Calcutta Kosher and The Man with Many Hats: Recasting the Baghdadi Jews as a ‘New’ Minority in Contemporary India
This article discusses some of the recent narratives of India's Baghdadi Jews, looking at the way works of literature have been recasting this community as an Indian minority referred to as 'Indian Jewish' or, more specifically, 'Calcutta Jewish'. Indulging into nostalgic me...
| Published in: | Studi e materiali di storia delle religioni |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Print Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Morcelliana
[2017]
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| In: |
Studi e materiali di storia delle religioni
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| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Calcutta
/ Bagdader Juden (India)
/ Religious identity
/ Religious minority
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| RelBib Classification: | AG Religious life; material religion BH Judaism KBM Asia |
| Further subjects: | B
minor transnationalism
B literature and performing arts B Ebrei Baghdati B transnazionalismo minore B letteratura e teatro B Baghdadi Jews B Memory B Nostalgia B Memoria |
| Summary: | This article discusses some of the recent narratives of India's Baghdadi Jews, looking at the way works of literature have been recasting this community as an Indian minority referred to as 'Indian Jewish' or, more specifically, 'Calcutta Jewish'. Indulging into nostalgic memory building, adopting literature as a strategical practice of history-writing and engaging into an archeology of cultural performances, two women authors of the Baghdadi Jewish descent have retrieved past lives and memories along the "sensory geographies" of India's most vibrant colonial city: Calcutta. Since 2001 renamed Kolkata, the city has undergone deep changes in postcolonial times and yet remains the perfect canvas where to perform a new hybrid subjectivity, that of the Indian Jew - or 'Calcutta Jew' as some would prefer - testifying to the historical ties and the special bond to the city that once upon an time they used to call home. Whilst the remaining Jewish communities of India are undergoing a legal battle for the recognition of their civic and political rights and the granting of the status of 'minority' - so far bestowed upon them only by the State of Maharashtra (2016) - some writers are contributing to highlight the greater history of a forgotten community, the Baghdadi Jews, who had arrived in India at the end of the eighteenth century as a "diaspora of hope" and are now claiming an Indian Jewish minoritarian identity, so far denied. From the autobiographical novel by Jael Silliman The Man With Many Hats (2013) to the witty theatre play Calcutta Kosher by Shelley Silas (2004), this article retraces some of the stories of the smallest Indian Jewish community, the Baghdadi Jews of Calcutta. Navigating the lanes of Calcutta/Kolkata, sensory memoryscapes evocatively reframe the history of this minor transnational community. |
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| ISSN: | 0081-6175 |
| Contains: | In: Studi e materiali di storia delle religioni
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