Indian Hindus constitute a small proportion of the population of present-day Russia, but they can claim a history of at least four centuries of South Asian presence in the country. The invasion in the 16th century of the Astrakhan Khanate by Moscow tsar Ivan the Terrible resulted in the incorporation of an existing trading colony of Indians in Astrakhan, formerly Haji Tarkhan, into the Russian state. An Indian trading court (Gostiniy Dvor) for Indian merchants had been erected in Astrakhan in 1624 (Goldberg et al., 1958, 11). More than one hundred Indian merchants lived there w…