Parsis in India and the Diaspora

John Hinnells, Alan Williams, John Hinnells, Alan Williams

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• eBook ISBN: 9781134067510
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

The Parsis are India's smallest minority community, yet they have exercised a huge influence on the country. As pioneers in education in nineteenth century India, and as leading figures in banking and commerce, medicine, law and journalism, they were at the forefront of India's industrial revolution. Parsis were also at the heart of the creation of the Indian National Congress in the nineteenth century and contributed some of the great leaders through into the twentieth century.

This book, written by notable experts in the field, explores various key aspects of the Parsis. It spans the time from their arrival in India to the twenty-first century. All contributions are based on original research and most of them use hitherto unexplored primary sources. The first part of the book analyzes the topic of Parsi migration from very different points of view; the second part presents leading Parsi personalities of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The final part is a set of studies of the Parsi traditional community in Bombay and an examination of three different diasporas. The concluding chapter, by John R. Hinnells, shows the range of contributions of Parsis to modern India and also in the diasporas, where the Zoroastrian religion is practiced in more countries around the globe than at any time in its history of more than 3, 000 years.

1
INTRODUCTION

John R.Hinnells and Alan Williams

The Parsis of India are a community which can often only be described in terms of superlatives. They belong to one of the world’s oldest religious traditions, and they are now India’s smallest community, yet they are among those who have exercised the greatest influence on the Subcontinent, having been foremost in so many areas all out of proportion to their demographic size. Zoroastrianism, the religion of the Parsis, takes its name from the ancient Iranian prophet Zoroaster, who is variously dated to between 1400 and 1200 BCE; it was the state religion of three Iranian empires—Achaemenian, Parthian and Sasanian—from the sixth century BCE to the seventh century CE.¹ In the face of Islamic persecution after the Arab conquest of Iran in the seventh century, and perhaps being aware of trading opportunities on the coast of north-west India, Zoroastrians migrated there, probably as early as the eighth century (see Williams and Nanji, chapters 2 and 3 in this volume). They lived by an agrarian, artisan and small-scale mercantile existence, in relative peace and security, in the Indian Subcontinent until the arrival of the European trading powers in the seventeenth century. First came the Portuguese, then the Dutch, and finally the British: with this new wave, the Parsis moved from their traditional roles to participate increasingly in international trade and shipping.² When the English took possession of Bombay (1662), the Parsis migrated in increasing numbers to this new base free of Moghul rule and Maratha raids (although for several decades Bombay remained exposed to the danger of invasion). The English sought to attract migrants and to encourage minorities, and accordingly they offered freedom of religion and equal justice before the law: various minorities, such as the Jains and Parsis, chose to live under this new regime. Bombay was, therefore, from its early days, a cosmopolitan island³ on which Parsis flourished, first as middlemen in trade, then as independent traders. They also changed from a rural environment (see Stewart in this volume) to what became an urban setting.

Until the beginning of the nineteenth century English trade in Bombay was the monopoly of the East India Company (despite some private trade and ‘interlopers’). First missionaries, then private traders, were allowed into Bombay in the early nineteenth century. The former brought education (as a means to evangelize) and the latter vastly increased trading profits. Parsis benefited from both, and subsequently they became perhaps the most westernized community in all of South Asia. In terms of trade and commerce they were unparalleled in their success and, consistent with their traditional values, they were the most generous benefactors to public charity in the history of pre-Partition India (see Palsetia in this volume).⁴ They built and ran the Bombay dockyard, and they were India’s leading ship owners;⁵ they were pioneers in education,⁶ social reform and medicine in the nineteenth century:⁷ from that base they led the Indian industrial revolution. They were leaders in banking and commerce, law, (see Wadia and Sharafi respectively in this volume), medicine, journalism, and were very influential in politics.⁸ They were, therefore, pioneers in colonial India. They were at the heart of the creation of the Indian National Congress in the nineteenth century and they contributed some of India’s great leaders through into the twentieth century. The first three Asian Members of the British Parliament at Westminster were Parsis (see McLeod in this volume),⁹ as were some of Gandhi’s closest allies and strongest critics. At the time of Indian Independence (1947) Parsis committed themselves to post-colonial India (and in Sind to the new nation, Pakistan), being deeply involved in the growth of both countries (see Hinnells chapter 13 in this volume).

Given the remarkable track record of the Parsis, generally neither Indian nor western scholars have treated them with sufficient seriousness. Part of the reason for this is that, in spite of their deep involvement and investment in the Subcontinent, they are all too often perceived, and perceive themselves, to be different from and somewhat outside the greater Indian community. Though they have been in India for over 1,200 years Parsi Zoroastrians still regard themselves as long-term émigrés from Iran,¹⁰ which remains their spiritual home.¹¹ Indologists and Iranologists alike have tended to regard Parsis as marginal to their respective fields, as a community which does not fit neatly into either the mainstream Iranian or Indian world. Relatively few western scholars in Zoroastrian studies have written about the Parsis,¹² or taken the trouble to learn the vernacular language of the community (Gujarati), despite the fact that the great majority of contemporary ethnic Zoroastrians are Parsi, not Iranian. Parsis in India are, of course, themselves a diasporic community. The memory and ties with the old country, Iran, continued as they sought priestly guidance, especially on ritual matters for several centuries; they travelled there to study in Iran, then to campaign, for their oppressed Iranian co-religionists, and in more recent times they have gone on pilgrimage there to the holy sites. Images of Iran are evident in both Parsi homes and temples. From the early eighteenth century Parsis migrated to China, Britain, East Africa, Sri Lanka and Sind for trade, and communities grew in all these places. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries new Parsi settlements have grown up in the New World, America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand and later in the Gulf States.¹³

The study of global diaspora communities is growing considerably, and pace the views of Safran and Cohen who deny that Parsis constitute diaspora communities, the Parsis in fact display many of the key features of other South Asian diasporas.¹⁴ Safran argued that the Parsis are concentrated in a single area, namely ‘the Bombay region of India’. ‘Moreover’, he wrote, ‘they have no myth of return to their original homeland’, which he attributes to the influence of India’s caste system and the tolerant attitude of Hinduism towards Parsis (because scholars of Safran’s era argued that for a group to qualify as a diaspora, there had to be an element of hostility on the part of the host society towards the diaspora group). Cohen argues that the Parsis are not so much a travelling nation as a travelling religion. He, also, argues that Parsis lack a ‘myth and idealization of a homeland and return movement’ (see, however, Williams in this volume). Safran overlooks the global spread of Parsis noted above. Both Safran and Cohen presuppose a ‘real’ diaspora community should have an expectation of return, something many other writers in the broad field reject. Although Jews the world over express the wish ‘next year in Jerusalem’, only a small number ever seriously contemplate moving back to Israel. Cohen argues that as a religious group Parsis cannot constitute a diaspora, but Vertovec (2000) argues that Hinduism (and by implication Judaism and Sikhism) is an exception, in which case it is difficult to see why the ethnic-religious Parsi Zoroastrians are not also.¹⁵ In fact, they fit all the other criteria listed by Cohen (1997:26), namely, dispersal from an original homeland, a collective memory and myth about that homeland and its idealization, a strong ethnic group consciousness sustained over a long time, and solidarity with co-ethnic members and enriching host societies. Another criterion mentioned by Cohen, namely a troubled relationship with host societies, is perhaps too rigid an imposition of the original Jewish victim diaspora model (unless one includes racial prejudice, for this Parsis have experienced in western societies).

Parsis in fact make a particularly good case study for diaspora studies. The community in India—but also in Britain and Hong Kong—have been there for generations so that one can consider issues relating to successive generations. The modern western diaspora groups come from a variety of ‘national’ origins, India, Pakistan, East Africa and, of course, Iranian Zoroastrian exiles. They exemplify several of the diaspora types outlined by Cohen, namely as victim populations (e.g. East African Parsis and Iranian Zoroastrians), in terms of their position in the labour market (Parsis are particularly highly educated professionals, scientists etc. in all western countries), regarding trade (e.g. China and Britain) and culturally, with the characteristic Parsi emphasis on the role as preservers of Persian culture. The small demographic numbers in any Parsi community mean that the researcher can know a high ratio of the total population. Parsis in any country have been meticulous at keeping records and, not least, they typically welcome outside academics. Viewing Parsis in this context of South Asian migration we may see important patterns emerge within the Parsi community, which have, for example, to do with issues of leadership, second and subsequent generations, transnational ties and the role of ‘gatekeepers’ protecting community boundaries.¹⁶ Parsi diaspora communities constitute both an ethnic and a religious diaspora; they are polyglot, having literatures and vernaculars in Persian, Gujarati and English, and other indigenous languages from countries where they have settled, not to mention the older Iranian languages of their scriptures.¹⁷

The essays

The essays collected in this book are by a range of historians of religion, social and legal historians, linguists, sociologists and archaeologists, i.e. specialists with very different approaches to the subject; they are, in most cases, not general surveys but very particular studies which, even in the limited space available, go into considerable detail in order to present their subjects in sharp focus and vivid colour. They are all part of separate long-term research projects and so thoroughly document their precise study within a wider field. To give one major example of this, a compendious collection of studies was recently published,¹⁸ written by an international team of 40 scholars (of whom five are represented in this present volume), on the whole gamut of Iranian and Parsi Zoroastrianism. The raison d’êre of our collection of essays is to bring together a focused and concentrated view of the Parsis, not only for the benefit of scholars and students of Zoroastrianism, but also for those interested in the history of religions and diaspora studies in general across cultures, for South Asianists, and for colonial and post-colonial historians.

The plan behind the original workshop and this consequent publication was to focus on three key periods in Parsi history:

1 What might be described as ‘the settlement’ of the Parsis in India, with a textual and an archaeological study of the arrival of the Parsis at the port of Sanjan, together with a study of an oral tradition concerning the celebration of one of the earliest Atash Bahrams (or ‘Cathedral’ fire temples).

2 Nineteenth-century India when Parsis are widely thought to have been at the peak of their power and influence: this Part includes a historical study of a key role model, the merchant prince and benefactor Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy (the first Indian to be knighted); a religious studies paper on changing perceptions and loci of religious and secular authority in the Indian community; an economic historian’s study of the nineteenth-century Bombay Parsi business world and a historian’s study of the gradually changing nature of identity in a leading Indian Parsi who went on to become a Member of the Westminster Parliament, Sir Mancherji Bhownaggree in the late nineteenth century;

3 Parsis in twentieth-century India and in their diasporas: it includes a legal historian’s study of unpublished material concerning a landmark judgment, followed into...

Table of contents

• ROUTLEDGE SOUTH ASIAN RELIGION SERIES
• CONTENTS
• PREFACE
• FIGURES AND TABLES
• NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
• 1 INTRODUCTION
• Part I THE SETTLEMENT OF THE PARSIS IN INDIA
• Part II PARSIS IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY INDIA
• Part III PARSIS IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY INDIA AND IN THEIR DIASPORAS
• INDEX