Navras Jaat Aafreedi, PhD
An Assistant Professor and Postgraduate Programme Coordinator of the Department of History & Civilization at the School of Humanities & Social Sciences, Gautam Buddha University, Greater NOIDA, Gautam Budh Nagar, India, and author of the e-book (CD-Rom) The Indian Jewry and the Self-Professed ‘Lost Tribes of Israel’ in India, 2006, which embodies his doctoral thesis, 1978 born, Dr. Navras Jaat Aafreedi is a Researcher in Indo-Judaic Studies, a Muslim-Jewish Relations Activist, Assistant Editor, refereed journal The Social Ion (ISSN 2319-3581), Editor International (English Section) of the online newspaper Weekly Press Pakistan-Canada ,and a Member of
- the Editorial Board of the Journal of Indo-Judaic Studies (International refereed journal published by Florida International University, USA and the University of Saskatchewan, Canada, ISSN 1206-9330)
- International Advisory Board of Asian Jewish Life (ISSN 2224-3011) (published from Hong Kong)
- the Advisory Team of “The Ten Lost Tribes Challenge: Expeditions of Discovery” (A series of research expeditions to various groups around the world, who consider themselves, or considered by others, to be descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.)
- the four-member-Cultural-Council of Gautam Buddha University
He earned his Ph.D. from the Department of Medieval & Modern Indian History, University of Lucknow in 2005, followed by post-doctorate from the Graduate School of Historical Studies, Tel Aviv University in 2007, supported by a scholarship from the Israeli Government and a supplementary grant from the Tel Aviv University. His lectures have been well appreciated in the US, the UK, Israel, Australia and India. He is the first person to make any worthwhile contributions to Jewish Studies in the Urdu language, the lingua franca of almost all South Asian Muslims, though he primarily writes in English and Hindi. Some of his articles have also been published in German.
From May 2008 to March 2010 he worked for the betterment of inter-faith relations, including Jewish-Muslim, in Lucknow, for the Centre for Communication and Development Studies, Pune, a social change resource centre focusing on the research and communication of information for change, under the auspices of its civil society and youth outreach initiative called Open Space.
In May-June 2010, he studied the “Muslim-Jewish Relations in South Asia” as a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Muslim-Jewish Relations (CMJR), Woolf Institute, Cambridge, UK. In February 2013 he spoke at a number of universities and organisations in Australia as a Visiting Scholar at the School of Languages & Cultures, Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, University of Sydney, Australia.
While studying the history of medieval and modern India, he was increasingly attracted towards the history of Jews; the vicissitudes of their struggle for survival; and their singular achievements despite seemingly insuperable difficulties. He realised that the history of Jews in India needed to be researched; and he applied himself to the task with great enthusiasm. His interest in Jewish History was also triggered by the fact that the Afridi tribe he comes from, has been identified by many Jewish and Muslim scholars, from the medieval to the modern times, with Ephraim, one of the ten lost tribes of Israel. There is also a centuries-old tradition of Israelite origin that has lived on in his people, the Pathans/Pashtuns/Pakhtuns.
He hopes to continue his study of Indian Jews and the World as a life-long vocation. He also seeks to establish a centre dedicated to Indo-Judaic Studies in India, a country where Jewish Studies are not recognized as an academic discipline. He is actively involved in creating an awareness of the Shoah among Indians and in combating Holocaust denial and minimization.
His articles have been translated into German, Spanish, French and Russian, and press reports on his research can be read in sixteen languages, viz., English, French, Hebrew, German, Russian, Slovak, Dutch, Spanish, Finnish, Turkish, Lithuanian, Romanian, Italian, Bahasa Indonesia, Urdu and Hindi, on his blog http://navrasaafreedi.blogspot.com
One can read about his hometown, the Afridi settlement of Malihabad, on his blog dedicated to the place – http://malihabad.blogspot.com