The clue is that nothing in the photograph looks foreign. Cover the caption and it is simply a large Indian family portrait of the late 1800s. You would not be able to tell that this family’s ancestors came from West Asia — and that is exactly the point the picture is making.
What you can actually see in the picture.
- The women wear saris, draped in the local way, with the loose end drawn up over the head as older women still do. Their blouses are full-sleeved.
- Indian ornaments — bangles on both wrists, necklaces, earrings, and a nose ornament on one of the women.
- The men wear long buttoned coats over a tunic, with caps on their heads — one an embroidered skull-cap, another a taller stiff cap. An elderly bearded man stands at the back.
- The children sit cross-legged on the ground in front of the adults, barefoot, exactly as children are arranged in Indian family photographs of that period.
- A hookah stands among the seated group, its long curved pipe held in the middle of the picture — an everyday household object in India then.
- The family is grouped in a courtyard or garden, elders seated on chairs and benches, younger people standing behind.
What that tells you. Dress, ornament, furniture, seating, even the way a photograph is posed — all of it is local. Meanwhile the family is still Jewish; that is why the caption can call them so. Look back at page 127: the Bene Israel “lost their holy books”, but “they remembered their prayer, which says there is only one God”, and grew “to become the largest Jewish community in India, numbering over 25,000 shortly after India gained independence.”