Sephardic Jews in India are Iberian Jews who settled in many coastal towns of India, in Goa and Damaon, Madras (now Chennai) and, primarily and for the longest period, on the Malabar coast in Cochin. After the Portuguese discovery of the sea route to India in the 1498, a number of Sephardic Jews fled Antisemitism in Iberia which had culminated in the Edict of Expulsion in 1492 and Persecution of Jews and Muslims by Manuel I of Portugal. They settled in Portuguese Indian trading places so that they could continue practicing Judaism secretly while still remaining within the Portuguese Empire. After the Portuguese Inquisition was established, an additional number of falsely-converted Sephardic Jews (known as New Christians and Conversos) made sea voyages to settle in India, because it would then be difficult for the Inquisition to investigate and punish them. They spoke the vernacular language of their kingdom (basically Castillian i.e. Spanish-Portuguese or Catalan) and some of them also Arabic. In his lecture at the Library of Congress, Professor Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Chair in Social Sciences at University of California, Los Angeles, explains that crypto-Jews were especially attracted to India because not only was it a center of trade, but India had established and ancient Jewish settlements along its Western coast. The presence of these communities meant that crypto-Jews, who had been forced to accept Catholicism but did not want to emigrate to tolerant countries, could operate within the Portuguese Empire with the full freedom of Catholic subjects but away from the Inquisition while collaborating with existing Jewish communities to hide their true beliefs. In "The Marrano Factory: The Portuguese Inquisition, and its New Christians 1536-1765" Professor Antonio Saraiva of the University of Lisbon in Portugal dedicates a section to the situation of crypto-Jews (New Christians) in Goa. He concludes that once the Portuguese Inquisition began, Goa, along with Italy, the Ottoman Empire, the Netherlands, and North Africa initially received most of the fleeing Jewish population (regardless of whether they had converted or not), and this situation continued till the middle of the 1500s. Goa was a popular destination till 1560 (when the Goan Inquisiton was initiated). A notable Jewish population once existed in the Portuguese India colony of Bassein. These Jews were of the Bene Israel community who had arrived in India centuries earlier. They had their own synagogues and enjoyed freedom. When the Portuguese took control over Goa, crypto-Jews