“Our Brother’s Blood”: Interreligious Solidarity and Commensality in Indian Jewish Literature

Abstract

Abstract: This article argues that contemporary Indian Jewish literature recovers a narrative of lost, Indigenous cosmopolitanism, which effectively reframes the history of the Indian subcontinent. More specifically, it contends that interreligious commensality, particularly between Jews and Muslims, forms the center of this cosmopolitan vision, thereby reimagining the home—rather than the public sphere—as the center of cosmopolitan experience. This gendered focus on food as a site for cultural syncretism and remembrance renders the home as a space that redefines Jewish identity and community, thereby challenging the patriarchal authority of both Jewish law and the Indian state. These texts (fiction, drama, poetry and creative nonfiction) preserve and transmit forms of Indian Jewish identity that are marginalized within India and little known by Jews outside the subcontinent. Despite the precipitous decline in the size of India’s Jewish communities, that loss is not defined primarily by externally imposed trauma. Indian Jewish literature therefore offers a distinctive model for remembrance that also challenges contemporary truisms about relationships between Jews and others. The memory of past commensality offers a note of both caution and hope as contemporary Indian Jewish writers wrestle with Jewish-Muslim conflict in the Middle East, where the majority of Jews of Indian descent now reside.