Page 8 - Kol Bogrei Habonim - September 15

HABONIM IN INDIA:
FROM THE ARCHIVES
PERCY S. GOURGEY MBE
“Y
ou are now members of a
Movement called Habonim. It
means the builders – the builders
of Eretz Israel.” With these few words addressed
to six young lads on a sunny Sunday morning in
February 1935 in the garden of the David
Sassoon Library in Bombay, Habonim was
formed in India by Mr. A. Manasseh and Mr. S.
Ezra, active members of Bombay’s Jewish
community. Once the seed was sown, the
Movement progressed steadily. Groups were
subsequently formed in Calcutta on India’s east
coast, Cochin in south India and, later, in
Singapore. Inspiration for the Movement came
from England and South Africa. The Habonim
manuals were faithfully followed in organising
its structure and activities.
The first gedud was called Gedud Sion and we
used to assemble every Sunday morning at the
Fort Synagogue rooms for lessons in Hebrew,
Jewish history, the Prophets, the geography of
Palestine, as well as for Hebrew songs and
dances (shirim and rikudim). We learnt about the
beginnings of the Zionist movement, Herzl, Ben-
Gurion, the Balfour Declaration, the early
kibbutzim and other pioneering ventures. We
were encouraged to distribute the Jewish
National Fund blue boxes and I vividly recall the
slogan at the time – “a penny a day drives the
galuth away!” The highlight of the year’s
activities was the annual camp at one or other of
the beautiful hill stations in Bombay Presidency,
as the province was then called in the days of the
British Raj. Cultural and social events filled our
day together with outdoor activities such as
trekking, cross country runs, cooking and the
like. Needless to say, we were hopeless at
cooking as this was done only by the domestic
8
staff at home! One year we were visited by a
Muslim Ministerial colleague of Mr. Morarji
Desai, India’s prime minister from 1977-1979.
After the outbreak of WWII, some of our
members decided to make aliya but this was
delayed as the necessary immigration certificates
for Jews from India and from South Africa from
the British Mandatory Administration in
Palestine were not forthcoming owing to urgent
situations elsewhere. Eventually, our chaverim
obtained the aforesaid certificates and went to
Kfar Blum in Galilee, or ‘Kibbutz Anglo-Baltic’
as it was then called. In 1942, a United Nations
pageant and procession was organised in
Bombay to stimulate the war effort and we in
Habonim were in the contingent representing
Palestine Jewry. The Movement also provided
the first members of Maccabi and subsequently
Bnei Akiva in Bombay. A number of our
chaverim volunteered for the Armed Forces
(there being no conscription) and I was
commissioned a sub-lieutenant in the Royal
Indian Naval Volunteer Reserve (RINVR).
Shortly following the end of the war, a
hachsharah farm was set up near Alibag (with
the participation of the Bombay Zionist
Association), a colourful Bnei-Israel village on
the Konkan coast. One of its prominent members
was Abie Nathan, the peace-pilot, who made
aliya in 1947. The farm closed down just before
the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 as
most of its members had already made aliya.
They were the forerunners of the large-scale
aliya of Jews from India and Singapore which
began in 1949 leading to the rapid diminution of
the South African and Far Eastern Jewish
communities. Today there are more Indian Jews