Shared Cultural & Spiritual Heritage
Culture. Historical exchange, religious traditions and the cultural ground on which the relationship rests.
The cultural and historical relationship between India and the Jewish world predates the modern bilateral relationship by a substantial margin. Jewish communities have lived in India for approximately two thousand years, with the Bene Israel, Cochin, Baghdadi and other communities carrying their own histories, liturgical traditions and relationships with the wider Indian society. India is one of the few places in the world where Jewish communities have lived continuously without sustained persecution by the surrounding majority.
The Indian Ocean trade history that connected the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea and the western Indian coast across two millennia is the long backdrop. The pre-modern relationship between Indian and Jewish worlds ran through commerce, scholarly exchange of a limited kind, and the practical accommodations of religious minorities in plural societies.
Contemporary cultural exchange includes a substantial cinema relationship, growing tourism and pilgrimage, and an emerging set of literary and academic exchanges. Research covers these and the older histories on which they rest.