Kolkata, India – Afternoon sunlight streams through the tall stained glass windows of the Maghen David Synagogue in the city of Calcutta, the capital of the eastern Indian state of West Bengal.
Anwar Khan, in his starched white uniform, with the name of the synagogue embroidered on his breast pocket, is at work. He places the richly polished teak chairs with well-kept rattan seats in symmetrical lines. Visitors to the synagogue are rare these days because there are very few Jews left in this sprawling city.
But that doesn’t take away from Khan’s diligence or pride in his work. This 44-year-old man is the chief caretaker of the synagogue. He dusts, sweeps and mops to keep the temple clean.
Some 4,000 kilometers away, Israel has been bombing Gaza relentlessly for a month now, killing more than 10,000 Palestinians. The assault began on October 7 after Hamas fighters entered Israeli territory, killing more than 1,400 people and capturing more than 200.
But in the quiet rooms of the Maghen David synagogue, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict finds no echo.
“They get up and say their namaz (prayer). We sit and do our namaz. That’s the only difference between us,” says Khan, who since the age of 20 has been caretaker of the 140-year-old Renaissance-style synagogue on Brabourne Road, in the busiest business and wholesale market district from Calcutta.
Until about 75 years ago, the synagogues of Calcutta pulsed with life. The first Jews arrived in the city towards the end of the 18th century. Today, the number of synagogues in the bustling city – once the capital of the British empire in the Indian subcontinent – has fallen from five to three, while the size of the Jewish community has shrunk from more than 5,000 people at its peak at just 20.
But there has been one constant for more than two centuries: the guardians of the synagogues. For generations now, they have come from a village called Kakatpur, in Puri district, about 500 km south of Kolkata in the neighboring state of Odisha.
And they are all Muslims.
Between the city’s three synagogues, there are six Muslim guardians, all of whom live on site in premises provided to them and return home from time to time to visit their families. They start work early in the day, cleaning, dusting, polishing and making sure lights and other electrical appliances are in order. They also accompany guests and visitors, which rarely happens these days.
“Sad that Muslims and Jews are fighting”
It is not as if the Jews of Calcutta or the Muslim guardians of the synagogues are oblivious to the horrors of the war between Israel and Hamas or the Israeli bombardment of Gaza.
Like many other cities around the world, Kolkata has also witnessed pro-Palestinian protests by left-wing activists and some Muslim groups. Muslims make up about 27 percent of the population in West Bengal, where a political party opposed to the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is in power.
But Muslim guards say they have faced no pressure from their families or the community to work in synagogues.
“For me, this (synagogue) is the house of ‘Khuda’ (God), just like our own ‘Khuda ka ghar’ (mosque),” says Khan. “It is very sad that Muslims and Jews are fighting today in Gaza and Israel. But their house of God is also our house of God. We will deal with it for the rest of our lives.
Masood Hussain, 43, is the sole caretaker of Neveh Shalome, Kolkata’s oldest synagogue, located next to Maghen David. He says he regularly goes to a local mosque to pray, but no one has asked him about his ties to Jews.
“We go to our mosque to pray but no one said anything, neither ordinary people nor religious leaders,” he said.
Having dropped out of school, Hussain came to Kolkata from Odisha 10 years ago, following in the footsteps of his father and father-in-law who also looked after the synagogue. A tall, thin man with two daughters attending university back home, Hussain points to a small exhibition of photos of Calcutta’s early Jews. He knows their names and their stories by heart.
“No one asked, ‘Why are you working for the Jewish people?’ No one in my family or community told me, ‘Quit your job,’” Hussain says.
“We will offer namaz in our masjid (mosque). No one says anything there either. The maulvi (imam) is very friendly. We have tea together. He never said, “Masood, why are you doing this?” If he says something, I will respond. But I believe that all problems should be resolved peacefully.
Asked about anti-Israel protests in the city, Hussain says there have never been attacks on synagogues. “And there never will be, not in Calcutta. The people of Calcutta are very good. But if it happens, we will deal with it. At worst, what will happen? We will be killed. But it is the house of God. For this house of God, we are ready to face anything.
“As long as we Muslims are not here, we will be the first to confront anyone from our community (who) comes here (to create trouble). If this happens, we will do muqabla (resistance). In our lifetime, nothing will happen to the synagogues.
A centuries-old bond
The connection between religions that is visible in the synagogues dates back to the early 1800s, when Neveh Shalomé was built. At that time, the Jewish community numbered around 300 people and came mainly from Iraq and Iran – the Jews of Baghdadi – following in the footsteps of the rich. The businessman Shalom Obadiah Cohen, born in Aleppo, would be the first Jew to arrive in Calcutta, in 1798.
Calcutta, then known as Calcutta, was a sought-after destination, where business was booming for traders in jewelry, textiles and, among other things, opium. The Jewish community was thriving, alongside Parsis, Armenians and Chinese who flocked to the city which was the headquarters of the East India Company.
But with the creation of Israel in 1948, many members of Calcutta’s Jewish community left. Families moved to Israel, but also to the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada, as newly independent India was in convulsion following a bloody partition and devastating communal riots.
Today, of the 20 Jews remaining in the city, most are over 70 years old. In total, India today has only about 5,000 Jews, out of a maximum of 30,000.
David Ashkenazy, president of the board of directors that runs the Beth El synagogue, honorary secretary of Maghen David and member of the board of directors of Neveh Shalomé, is not sure how Muslims from a village hundreds of kilometers away are became guardians of the synagogue. But he confirms that the profession has been passed down from generation to generation.
Khan, Maghen David’s caretaker, got the job because his father Khalil Khan and grandfather Ajju Khan were caretakers at Beth El Synagogue and championed his cause when he was looking for work.
That Muslim guards from another state would establish ties with then-immigrant Jews is not surprising, Ashkenazy suggests.
“We were both strangers in a new country – Jews from Baghdad and these Muslims from a village 500 km to the south,” he says. “Some of our dietary laws are also similar.”
“I do not even think about it. It’s normal. It’s natural,” says Jael Silliman, a famous Kolkata-based Jewish author, painter and women’s rights activist, referring to the friendship between the city’s Muslims and Jews. “We Baghdadi Jews have lived with Muslims in the Ottoman Empire and across the Middle East for centuries. We are Arab Jews.
Silliman cites another example of this link with Calcutta: the city’s Jewish girls’ school, founded in 1881, where 90 percent of the students are Muslim.
“This too is a beacon of hope, like the Muslim guardians of our synagogues,” she said.
“The natural choice of Muslims for caregivers”
Initially, in Calcutta, wealthy Baghdadi Jews hired Muslims as cooks in their homes, says Navras Jaat Aafreedi, assistant professor of history at the Presidency University of Calcutta, where he offers a course on world Jewish history.
“The main factors behind Jewish-Muslim friendship were the absence of idol worship and similar dietary restrictions,” he says, “the latter of which prompted Baghdadi Jews to employ Muslims as cooks.
“Once the synagogues were built, Muslims were a natural choice for guardians,” he adds. “In India, the Arab-Israeli conflict has not undermined the historic cordiality between Jews and Muslims. »
However, the ongoing war in Gaza worries the guards.
“Our ‘mazhab’ (faith) does not teach us to hate,” says Sheikh Gufran, the oldest of Maghen David’s three guardians, as he meticulously polishes the synagogue’s teak benches.
“Every time I offer namaz, I pray for people of all religions who are suffering during the war (in Gaza and Israel). Muslims suffer there. The Jews are suffering. I hope their suffering will end soon,” says the 48-year-old.
Ashkenazy hands some religious books to Gufran and asks him to dust them carefully. The books are old and valuable and should be handled with care.
It is also time for Gufran prayers. He leaves the synagogue, turns west and begins to pray in the courtyard.