Novels set around the Jewish Bene Israel community in India are as rare as hen’s teeth, but Sheela Rohekar’s 2013 Hindi novel, Miss Samuel: A Jewish-Indian Saga, translated this year into English by Madhu Singh, must be one-of-a-kind. Rohekar is perhaps the only Jewish author in India who writes in Hindi. Her novel reads as two stories in one: the fictional saga of six generations of a Bene Israel family from Amdavad, the Gujarati name for Ahmedabad, and a more general history of the Bene Israel, the earliest group of Jews to settle in India some 2000 years ago, thought (by some) to be a lost tribe of Israel.
Rohekar provides a family tree at the beginning of the book, which comes in handy as the different generations can be complex. The narrator for much of the family saga is Sarah, the daughter of Bobby, the family historian who was murdered when he was mistaken as a Muslim. It’s Bobby’s written history of the Bene Israel that forms most of the second half of the book. Before that, Sarah tells of Bene Israel names.
You must be wondering what strange names these are. The truth is, after our ancestors first set foot in the Konkan region of Maharashtra, they discarded their feeling of displacement, hoping to make this land their new home. As the Hindu population was in the majority, it was safer to imitate the Hindu names and mingle with their culture. So, Isaac became Isaji and Elijah became Eloji. Similarly, we have names like Abaji, Ramaji and Hasaji.
Sarah also narrates the difficulty her father Bobby had in getting a job because he was Jewish and was perceived to have loyalties to Israel, not India. In one interview, he was asked for his name and caste. When he answered, he was told he was too old and didn’t have the right experience. He tried to convince his interviewers that he was loyal to India, but that didn’t seem to matter.
He was successful at the interview, but he was disqualified for the job. ‘Even if you are Indian, you do not belong here. Like other minorities, you are exploiting our country and resources. Your loyalties will always be towards your homeland. Please go back to your country, to your own soil, so that some needy Hindu brethren may get a job here.’
But he was Indian and had never lived anywhere else. The Bene Israel didn’t even know they were Jewish—they had no name for their customs—until just over 250 years ago. Bobby describes this turning point.
The biggest change in the social and intellectual condition of the Bene Israel of the Konkan region was the arrival of the son of a Cochin resident, Ezekiel Rahabi, David Rahabi, who was sent to South India by the Dutch East India Company in 1768. He taught the Bene Israel about Judaism, took a few young men to Cochin to teach them about Jewish practices, and gave them the title of Kaji (judge in Arabic) so that they could return and teach the Jewish traditions to their people.
He tells of how the Bene Israel were afraid to move close to Bombay because the Portuguese lived there and tried to convert people who weren’t Catholic. A new policy to open Bombay, by then British, to other races and religions began under Governor Gerald Angier around 1669. Parsis were the first to move into Bombay, followed Muslim traders, who in turn inspired the Bene Israel to follow suit. They shared with Muslims many of the same dietary customs and religious rituals.
The author’s integration of history into the novel and its dialogues seems to have led to the inclusion of a passage that will raise eyebrows, at least among anglophone readers in the wider world. In the context of the anti-Israel riots of 2006, a discussion wrongly places Auschwitz in Germany and the author has a character make the following comment: “At least those sixty lakh Jews knew that death stared at them…” This particular discussion doesn’t seem consequential to the plot, and is at best a distraction.
What is one to make of a Jewish novel written in Hindi in India? In her translator’s note introducing the novel, Madhu Singh asks the questions: Can a non-Jewish translator translate a writer’s Jewishness? If so, to what extent can a non-Jewish translator adjust, adapt or compromise in order to translate a sensibility and ethos different from her own? She does not, alas, enlighten us as to what she might have adjusted, adapted or compromised or why.