This Article First Appeared In The Scroll On Oct 21, 2023
In early 1917, most members of Bombay’s financial elite would have felt the horrors of the Great War unfolding a world away. After three years, the tide was turning in favour of Britain and its allies, but the human cost it exacted was heavy. In Bombay, all trading communities kept a close watch on the war, but the one that lost sleep over it was the city’s Baghdadi Jews. Many members of this community had strong family connections to the area that was the theatre of bloody battles between British forces and the Ottoman Army.