Born into a poor family, Salem went on to become the first graduate from his disadvantaged Jewish subgroup dubbed meshuchrarim meaning freed slaves by the local “white” Jews. Jews came to Kerala over the centuries in waves and the late arrivals considered themselves genetically and religiously purer and whiter than the early ones. They had an even sharper bias against the likes of Salem who were technically part of their own congregation at Kochi’s Paradesi Synagogue, where today tourists vastly outnumber the dwindling Jewry.

In Salem’s days the congregation was sizable enough to perpetuate what historians saw as apartheid and visiting Jewish scholars themselves disapproved of. The Salem subgroup had no right to chant prayers in full and had to sit mostly silent in the synagogue’s anteroom.
The list of don’ts stretched from marrying into the ‘white’ families to being seen wearing gold in Jew Town.

Salem fought back with his own sermons and a favourite mount in the neighbourhood came to be called “Salem Kunnu” (Salem Hill). By then he had qualified as a lawyer like Obama but unlike him never practiced law. He was drawn to the biggest of the lawyer-turned activists who was fighting untouchability.
Salem connected with Gandhiji at the Lahore Congress session and returned to try out satyagraha at the synagogue itself. Along with his three sons, he squatted on the steps to the prayer hall blocking the privileged congregationists.

Soon, he became a member of the Cochin Legislative Assembly and his fight could no longer be ignored. By the 1940s, his group gained a bit more access to worship and the right to bury the dead in a segregated area of the Paradesi cemetery.
With a little help from Cupid the matrimonial divide was bridged too. His son Balfour fell in love with Seema Koder, a ‘white’ Jew and the couple got married in a Mumbai synagogue, amidst much acrimony back home. More weddings followed, across and beyond the divide.

Balfour’s younger brother Gamliel married a white Jew and his sisters married non-Jews, Malkah a Christian and Esther a Hindu.
If the son of a black Kenyan father and a white American mother chooses to visit the Paradesi synagogue, nobody will stop him today. Every day hundreds of tourists from the world over throng Kochi’s Jew Street. Of every hue.