Talk by Dr. Richard Benkin
Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP)
Under the auspices of Dr. Navras Jaat Aafreedi
18 February 2021
https://isgap.org/seminar-series/antisemitism-in-south-asia-in-comparative-perspective/
Thank you, Dr. Aafreedi, my dear friend and colleague of many years. If anyone knows how important this topic is, you do. And understanding it is even more important today given the geopolitical significance of South Asia. With the shifting sands of self and national interests, we simply can’t afford to make assumptions about the essence of antisemitism in South Asia or what that means for action. Doing so misses the point and leads people to consider potential allies as enemies, as we will see later. Some assumptions and insights as we delve into this.
· First, it would be a mistake to try and understand antisemitism in South Asia within the context of traditional Western antisemitism. To take a mild illustration, the few people who continue calling Chicago’s Maxwell Street “Jewtown,” do so despite decades of information that it offends Jews. And as a result of these decades of education (not to mention urban renewal), the expression has passed from popular speech; and take-out signs advertising a “Jewtown Polish” also are gone. But there’s no offense meant or taken at the many signs, store names, and such that identify Jew Town near the Paradasi Synagogue in Kochi, India. That’s not to deny their existence but rather to avoid potential pitfalls in our analysis, and to determine what should and should not be addressed and find the most effective way to address it.
· Second, while our analysis doesn’t focus on South Asia’s religions per se, it recognizes the distinct nature of antisemitism among post-Judaic Abrahamic faiths (i.e., Christianity and Islam) vs. non-Abrahamic faiths like Hinduism.
· Third, for context; we use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) “working definition” of antisemitism: “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” IHRA’s accompanying guide provides examples that include traditional anti-Semitic canards (e.g., Jews are more loyal to Israel or an alleged worldwide Jewish network than to their country). It also includes targeting the State of Israel with “double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.” That is, it doesn’t label all criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic, but it acknowledges that much of what masquerades as policy or politics is nothing more than a smokescreen for Jew-hatred.
· And fourth, in drawing conclusions, I paint with a broad brush and base much on almost two decades of participant observation as a Jew in South Asia.
So let’s begin. In the West, antisemitism’s origins—and continued existence—are based on theology and nationalism; both of which makes antisemitism the hatred that will not die. In South Asia, antisemitism is essentially political, even if it sometimes has theological overtones; and that makes it something that either can be marginalized or eradicated among most. Two very different phenomena with very different staying power.
Western antisemitism developed organically from the strong hybrid soil of violent Roman imperialism and Christian religiosity; that makes it the hatred that will not die. Antisemitism in South Asia, on the other hand, was a foreign phenomenon grafted onto the cultures of the region.
The Roman Empire was anti-Jewish long before it made Christianity its official religion; even waging anti-Jewish genocidal wars in the first and second centuries of the Common Era. And I use the word genocidal deliberately. The first war ended with the wholesale expulsion or murder of most Jews, especially their intelligentsia and other elites; Roman hordes burning and looting the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem; and the destruction of the Jewish/Israelite state. Sixty years later, the Emperor Hadrian visited the region and determined to eradicate all remaining things Jewish. He set up a new colony on the ruins of Jerusalem, Aelia Capitolina, and erected a Temple to Jupiter where the Jewish Temple had stood. That serious desecration helped spark the doomed Bar Kokhba revolt, which brought on the second military campaign; and ended with Rome killing, expelling, and enslaving more Jews and renaming Judea Syria Palestina.
The Jews’ refused to do what other occupied peoples were compelled to do, that is, alter their faith and include Roman deities alongside Ha-Shem. That same fidelity to their faith also formed the basis of Christin antisemitism. In Why the Jews, (a great little book that I keep constantly at my desk), Dennis Prager and Rabbi Joseph Telushkin argue that Jews represented an existential threat to the early Church. Supersessionism, a key tenet of the faith then and for many now as well, held that Jesus as the son of God replaced or superseded Jewish law; that with Jesus, belief alone was sufficient, and there was no imperative to follow Judaic laws. But the Jews rejected that and as Prager and Telushkin wrote, “Jews, merely by continuing to be Jews, threatened the very legitimacy of the Church. If Judaism remained valid, then Christianity was invalid.” ‘Belief in Jesus alone was not sufficient,’ the Jews proclaimed simply by remaining Jews. For this new religion, now wedded to violent Roman imperialism that could not stand. Thus, the violent Jew-hatred in the writings of many revered fathers of the early Church.
· St. John Chrysostom, whose appellation means “golden mouth,” used his ‘golden mouth’ to call “the synagogue… worse than a brothel [and] the refuge of devils.” He justified anti-Jewish violence in a way that Catholic historian Malcolm Hay said “would have been useful to the defense at Nuremburg.”
· St. Ambrose of Milan established the principle that all damage done by anti-Jewish rioters had to be rectified and paid for by the Jews themselves; a tenet Joseph Goebbels imposed on Germany’s Jews after Kristallnacht.
· The Gospel of John, the last gospel written, had Jesus rant to the Jews “You are of your father, the Devil, and your will is to do your father’s desire.”
· St. Louis was an implacable antisemite who ordered Jews expelled from France after previously being only the second monarch to order that Jews wear a yellow badge, and ordered 12,000 copies of the Talmud burned.
· Even “good” Pope John Paul II began beautifying rabid anti-Semite August Cardinal Hlond who in 1936 told the Polish people “So long as Jews remain Jews, a Jewish problem exists and will continue to exist… Jews are waging war against the Catholic church, [they] constitute the vanguard of atheism, the Bolshevik movement, and revolutionary activity. It is a fact that Jews have a corruptive influence on morals and that their publishing houses are spreading pornography.”
Even today’s New Catholic Dictionary has an entry on “Little” St. Hugh of Lincoln. In the 13th century, his nine-year-old body was found in a well, and England’s Jews were accused of killing him in a ritual murder. There were widespread anti-Jewish riots, and King Henry III himself took an active role, ordering 90 Jews arrested and held in the Tower of London. They were convicted of “ritual murder,” and 18 were hanged; the rest saved from execution some time later when embarrassed clerics intervened. And though ritual murder has been debunked as libelous and the cause of unjust suffering and death; this “NEW” Catholic Dictionary notes that, “Whether there was any truth in the accusation against the Jews, there is now no means of ascertaining.” Really! You mean it might be true? That crap keeps Christian Jew-hatred and the blood libel alive, and there’s even a boys’ school in Lincolnshire, England, named after Little St. Hugh. You know what they say: ”Teach your children well.”
South Asia is a different matter. Just outside the main worship hall of Kochi’s Paradesi synagogue is a room whose walls are covered with paintings that depict the arrival of South Asia’s first Jews after that first Roman genocide, 72 CE. Evidence supports the depiction, and there are anecdotal accounts of Jewish-Hindu interaction even earlier: Judean traders visiting India during King Solomon’s time and emigres arriving after the First Temple was destroyed in 587 BCE. As such, Judaism was the first foreign religion in India and so arrived there without the baggage of Roman and Christian antisemitism. In fact, Indians pride themselves on the fact that Jews never faced the bigotry and official hatred in India that they did in the West, other than the foreign/colonial imposition of the Portuguese Inquisition in Goa, which targeted Hindus and Muslims, as well as Jews.
Yet, it would be wrong to say that there’s no antisemitism in South Asia today, but we’ll never understand its dynamics unless we throw away the prism of western antisemitism. Here are two illustrations of this disconnect.
While preparing this piece, I found myself leafing through the pages of Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler’s notorious autobiography and Jew-hating manifesto. I bought it in an open air market one night in Kolkata and recall how the vendor had no idea of the book’s place in the panoply of hate. He knew that Hitler led Germany to a string of “amazing” successes, as he put it, in World War II before going down to defeat, and that Indians fought alongside the British and against Hitler in that war. For many Indians, the “enemy of my enemy is my friend” mantra has them curious about this fierce opponent of their colonial oppressors. The Kolkata vendor also knew that Hitler “hated Jews and killed some” but couldn’t provide any context for what happened, any history that could have caused that phenomena, other than the fact that Hitler was a “bad man.” But that assessment, too, was a foreign import with little emotional content. The publisher, Jainco, also publishes Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl. And while that makes little sense from a western point of view, there is no contradiction if we understand that South Asian antisemitism simply does not work the same way.
I’ve also helped with recent discussions between the American Jewish and Hindu communities over a New York State Senate bill that recognizes the swastika as a symbol of hate; in effect, as something odious. It reads in part:
As many of our youth are not aware of the hateful connotations behind swastikas and nooses, it is necessary for the legislature to mandate compulsory education in all schools across our great state in regard to the meanings of these two symbols of hate.
But the swastika is a Hindu religious symbol that predates the Nazis’ hateful appropriation by millennia; and it remains a treasured symbol in the Hindu religion. It’s said to bring good luck and well-being. So on roads throughout India—from New Delhi and Mumbai to remote villages—you see swastikas on car windows, none of them having anything to do with Nazism or antisemitism. Hindus are incensed about this attempt to declare their religious symbol hateful, and to teach that to their children no less. Consider: I am involved in protests to the Sri Lankan government over religious freedom violations, viz. forced cremations of Muslims; who like Jews, proscribe cremation. How different is that from forcing Hindu children to learn that their religious symbol is hateful. At the same time, like so many other Jews, I lost a lot of family in the Shoah, and have come to find it and the Nazis the most detestable of human scum; and as the crisis has heated up, I’ve been receiving emails from Jewish groups that show pictures of Indians wearing clothing or jewelry adorned with swastikas. These messages suggest that the images prove Indians view Hitler and Nazis with favor. It doesn’t do that, but it does show that we cannot understand the existence or lack of antisemitism in South Asia using the historical baggage that we in the West bring.
I have not faced serious antisemitism myself in India, aside from some anti-Israel partisans; but I have encountered ignorance and stereotype. In 2009, for instance, Dr. Aafreedi arranged for me to give two days of talks at Lucknow University. On our way to the car after the second day, a young man in religious Muslim garb ran out of the Islamic Studies Center and invited us to come inside for tea, which we did. One person there was a journalist who writes in Urdu, the lingua franca of Indian Muslims. He and I had a rather animated debate over what he called “the occupation,” and as we were leaving, he said rather nonchalantly that “every Muslim child knows that the world’s media is controlled by eight Jews.”
“Really.” I said. “Who?”
“Rupert Murdoch,” he replied.
“Not Jewish,” I said. “Next.”
“Ted Turner.”
“Ted Turner! I replied. “I don’t know if he even likes Jews!”
Here was a journalist, an opinion maker and giver of information. Even he was ignorant about Jews, yet repeated bigotry as if it was accepted, common knowledge. And that ignorance, with a political overlay that people try to associate with religion, is at the heart of South Asian antisemitism.
Back to the Goa Inquisition. Catholic Portugal imposed it on India about 15 years after Columbus arrived in America. Its focus was to root out “New Christians” who continued to practice their original faiths or elements of them. Though former Hindus and Muslims way outnumbered Jews, the Portuguese Inquisition in India, like its big brothers in Europe, held a particular animus for them. Portugal’s King Manuel I expelled the Jews in 1497, and many fled Portugal on trading ships. A lot ended up in India in large part because:
· There was no native antisemitism in India, as there was in Europe and most of the lands they ruled.
· India presented trading opportunities barred to Jews in Europe and elsewhere.
· There was an old and well-established Jewish community not far from Portuguese-ruled Goa, in Kochi, that welcomed Jews and were ready to accept those forcibly converted to Catholicism back into the Jewish faith.
Significantly, after the Inquisition was abolished in 1812, hostility toward so-called crypto-Hindus and crypto-Muslims remained in the Christian community there, but antisemitism largely evaporated. Again we see that antisemitism was a foreign import with no traction among Indians.
We do find a general ignorance about Jews in India, especially conflating being Jewish with being Israeli. In 2009, I was in Delhi to be the featured presenter at a seminar for lawyers who practice before the Indian Supreme Court. The event was held just across from that chamber, and I arrived to see a big sign reading:
“Jihad: The Jews response, Lessons for India. A talk by Dr. Richard Benkin, Noted Jew Thinker and Human Rights Activist.”
The conveners were well-educated people with a large imprint on Indian public life. Yet, even their level of knowledge is limited. They didn’t want the Jewish response to terrorism. Most Jews would find the notion of getting a single Jewish approach to anything, let alone this, hilarious and absurd. They wanted Israel’s response to terrorism; that is, why tiny Israel can do what giant India cannot. And here I am, an American citizen who has never been anything but an American citizen; but for most of the South Asians I’ve encountered, that also means Israeli. Antisemitism or what we might think is antisemitic in South Asia has two basic sources, ignorance and politics, but nothing as emotionally impactful as religion.
I also disagree with those who have been trying to identify Hindu nationalists as antisemitic or suggest that it’s inherent to their philosophy. That, too, is politics and reflects the writers’ distaste for Hindutua, the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party), PM Narendra Modi, or conservatives in general. But there is an antisemitic strain there. Our group of Hindu and Jewish Americans puts on events like our “Hindu/Jewish Festival of Lights” celebrating Diwali and Chanukah, Recently, we were working on other events when one of our Hindu members, many of whom are Hindu nationalists, remarked on some push back by saying that “there are some in our community who are against working with Jews.” So that dislike is there, but third parties who have called out groups like the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) as endemically antisemitic are hoping to convince people of something that simply isn’t so. The RSS and other Hindutua groups have had me address their members regularly—and I am very openly and proudly Jewish and Zionist. Antisemitic individuals among Hindu nationalists? Yes, but no one has been able to provide anything but anecdotal evidence. It’s something to be watched and opposed, to be sure, but nothing organic to them.
Religious overtones do exist in South Asia’s Muslim-majority countries, but they’re secondary to politics and thrive on ignorance. Somewhere in the Bangladeshi legal system are government papers identifying me as an agent of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency. There is no truth to it, and if real agents ever thought about the accusation, they’d probably find the idea rather humorous. But no one was laughing when they made the charge; and the Mossad accusation adds a sinister and dangerous dimension to my status in a region where conspiracy theories abound. In fact, one long time Bangladeshi colleague explained that “you can be sure to have a lot of supporters in Bangladesh, no matter what it is for, if you condemn Israel.” He also said that calling something “a Zionist plot” is a credible way to deflect criticism or cover failures.
Dr. Shadman Zaman, a 25-year-old Bangladeshi who moved to Israel, said he grew up surrounded by classic antisemitism, and with school books that taught ‘Jews are the mirror of Satan’ and ‘Zionists control the world.’” No doubt, but I never encountered antisemitism, unless it came from Islamists or foreigners (like the Iranians who picketed my presence with antisemitic tropes.) The one exception came from H.T. Imam, a close confidant of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina with a cabinet-level post. On March 10, 2015, human rights activist Rabindra Ghosh met with him about the persecution of Hindus. Imam dismissed the notion out of hand, so Ghosh noted my long standing activism and detailed documentation of anti-Hindu atrocities, Imam replied, “Dr. Benkin is working for the interests of the Jews,” and warned him not to meet with me in Kolkata as he planned. Mr. Ghosh, however, a longtime colleague, met with me, and handed over a thick dossier with evidence of government-tolerated persecution.
According to the B’nai Brit Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Imam is an outlier. Its 2014 poll of global antisemitism sampled 102 countries. Bangladesh was tied for 50th in overall antisemitism, squarely in the middle of the pack, besting both France and Greece. This distinction is not merely academic. Antisemitism is not embedded in the Bengali cultural narrative, though arguments used to demonize Israel contain antisemitic canards, and there is a significant Islamist element that actively promotes Jew hatred. Yet, the government while not taking action to combat or actively condemn it; doesn’t adopt or express those anti-Jewish attitudes even when criticizing Israel.
Pakistan did not appear on the ADL study; too difficult and dangerous to sample. And of the three South Asian countries, I admittedly know Pakistan the least. I do, however, work closely with its Pashtun, Sindhi, and Baloch minorities. Pashtuns claim descent from Ancient Israel’s Ten Lost Tribes, and other Pakistanis derisively call them “Yahud” or Jew. Doing so, one Pashtun colleague told me, is intended to make them less legitimate as Muslims. But again, while given a religious veneer, the phenomenon is essentially political. My colleague said he was raised with it being emphasized again and again (often with beatings) that a Muslim’s first and overarching loyalty was to the Muslim Ummah, and any attempt to strengthen other identities was contrary to being a good Muslim; and that “during childhood, I considered the Jews and all other non-Muslims as the worst enemy of Islam and Muslims and that Jihad should be fought against them.” That’s a pretty telling statement. Is there a lot of anti-Jewish prejudice? Yes, but only to the extent that it serves other, less particularistic, goals.
Yes, South Asia’s radical Imams give anti-Jewish sermons and polemics, and use the Quran and Hadiths to try to tie Jew-hatred to religious duty; but that simple reality is replicated globally. As long as these expressions of antisemitism remain largely the province of the extremes, they are no more reflective of the general population than were the Charlottesville, VA, marchers reflective of Americans when they chanted “The Jews will not replace us.”
So, what do we do?
1. We leave our assumptions at the door and stop acting like expressions in South Asia mean the same things they do in the West.
2. Education. As Dr. Aafreedi has noted, the abundance of ignorance about Jews breeds an abundance of antisemitic stereotypes. And no one has done the hard work for so long and effectively on this as Navras has. I wouldn’t even try to suggest anything more than referring to his substantial body of work.
3. De-politicize things. Conflating Jews and Israel means identifying Jews as the villains of the conflict and for many, ties that to Muslim religious duty. And there is real reason for hope on this front.
Besides being the year of COVID, 2020 was a year of unprecedented change in the Israel-Arab cum Jew-Muslim conflict. There are so many reasons to celebrate the Abraham Accords by which several Muslim-majority countries embraced the Jewish state. But I believe their greatest achievement was de-coupling the religious conflict from the political one. In one early human rights battle, I freed a Bangladeshi Muslim journalist accused of blasphemy for urging relations with Israel. Charge him with treason or something else, if you want, but if you call it blasphemy, then more and more Muslim leaders are likewise guilty for having relations with Israel. And even the heart of Islam, the land where The Prophet trod, where Islam was born, we now know has some level of relations with Israel. If we stay that de-political course, will there still be antisemitism in South Asia and radical Imams spewing hatred toward the Jews? Probably; but fewer and fewer Muslims will see their stance on Israel as anything more than political.
Thank you.