The Baghdadi Jews of India: Perspectives on the Study and Portrayal of a Community

Abstract

In discussing the current state of research on Baghdadi or Iraqi Jews in India, one of the first problems encountered is the lack of reliable demographic data. In Turning Back the Pages: A Chronicle of Calcutta Jewry, Esmond David Ezra carefully analyzed all the available censuses and other information for Calcutta and concluded that at its peak, in 1942, the Baghdadi population in that city numbered about 3800, including about 1200 refugees who came from Burma in that year. It is more difficult to determine the Baghdadi population of Bombay or Poona because official census figures did not differentiate between Baghdadis and Bene Israel in those cities. H. G. Reissner estimated that by 1941, the Baghdadis in both of these towns might have numbered about 3000. The total figure in India, therefore, at its height in the 1940s, would probably have been fewer than 7000. Ezekiel Musleah, in On the Banks of the Ganga: the Sojourn of Jews in Calcutta, gives a figure of 10,000 Baghdadi Jews before Second World War. This seems high and he does not give sources.1