Abraham Salem the Jewish Gandhi of Cochin, India
By Bala Menon and Essie Sassoon*
Adapted from their book: The Jewish Gandhi
In August 1941, Abraham Barak Salem, a member of the Legislative Council in the Kingdom of Cochin, introduced a bill to provide free and compulsory education. The bill was left pending during the Second World War years.
On August 13, 1947, the bill was signed into law by the Maharajah of Cochin. The law was one of the factors which has helped Kerala, the state which now includes the former Kingdom of Cochin, to have levels of literacy as well as advanced education. Today Kerala’s literacy rate is 96%, the highest in India, with Delhi coming in next at 88%.
Salem was a founding member of the legislative council. The advisory body was set up in 1925 by the Maharajah of Cochin. It was part of the early attempts at expanding democratic rule in India. A year later, Salem introduced bills in the council to provide Pensions for Widows and Food Rations for The Poor. Later in the 1950s, similar social reform laws were passed by a democratically elected Kerala government.
Like Cochin, there were over 600 princely states run by royal families during British rule in India. The kingdoms covered about 40% of the subcontinent and about a third of the population. They were only nominally independent since all major decisions were overseen by a British administrator.
Salem was born into a Jewish family in Cochin in 1882. A labor union organizer and lawyer, his clients came from all religious and social backgrounds. Salem recognized early on that social reforms, as well as India’s independence from British rule, could only be achieved through Mahatma Gandhi’s strategy of Satyagraha - hold onto the truth and offer non-violent resistance to evil.
From the 1920 onwards, Salem organized peaceful protests and civil non-cooperation strategies against the British rulers. He was elected a general secretary of the Indian States’ Peoples Party, the wing of the Congress Party in Cochin and other princely states. The Congress Party was effectively led by Gandhi, the leader of India’s peaceful struggle for independence.
In 1929, Salem was a representative from Cochin at the Lahore session of the Congress Party. The session passed a resolution calling for Poorna Swaraj (complete independence), marking the start of the party’s campaign to end British rule.
Salem was a leader of Gandhian campaigns: for temperance-against alcohol consumption-in the Kingdoms of Cochin and Travancore, where there were major problems of alcoholism among men; and Swadeshi, that promotes consumption of Indian made goods, sitting with school children to weave cloth with charkas, handlooms. Not surprising, therefore, that Salem was locally known as the Jewish Gandhi of Cochin, a title he was happy to accept.
He also campaigned for allowing lower castes’ entry into local Hindu temples. While a Jew, he was viewed as a social reform leader by local Hindus, Christians and Muslims. Reflecting his wide appeal, he won the popular vote to serve a second term in the Cochin Legislative Council and was elected as the first president of the Mattancherry Municipal Council.
In the 1940’s, there were about 3,500 Jews in Cochin in eight congregations. There were three congregations in Mattancherry, where Salem lived, two in Ernakulam and one each in Paravur, Mala and Chennamangalam. None of the congregations in Cochin had Rabbis.
Salem sought reforms at the Paradesi Synagogue in Mattancherry. The White Jews would not allow Brown Jews, like Salem, to sit on the benches nor call on them to recite high prayers. Brown Jews could not marry White Jews and could not be buried in the Paradesi cemetery.
Salem protested outside the synagogue, with no visible support from others in the congregation. At times he took two of his sons inside and sat them on a bench. In 1932, the White Jews made some changes: Brown Jews could read some prayers; sit on the benches, but only at the back; and be buried in the synagogue cemetery, but against a back wall. The partial discrimination continued until the late 1950s, when younger Jews pushed for everyone be treated equally. .
In 1929, Salem wrote The Eternal Light, a book in English about the architecture and customs of the Paradesi Synagogue. In the book, he referred obliquely to the discrimination faced by Brown Jews, using Biblical verses. Salem was a prolific diarist and 21 volumes of his diaries, from the 1920s to the mid-1950s, are in the The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life at the University of California, Berkeley.
In the 1950’s, Salem helped organize the emigration of Cochin Jews to Israel. As a result, he became friends with Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, Moshe Sharett, David Ben Gurion and other Israeli leaders.
Although they got documents to migrate to Israel, Salem and his family chose to stay back in Kerala. His five children, now deceased, were: sons Raymond, a lawyer, and Balfour and Gumliel, both engineers, with Gumliel earning a Master’s Degree at Cornell University in New York; and daughters Malka and Venetia, both gynecologists. Salem, who died in 1967, is buried in the Paradesi Synagogue cemetery.
The largest open ground in Cochin was once known as Salem Maidan, in recognition of Salem’s powerful public speaking skills in Malayalam, the language of Kerala. Today there is an AB Salem road in Mattancherry named after him. In Teen Murti House in New Delhi, the official home of India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, there is a large photograph of Salem with Nehru.
The Cochin Jews, or Cochinim, are one of the most ancient Jewish communities in the diaspora. In the late 18th century, Cochin was more important to the Jews than New York. In 1792, for instance, there were about 2,000 Jews in eight congregations in Cochin, while New York had 72 families in one congregation, according to Walter Fischel, who taught at the University of California, Berkeley.
Recorded history dates the first presence of Jews in Cochin to 879 A.D. Engraved copper plates, with proclamations by local kings from the time, have Hebrew names as witnesses for land grants.
In 1000 A.D., two copper plates were given to the Jewish community, which was led by a Yemeni merchant Issappur Irrappan (Joseph Rabban). Inscriptions on the plates granted land rights and other honors to the Jews “as long as the earth and moon exists.” The plates are preserved in the Cochin Synagogue, with copies in Israel and the United Kingdom.
According to legend, Jews first landed on the coconut tree lined shores of Cochin about 3,000 years ago. They sailed there in the fleets of King Solomon to purchase spices, apes, peacocks and precious metals. Some Jewish scholars and the Cochin Jews call this the First Diaspora.
For several centuries, the Jews controlled Cochin’s thriving global trade in cinnamon, cardamom, cumin, pepper, turmeric, ginger and other spices. They also used the spices in their cooking, along with coconut, coconut milk and curry leaves. They adapted dosas, appam and other local dishes into their meals, including for religious rituals.
Another legend is that the Cochin Jews are descendants of Jewish prisoners of Nebuchadnezzar, the King of Babylon from 605 BCE to 562 BCE. They came to India after being freed by the Persian King Cyrus the Great around 539 BCE. The early Jewish settlers in Cochin were known as the Malabari or Black Jews.
The division among the Jews into Whites and Browns began after the Portuguese conquest of Cochin in the early 1500's AD. The White Jews came from Europe, mostly Spain and Portugal, especially after the Spanish Inquisition began in 1478 AD.
The White Jews alleged that the Brown Jews were children of their servants, slaves and concubines and, hence, not of pure Jewish ancestry. The White Jews built their own synagogue in 1568, the Paradesi (foreign) in Mattancherry, to which Salem later belonged.
Today there are only 21 Jews left in Kerala. There are no regular services or prayers at the Paradesi Synagogue, the only synagogue still functioning in Cochin. It is open daily for tourists. Religious services are held for Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur and other Jewish festivals, when Israeli tourists gather, and also when a Chabad Rabbi visits from Mumbai.
Most Cochin Jews have settled in Israel, with others in the United States, UK, Canada and Australia. In Israel, the descendants of the Cochin Jews are estimated to be over 8,000. The Black and White Jews continue to attend separate synagogues in Israel, as they did in Cochin.
Speaking of his ties to Cochin, Salem wrote “The Jews of Cochin are the most loyal citizens and…offer special prayers to bless, preserve, guard, assist and exalt the Raja of Cochin and His Royal Family…in spite of the tenacious, age-long fond longing to return to Jerusalem.”
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*Bala Menon is editor of The Voice Media Group, Toronto. Earlier he was at The Times of India; Deputy Editor at the Times of Oman; and an editor at Gulf News in Dubai.
Essie Sassoon was deputy head at Barzilai Medical Centre in Ashkelon, Israel. Born in Cochin, she graduated from the Trivandrum Medical College, Kerala.
**The Jewish Gandhi of Cochin - A biography of Abraham Barak Salem by Bala Menon and Essie Sassoon. Menon, Sassoon and Kenny Salem, who lives in Toronto and is a grandson of Abraham Salem, co-authored Spice and Kosher - Exotic Cuisine of the Cochin Jews.
