Advocate Abraham Barak Salem: How 'Jewish Gandhi' fought against racial discrimination in Cochin

Abraham Barak Salem (1882–1967) occupies a singular place in India’s social and legal history. He was not only a prominent Jewish reformer from Kochi, but also the first lawyer to emerge from the marginalised Brown Jewish community of Kerala.

Salem’s life is best understood as a symbol of resistance against inherited hierarchy, social exclusion and the quiet cruelty of custom.

Unlike many reformers who challenged the State or colonial power, Salem’s primary struggle was internal. He fought discrimination practised within the Cochin Jewish community itself, where racial and lineage-based hierarchies governed religious and social life.

Salem was born in 1882 to a Jewish family in Cochin, then a princely state in British India. He was brought up by his mother and attended Maharaja’s College, Ernakulam. He later moved to Madras, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree, becoming the first university graduate among the meshuchrarim (mixed race Jews).

While in Madras, Salem also obtained his law degree, becoming the first Jew from Cochin to do so. Bala Menon and Essie Sasoon in their book The Jewish Gandhi write that Salem returned to Cochin after working in Madras for a couple of years. On his return, he began practising as a lawyer before the Cochin Chief Court in Ernakulam.

A brief account of Kerala’s Jewish history is essential to understand the roots of the discrimination that Salem confronted.

The earliest Jews of Kerala are believed to have arrived in Kodungallur immediately after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. Over time, they integrated with local culture and came to be known as the Malabari Jews.

A later group of Jews arrived in Cochin in the 16th century, following the expulsion of Jews from Spain. These Jews were largely white-skinned and economically influential merchants with extensive overseas trade links. They came to be known as the Paradesi Jews. The term paradesi in Malayalam and Tamil means outsider.

A third community of Brown Jews also existed. Salem’s family belonged to this group, known as the meshuchrarim, a Hebrew term used sometimes neutrally and sometimes pejoratively to denote emancipated slaves or their descendants. Within the Cochin Jewish community, the meshuchrarim occupied the lowest position in an entrenched internal hierarchy.

The Paradesi Jews exercised social dominance within the community and practised discrimination against the meshuchrarim, particularly in religious spaces. Members of the meshuchrarim were relegated to a subordinate position within the Paradesi Synagogue in Cochin.

Cultural differences between the Paradesi Jews and the older Malabari Jewish communities were maintained for centuries. Over time, these distinctions became closely associated with differences in skin colour, reinforcing a racialised social order. According to experts, the discrimination faced by Brown Jews at the hands of Paradesi Jews closely resembled the Hindu social hierarchy of the time.

In their book Kashrut, Caste and Kabbalah, Nathan Katz and Ellen Goldberg record a 1757 entry in the Paradesi Synagogue’s records stating that if a Jewish man married a woman from the Black Jewish community or a manumitted slave, the sons born to them would follow the status of their mother, while the man would continue to stand separately in the congregation.

Although Jewish scholars from outside Cochin opposed these practices from as early as the 16th century, their objections were largely ignored.

The Paradesi Synagogue in Kochi's Mattancherry was the primary site where this hierarchy was enforced. Built and maintained by the Paradesi Jews under the aegis of the Maharaja of Cochin, who granted them land behind his palace, the synagogue became the focal point of Jewish religious life in Kerala.

The discrimination faced by the Brown Jewish community in Cochin was not abstract or symbolic. It was practised daily and enforced through religious ritual, social conduct and community regulation.

The most visible form of exclusion operated within the Paradesi Synagogue. Members of the meshuchrarim were assigned inferior and segregated seating during prayers and were denied equal access to religious space. Their participation in worship was regulated in a manner that reinforced inherited status, even within a shared faith.

Social exclusion went beyond the synagogue. Brown Jews were denied parity in community standing and were treated as subordinate in everyday interactions. Burial practices reflected the same hierarchy. For generations, members of Salem’s community were denied burial in spaces reserved for Paradesi Jews, reinforcing exclusion even in death.

Edna Fernandes, in her book The Last Jews of Kerala, notes that Salem was known for using his skills as an advocate to represent the poorest sections of society in Kochi. He was actively involved in trade union activities, served as a member of the Legislative Assembly and also held office as the Municipal Chairman of Mattancherry.

In 1929, Salem attended the Lahore session of the Indian National Congress, where he was influenced by Mahatma Gandhi’s call for satyagraha. He returned to Cochin, determined to confront the discrimination his community had faced for over four centuries. He was also inspired by the temple entry movements in Travancore and Vaikom in 1927, which challenged caste-based exclusion from places of worship.

According to Fernandes, Salem initiated his movement through sit-ins at the Paradesi Synagogue. He warned that he would fast unto death if his protest was obstructed. Salem made his sons sit in areas from which Brown Jews were barred and organised small prayer meetings in his home.

At times, Salem and his sons sat on the path leading to the Torah scrolls - the sacred scriptures read during the Sabbath - and refused to move. These acts directly confronted the ritualised nature of discrimination.

Fernandes records that opposition to Salem was muted, partly due to his connections with senior political leaders, including Jawaharlal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi. Over time, younger members of the Paradesi Jewish community began supporting his cause. By the late 1930s, discrimination within the synagogue came to an end with members of Salem’s community granted equal seating and participation.

Salem’s relevance lies in the form of discrimination he challenged. The inequality he confronted was not imposed by law or enforced by the State, but sustained through religious practice, social convention and inherited authority. Such discrimination often persists precisely because it is described as internal or customary. Salem’s life demonstrates how exclusion can endure in the absence of formal legal sanction and how confronting it requires public challenge rather than quiet accommodation.

Two of Salem’s three sons married members of the White Jewish community, a development that contributed to the gradual normalisation of relations between the communities.

Salem eventually retired from active politics and legal practice and devoted his time to the upliftment of his community. He maintained close ties with the leadership of Israel during the 1940s and 1950s, which facilitated the migration and settlement of many Jews from Kerala.

Salem never left India. He died in 1967 at the age of 85 and was buried in the cemetery attached to the Paradesi Synagogue, an honour that had been denied to his ancestors.

He continues to be remembered as the Jewish Gandhi for his sustained and principled struggle against discrimination.