Zion by the Ganges

I found the following from a Mr. Bharat Singh in the comments section of a Standpoint Article:

Oh Jews, come and live in India! We've had you among us for 900 years and never harmed a hair on your head but then most of you still left - for a condo and a stipend in Tel Aviv! We can assimilate 7million of you no problem - a drop in our billion+ ocean. Your kids come here every year after being in the IDF - and no one bothers them. 7million smart, resourceful Jews would be a godsend to us. Europeans and Arabs will always hate you - because you make them feel guilty, or stupid and inadequate. Over here, you'll be able to relax for the 1st time in 2000 years. Think about it...

It strikes me that the man is correct! India has a tradition of religious pluralism and lacks any ingrained culture of anti-Semitism. On a theological level, I've always been bored with the notion of a "Judeo-Christian tradition." I would love to see a Judeo-Vedantic tradition emerge that bridges the Eastern and Western monotheistic faiths. After all, Jews are basically the Brahmins of the West - and samsara, the Sanskrit term for the cycle of reincarnation, literally means "to wander." What better resting place for the Wandering Jew than the home of moksha and nirvana, liberation from cosmic wandering?

Nathan Katz writes:

Most of us think of Judaism, Christianity and Islam as the “three western monotheisms,” as though monotheism never existed in India. Some politely refer to them as the “three Abrahamic faiths,” as Abraham is taken to be the father – either in a literal or spiritualized sense – of each. These western religions are assumed to be distinct from “eastern religions,” which are characterized by a cyclic view of history and multiple deities. Indeed, that is one way to make a general distinction.

But it is not the only way, as I tell my students. The western/eastern distinction conceals as much as it reveals, and when one’s attention is focused on Judaism and Hinduism, another model presents itself. This is the old/new distinction. The world’s ancient religions – by these I mean Judaism, Hinduism, and Chinese tradition which we have come to call Confucianism. Beside a history of some four thousand years, these ancient faiths address all aspects of life – from ethics to law, medicine, painting and sculpture, politics, philosophy, literature, social theory, astrology, and the performing arts. They fill all these roles because during ancient times knowledge had not yet been fragmented into discrete fields, and religion was knowledge. The newer religions – Buddhism, Christianity and Islam – could focus their interest. The first two of these, the original offspring, developed around a charismatic leader who accepted the basic worldview of the parent faith, but chose to focus on spirituality. Just as Jesus was born, lived, taught and died as a Jew, so too the Buddha was born, lived, taught and died as a Hindu. Christianity, for example, simply accepted the Judaic worldview of creation and went on from there. The Buddha’s famous lack of cosmological interest was due to the absence of any need to develop one because the Hindu stories held the day. In both cases, for reasons more cultural or political than religious, followers of the Buddha and of the Christ ended up creating new religions named for their “renegade” founders.

India - birthplace to Jainism, Sikhism, Hinduism and Buddhism - has as great a claim to the title of "Holy Land" as Israel. We even share a star! As Mohandas Gandhi remarked:

For me there can be no deliverance from this earthly life except in India. Anyone who seeks such deliverance must go to the sacred soil of India. For me, as for everyone else, the land of India is the "refuge of the afflicted."

Why not Zion by the Ganges?