The Jews are a diasporic community and have been dispersed all over the world. They have been exiled from their ancestral land and escaped persecution and thus landed in various parts of the globe. India, being a multicultural nation, is host to various groups of races, religions, linguistic variations, ethnicities from across the globe. It is a homeland to various minority communities such as the Parsees, Indian-Chinese and the Indian Jews. Indian Jews are a religious minority of India and have assimilated with a large number of local traditions through cultural diffusion. At present, India is home to the Bene Israel (Children of Israel), the Baghdadi Jews of Calcutta, the Cochin Jews of Kerala, the Bene Ephraim of Andhra Pradesh, the Bene Menashe of Manipur and Mizoram. This paper aims at exploring the status of the Bene Israel and Baghdadi Jews of India during the British Rule and how they used English language as a tool to gain advantage in terms of jobs and education when compared to the Indian people. The skill of English language in relation to Indian people will be analysed with the help of Postcolonial theory.
Dr. Kabideepa Handique (Mon,) studied this question.