Israel is preparing to erect a statue of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj in the Jewish country, and bringing to spotlight an overlooked historical connection between Jews and India. The story stretches from the villages of Maharashtra to the armies and navies that helped shape India’s history.
“Proud and historic,” wrote Maharashtra’s Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, in a post on X, announcing that the Consulate General of Israel in Mumbai has announced plans to install a statue of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj in the Jewish country. The announcement was made on the occasion of Shivrajyabhishek Din, which is the anniversary of the coronation of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj. It was over 350 years ago, on June 6, 1674, that Shivaji was coronated.
At a time when Jews were facing threats from the outside world for centuries, India was among the few countries where they lived without facing persecution, preserving their faith while also contributing to the local society.
From the Marathi-speaking Bene Israel of the Konkan coast to the Jewish merchants who travelled along India’s western shores, the relationship between India and the Jewish people stretches back thousands of years, but the 16th century is an important chapter in the history of the friendship between the two.
Now, with a Shivaji statue to be erected in Israel, the spotlight is on a story of a lesser-known chapter of the shared history involving the Maratha Empire and Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj.
HOW SOME JEWS EARNED ‘SHANIVAR TELIS’ MONIKER IN INDIA
Bene Israelis, one of India’s oldest Jewish communities, fled Galilee during the persecution of the Seleucid ruler Antiochus Epiphanes and reached India’s western coast after a shipwreck near Navagaon, south of present-day Mumbai, in the early 2nd century BCE, according to HS Kehimkar, who was a prominent 19th-century educator, author, and civil servant’s book, History of the Bene Israel of India (1937).
According to community lore, the Bene Israeli survivors were seven men and seven women, and they settled in the Konkan region and gradually became an integral part of local society.
The Bene Israel took up occupations such as oil-pressing and grocery trading, but strictly observed the Jewish Sabbath on Saturdays. Their staying away from work on Saturdays earned them the moniker Shanivar Telis (Saturday oil-pressers). The distinction was notable in Maharashtra’s social landscape as Hindu oil-pressers were known as Somwari Telis because they rested on Mondays, while Muslim oil-pressers who observed Friday prayers came to be called Shukrawar Telis.
Over the centuries, the Bene Israelis adopted the Marathi language and also many local customs of India, while preserving their Jewish identity. Their long presence in Maharashtra helped forge a uniquely Indian Jewish culture, one that thrived without the anti-Semitic persecution experienced elsewhere.