Why are Hindus and Muslims in India Worshipping Dead Jews?

Across the country, the tombs of Jews, including those of a Jew-turned-Sufi saint whose severed head recited love poems and a Yemenite kabbalist with supernatural powers, are venerated in Hindu and Muslim rituals

- SAYAN LODH

In the Kankurgachi neighbourhood of Kolkata, the Das family worships a large gravestone, which sits in the courtyard of their home. In traditional Hindu fashion, they adorn it with marigold flowers and incense sticks. Every Thursday, a special puja takes place at the tomb, in which prayers are said and fresh garlands are placed atop it.

But this isn’t a Hindu tomb. It is the last remnant of Kolkata’s Jews Burying Ground No. 59. The gravestone and an unnoticeable plaque, now obscured by an electric installation box, are solitary witnesses to its real identity and the city’s now-obscure Jewish past.

This tomb is part of a fascinating phenomenon: It is one of three instances of Jewish graves worshipped by non-Jews in the country. Mrs Das, one of the grave’s guardians, proudly declares that the tomb is their “family deity”, who fulfils their wishes and protects them from evil. The Das family believes that the most prominent of the graves belongs to a male, on the basis of a fantastic paranormal experience that Mrs Das’s mother-in-law had in the 1960s. According to her account, on a winter’s night, she’d stepped outside and saw an old Jewish priest, dressed in white robes with a long beard and wearing the wooden kharam (slippers worn by Hindu ascetics), ascending from the grave. The elderly apparition assured her, “I won’t harm you.”

The prominent grave in the family’s courtyard, however, is actually that of Geula (or Jalla), daughter of Nissim Isaac (Yitzhak) Abraham. She died on 29 Tishri 5631 of the Jewish calendar, or October 24, 1870, and was buried in accordance with Jewish custom the next day.