hen I was a child growing up in an extended family, I had a peculiar bedtime ritual with my grandmother. I went through a phase when every night after our goodnight kisses, I would ask her, "When I wake up in the morning, will you be there?" In essence, I was asking her to reassure me that she wouldn't die in the night and leave me to wake up grannyless. But to talk openly about my fears was embarrassing, it might also tempt fate; so I'd say that the reason I was asking was maybe she'd be gone before I woke up, to Chowpatty with Dhunmai, to pray and throw coconuts into the sea.
          My grandmother and her friend Dhunmai made their pilgrimage to the sea, carrying their coconuts, walking from Gowalia Tank down Babulnath to Chowpatty on only one day of the year, dedicated to the water divinity, Avan. The other three hundred and sixty-four days of the year she had no reason to be out of the house by seven in the morning. She knew it. I knew it. But she'd still patiently play along. Sometimes she would pretend to be exasperated, "Where can I go so early in the morning?" But most times she would just smile and say for the hundredth time, "Yes, I'll be at home when you wake up."
         This book has its genesis in that childhood desire to hold on tight to what is precious, not allow it to change or disappear. For me photography has always been a form of magic. Photographs freeze time and survive death. My grandmother did die, so did my grandfather and granduncle and a host of aunts and uncles who took with them an entire world. But not before I had captured them on celluloid. Their photographs still give me some measure of, perhaps, childish comfort.
          In 1982 I met photographer Raghubir Singh who saw in my eclectic collection of photographs, the subject that had been staring me in the face but that I had failed to see: a photographic study of the community to which I belong. What had begun nostalgically and personally, grew into a more objective project that encompassed a world larger than my immediate family.

                                                                        

There are only 100,000 Parsis in the world today, mostly in India, particularly in Bombay. Demographically, we are a dying community-our deaths outweigh our births. Parsis like to quote a remark that Mahatma Gandhi once reportedly made, "In numbers Parsis are beneath contempt, but in contribution, beyond compare." Out of an Indian population of more than one billion, Parsis number a mere 76,000. Demographic trends project that by the year 2020, India will have achieved the dubious distinction of being the most populated country on earth with 1200 million people. At that point, Parsis who will number 23,000-0.0002 per cent of the population, will cease to be termed a community and will be labelled a 'tribe', as is any ethnic group below the 30,000 count.
          It is a fact that obsesses us-whether we fear our demise or deny it-whether we are optimistic and believe we have survived for so many centuries and will continue to do so, or whether we are orthodox and believe it is better to go down guns blazing, with our laws of exclusivity intact. It is an issue we never tire of, that we debate and fight over endlessly with passion.
          Parsis are a people who uprooted themselves and moved to a different world to save their religion. We migrated to India one thousand years ago. The Parsi experience is about dilemmas that most minority communities face; questions about religion and race, survival and extinction, assimilation and identity, tradition and the modern world.

                                                                        

The first time I learnt of our origins was when I was a schoolgirl in cosmopolitan Bombay. My class was made up of Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Jains and Jews. Communal insults were part of growing up. Parsis, who have always had a reputation for being eccentric oddballs, were called, "mad Bawajis". It was after one such teasing session, when I got home in the evening and sat out on our balcony with my grandparents and granduncle that I was told our history.
          "Go tell them in school," Maneck kaka had said, "that your ancestors founded the mighty Persian Empire centuries before the Christian era. Cyrus the Great ruled over an Empire so vast it touched the waters of the Mediterranean, the Aegean, the Black, the Caspian, the Indian, the Persian and the Red Seas; had six of the grandest rivers in the world flowing through it-the Euphrates, the Tigris, the Indus, the Jaxartes, the Oxus and the Nile..." My schoolmates were not impressed. They giggled and chanted,

  Cyrus the Great
  Born in a plate
  In five hundred and fifty eight.

They couldn't care less that Cyrus had risen from a minor chieftain to being the founder of such a vast empire, it was here that east and west met for the first time; he compelled Greece to acknowledge his power, conquered the mighty kingdom of Babylon, freed and allowed the Jews to build their temples and establish themselves in Jerusalem. In his book, The Upbringing of Cyrus, the Greek writer Xenophon says about him:
He ruled over these nations, though they did not speak the same tongue as he, nor one nation the same as another's: yet he was able to stretch the dread of him so far that all feared to withstand him; and he could rouse so eager a wish to please him that they all desired to be governed by his will.1
Darius, his successor, set about consolidating and organising what Cyrus had so casually conquered. His empire encompassed Asia Minor, parts of Greece, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, northern Arabia, Mesopotamia, Persia, Afghanistan, Turkestan, Uzbekistan, the Tadzhik and part of the Kirgiz Soviet Republics, western Pakistan, the rich Indus Valley and Thrace.2 It had the first international bureaucracy, the first international army and there was nothing to beat the pomp, pageantry and wealth of the Persian court.
          To maintain contact between the different centres of the Empire, Darius created a network of roads which survived a long time after the Empire fell. It is still possible to trace the Royal Road, 1677 miles long, divided into more than one hundred post-stations. An efficient courier service and chains of fire signals kept the court in touch with every corner of the empire and foreshadowed by thousands of years, DHL and FedEx.
          As Empires go, the Achaemenian Empire (559BC- 330BC) originally a small highland tribal kingdom obscurely situated in the foot-hills of south-west Iran, was unique on two counts. The Achaemenians carved out a colossal empire in the space of one generation. Unlike other conquerors who forced the vanquished to adapt to a common culture, Cyrus and Darius were liberal and tolerant rulers. Their subjects were granted autonomy to worship their own Gods, speak their own language and retain their own culture. When Cyrus conquered Babylon he issued a decree outlining his aims and policies, later hailed as the first Charter of Human Rights. The original cylinder in cuneiform script is housed in the British Museum. A copy can also been seen at the United Nations building in New York.
          Though the Achaemenians patronised the temples of their subjects as a mark of respect and diplomacy, their religion was different from the fertility cults that existed in those days. They were believers in the Good Religion as taught by the prophet Zarathustra.

                                                                        

"Zorro who?" they would ask me in college in America. "Thus Spake Zarathustra" I would say, "Nietzsche, Richard Strauss, 2001 Space Odyssey?" One or the other would usually hit the mark. Maneck kaka once told me that the Parsi Panchayat (our governing body) had enthusiastically ordered several hundred copies of Nietzsche's tome, only to discover that not only was it impossible to understand, but it also had nothing to do with the Prophet as we know Him. The copies languished in the basement and were eventually probably sold for a pittance to the local ragman.
          Nietzsche's sister quotes him as saying,

People have never asked me, as they should have done, what the name Zarathustra precisely means in my mouth, in the mouth of the first Immoralist; for what distinguishes that philosopher from all others in the past is the very fact that he was exactly the reverse of an Immoralist. Zarathustra was the first to see in the struggle between good and evil the essential wheel in the working of things.3

When my son Jahan was a baby, the first word he said was Dadaji (a child's name for God). Though we don't have an iconoclastic tradition, nearly every Parsi home has an image, always the same one, of gentle Zarathustra with long hair and a flowing beard, as imagined by a 19th century Parsi artist. Though Jahan used to take great delight in recognising and pointing out Dadaji wherever he went, Zarathustra belongs to such remote antiquity that we don't even know for certain exactly when He was born and where, much less what He looked like. But what has miraculously survived is the religion that He was inspired to reveal.
          His date of birth is said to have been between 1700 and 1500BC4 and it is generally believed that He was born in Eastern Iran, in what is now the Russian Steppes. He lived in troubled times, the Stone Age was giving way to the Bronze Age and the settled pastoralism of His people was threatened by the discovery of bronze, copper and tin. Sedentary farming gave way to chieftains who roamed the countryside in chariots, drawn by the wild horses of the Steppes, lassoed and tamed, in a restless quest for gain and heroic glory. Villages, once peaceful, were raided by marauding tribes who would loot, pillage, set fire to the pastures, carrying off herds of cattle.5
          Like Buddha after Him, Zarathustra wanted to know the mystery of life. Why was there death and suffering in the world? What was the origin of evil? He became filled with a deep longing for justice, for a moral law that would allow mankind to lead a good life in peace. Tradition didn't provide any answers. Tradition demands its instructions to be taken on trust. Zarathustra, always a man of reason, doubted the wisdom of what He was learning.6
          He turned His back on the world and retreated to a cave on a mountain, where He meditated for ten years. Communing with nature and His inner self He finally received enlightenment from Ahura Mazda, the Wise Lord. He left His life of seclusion and descended from the mountain. He was thirty years old. He brought with Him a new hope, a new way of life, which still has relevance to us four thousand years later.
          A life of active good towards others; people, animals, nature, is at the heart of what He taught; giving us a simple creed to follow-Humata, Hukhta, Huvarashta, Good Thoughts, Good Words, Good Deeds.
"Happiness unto him who gives happiness unto others," said Zarathustra at the grey dawn of history.7
          The religion He revealed was based on the moral choices humans make here on earth. Every individual has the twin spirits of good and evil in their minds, that form their dual nature. When we exercise our Better Mind, we create life and draw Ahura Mazda and His Divine Powers towards ourselves. When we choose to use our Evil Mind, we enter a state of spiritual death. Confusion descends upon us and we rush towards wrath and bloodlust, by whose actions human existence is poisoned.8 Our duty in life is to play our part in this great cosmic battle between Good and Evil. Our individual lives are the battlefield. Every decision we make, every choice of thought, word and deed, adds up.
          It is perhaps difficult to appreciate the originality and courage of Zarathustra's thought today. So many prophets have come after Him with similar proclamations. But if we place ourselves into the antiquity in which He lived, Zarathustra's religion was radically different to anything mankind had ever dreamt of thus far. Instead of a religion based on fear, on propitiating and appeasing several Gods, Zarathustra's religion put a free, thinking, rational mind on centrestage. "Zoroastrianism," writes the scholar, R. C. Zaehner, "is the religion of free will par excellence."9
          According to Zarathustra, salvation for the individual depends on the sum of his/her thoughts, words and deeds and there can be no intervention by any divine being to alter this. No costly material sacrifices or rituals will change the way the individual is judged. Making our own choices, we alone have to bear the responsibility for our own souls.10
          Later religions, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, all borrowed freely from His teachings. But while they grew to attract millions of believers, the oldest prophet of them all retreated into obscurity, remembered only by scholars of religion and we His followers. Noble though his teachings were, they contained much to anger the establishment. The scholar Mary Boyce writes,

In offering the hope of heaven to everyone...he was breaking with an aristocratic, priestly tradition which consigned all lesser mortals to a subterranean life after death. He not only extended the hope of salvation on high to the humble, but threatened the mighty with hell and ultimate extinction if they acted unjustly.11

It is believed that the years He spent preaching amongst his own people were almost fruitless, bringing Him only one convert, His cousin. So He departed and went to another tribe, where being a stranger, He was granted an audience with King Vishtaspa who became an ardent follower. And from there the religion spread.12
          What we know about Zarathustra comes primarily from the Gathas, seventeen great hymns which He composed. These are not works of instruction, but inspired, passionate, poetic utterances, many of them addressed directly to God in a language that became extinct thousands of years ago.13
          Tradition credits Zarathustra with having composed profusely. Pliny states that the great philosopher Hermippus, who lived in 3BC had studied 2,000,000 verses composed by Him. Arab historians state that Zoroastrian texts were copied on 12,000 cowhides. Parsi tradition speaks of 21 nasks or volumes containing 345,700 words. Out of this, what has survived is a fraction of what was originally there, a mere 83,000 words.14
          These 83,000 words make up our prayers, collectively called the Avesta. Though most of us have no idea what we are praying, yet we have prayed these same prayers in an unbroken continuum from 1500BC. Scholars, linguists, priests have translated the Gathas, but the devout have no need for translations; the words of the prayers are like old friends-rhythms that have been there since childhood, intimate companions.
          And it is these ordinary, unsung men and women, whose faith needs no scholarship, who have also preserved through the years the basic ethical framework that Zarathustra gave us; the retired salaried worker, who lives in a building filled with wealthy businessmen, who quietly and without fanfare, gives the largest amount to victims of the Latur earthquake; the diligent clerk who handles large amounts of cash and fastidiously accounts for every paisa.
Two hundred years after Cyrus the Great first took the world by storm and the world at large learnt of Ahura Mazda, a young prince in Macedonia who was addicted to reading, carried two favourite books around with him wherever he went. The first was by Homer, the second, The Upbringing of Cyrus by Xenophon. Xenophon's image of Cyrus as a brilliant conqueror, powerful and merciful, making friends of enemies, hailed as a father by the conquered, made a profound impression on him.15
          Inspired by Cyrus' meteoric rise, from minor chieftain to ruler of the world, this young man followed in his footsteps and proceeded to place his own imprint on the world stage. Supported by Greece, their avenging angel marched against the Persian Empire with crusader-like zeal, wrested the sceptre from Darius 111 and proclaimed himself his successor. Darius fled and the mighty Achaemenian Empire fell, as all empires do.
          The world knows him as Alexander the Great, but to Zoroastrians he is Alexander the Accursed (guzastag) an epithet which he shares with the devil Ahriman alone.16 His soldiers plundered temples and sanctuaries, destroyed religious texts and massacred the priests. At the end of his four-month-stay in the magnificent royal city of Persepolis, built by Darius the Great, he burned the city to the ground in a drunken orgy. He threw the first torch himself, then had second thoughts but it was too late. It is said that when it got too hot inside, the party drunkenly trooped outside to watch the spectacle of Persepolis going up in flames.17 Legend also has it that Alexander wept. While Iran eventually recovered political autonomy, the religion never regained what Alexander had so wantonly destroyed.
          Still, in a sense the Persians had the last laugh. When Alexander did mount the Persian throne in Susa, he found he was too short and his feet would not touch the ground.18 By the time he died at the age of thirty-two, Persia had completely conquered him, much to the dismay of his fellow Macedonians and Greeks. He reared a young guard of Persian nobles who became his personal guard, married a Persian in a mass wedding where eighty of his men were also wed (by force) to Persian ladies, had a Persian eunuch as a lover, adopted the Persian royal colours and robes and all the Persian ceremonials including their custom of homage; demanded that his followers, even fellow Macedonians and Greeks, prostrate themselves before him. The tough old Macedonian warriors laughed at this new requirement, and Alexander, embarrassed, quickly abandoned the ritual but not before he had killed the man who had led the laughter.19
           Five and a half centuries after Darius 111 his empire to Alexander, there arose from the province of Pars, earlier home to the Achaemenians, Ardeshir from the Sassan family, who was to become the founder of the second Persian Empire. The Persians quickly re-established their power and though the Sassanian Empire was not as vast as the Achaemenian, between Zoroastrian Persia and its arch-enemy, Christian Rome, they had the entire known world carved up.20

                                                                       

Under the Sassanian dynasty, (226AD-641AD) Zoroastrianism became for the first and last time, an official State Religion. The priesthood was invested with importance and power. The Achaemenians had kept a strict separation between the Church and the State, but under the Sassanians, for the first time, there was a Zoroastrian 'Church'. The religion became intertwined with the State and thrived. There was a revival. Many of the scattered texts which had been preserved orally were written down, translated and compiled. Though the early Sassanians were zealous about their own religion, they were tolerant of other faiths.
          In contrast, the last years of the Sassanian dynasty seem to be a period of extremes and ironies. It was at once a brilliant society, a cultured and luxurious civilisation, an open society that was receptive to foreign influences, yet was also fiercely nationalistic.21 Other religions were beating at the door: Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism. The Sassanian answer to the menace of the Roman Church was to proclaim Zoroastrianism as the only good and true religion and to sometimes follow this up by savagely persecuting those of other faiths, as descriptions left by Christian martyrs testify.22
          Between the lower classes and the nobility existed an unbridgeable gulf.23 On one side there was unbridled luxury and a feverish pursuit of pleasure. On the other, famines and plagues.24 In addition to this spiritual and economic dissatisfaction was political instability. Power-hungry kings and queens ascended the throne and were plotted against and assassinated in quick succession.
          It was into this society, ripe for revolution, that the conquerors came-this time not from the west, but from where it was least expected: they came riding from the south, from the deserts of Arabia.

                                                                       

In 632AD, Yazdegard 111, a hastily crowned twenty-year-old boy, fated to be the last of the illustrious house of Sassan, sat on his tottering throne, granting a hearing to a deputation of fourteen Arabs who had come to visit him in his capital, Madayn. All around the young king was chaos. His two army generals who had placed him on the throne had been feuding amongst themselves. On the outskirts of the empire, Arab tribes were engaged in marauding expeditions. Though they had been repelled and could never really be a threat, their existence was a source of some worry.25
          "What motives bring you here?" asked Yazdegard. "And why has your nation taken up arms against us?" Noman Makarin, their spokesman replied, "Allah commanded us, by the mouth of His prophet, to extend the dominion of Islam over all nations. That order we obey and say to you, become our brothers by adopting the Faith, or consent to pay tribute, if you wish to avoid war."
          "The dissensions which have for some years troubled Persia, must have greatly emboldened you," replied the outraged young king. "Mice and serpents are your food and you have nothing to dress with except the wool of camels and sheep. Who are you that you think yourselves able to fasten on to our empire? Of all the nations of the world you are the poorest, most disunited, the most ignorant, the most estranged from the arts which constitute the sources of wealth and power. If a foolish presumption has taken hold of you, open your eyes and cease to indulge deceitful illusions. If misery and want have driven you out from your deserts, we will grant you food and raiment; we will deal liberally with your chiefs and we will give you a king who will govern you with gentleness and wisdom."
          The deputation kept silent for a while, then one of its members broke it. "What you have said about our poverty, our divisions, our state of barbarism is quite true. Yes, we were so wretched that some among us appeased our hunger by feeding on insects and serpents, whilst some killed their daughters to avoid sharing food with them. That is what we have been. But now we are a new people."
"Allah has raised in our midst a man, the most distinguished of Arabs by the nobility of his birth, by his virtues, his genius. He has enlightened our minds, he has extinguished our hatreds, he has united and converted us into a society of brothers under laws dictated by divine wisdom."
          "The religion he announced to us, which he called Islam, is the only true religion. He has said to us: 'Complete my work; spread everywhere the dominion of Islam. The earth belongs to Allah.' Now you know who we are and why we have come. It is for you to choose either Islam, or tribute, or war unto death."
          Yazdegard laughed, "If I entertained no regard for your character as deputies, I would instantly deprive you of life." Uttering these words, he ordered a bag full of earth to be brought and ironically alluding to the tribute the envoys had ventured to demand, he said to them, "This is all you will get from me. Return to your general; inform him that Rustam will, in a few days, go to bury him with his whole army in the trench of Kadesia." Then he added, "Let this bag be placed on the shoulders of the chief of the deputation and let the men be pushed out from the gates of Madayn." The chief of the Arab deputation, hurried forward eagerly to receive his load and far from being humbled by it, lifted it on his head with an air of jubilation.
A few hours later when Rustam, the Persian general, heard about the deputation and what young Yazdegard had so naively done, he sent men chasing after the Arabs to take away from them the bag full of earth. The Arabs however had progressed so far that all pursuit was in vain.
          When they reached the camp, the chief of the deputation, deposited the bag before his general and exclaimed, "The soil of Persia is ours!" 26

And indeed it was. It is said that the Arabs did not owe their success to their political superiority or to the genius of their military leaders. It was the ancient world of Asia, Europe and Africa, that gave them their victory; a world exhausted by war, undermined by social and religious strife and powerless to resist a united, inspired, fanatical and resolute enemy.27
          So completely was Zoroastrianism routed out from the country of its birth, that in current popular thinking, the thought of an Iran that was not always Islamic, is inconceivable.

                                                                       

After the Arab conquest, tens of thousands embraced Islam. Many went over to the new faith because it allowed them to preserve their power and influence. Others converted to avoid the payment of poll-tax and to find relief from the persecution that raged around them. But those who were devoted to Zoroastrianism resolved to stick to it at any cost.28
          A small band of devoted Zoroastrians, or so our story goes, fled to the inaccessible, mountainous region of Khurasan. But it was only a matter of time before they would have to choose between Islam or death. Either way, the religion would die. So they came down from the mountains to the port of Hormuzd, on the Persian Gulf, from where they set sail. I wonder if they knew where they were going, or whether, casting themselves on God's mercy, they had sailed into the great unknown?
          It is said that a violent storm overtook them at sea. They prayed fervently and vowed if they reached land safely, they would build a fire temple. Their prayers were heard. The storm died down, a gentle breeze guided them to shore. They had landed in Diu, an island on the west coast of India, off the state of Gujarat. According to Parsi lore they spent nineteen years on the island of Diu, after which they set sail again and landed in Sanjan also on the west coast of India, either in the year 936AD or in 716AD; I present both dates here because many an intense battle has been fought amongst Parsis over which date is more accurate.
          The Hindu ruler, Jadhav Rana, alarmed at the sight of these strangers, forbade any of them to land except four of their wisest men. Four priests stepped onto Indian shores and answered in Sanskrit the questions Jadhav Rana put to them-about their home, their religion, their customs.

"What is it you want from us, strangers from a far land?"
"Freedom of worship, Sire," replied the old priest.
"Granted. What else do you wish?"
"A small piece of land that we could cultivate, so that we may not be a burden to the people among whom we live."
"Granted. In return, what will you do for the country of your adoption?"
The old priest asked for a brass bowl to be filled with milk and brought to the assembly. He then stirred a spoonful of sugar in the bowl and holding it up in his trembling hands asked: "Does any man see the sugar in the bowl of milk?" All shook their heads. "Sire," said the priest, "we shall try to be like this insignificant amount of sugar in the milk of your human kindness."29

Though this story might belong to the realm of unrecorded myth, like all good myths, somewhere embedded in it is the 'ring' of truth. Orthodox Parsis believe that it was actually a gold ring that was dropped into the milk, not a spoonful of sugar. "You see sugar dissolves and we have always maintained our own identity. But the gold ring showed Jadhav Rana that we will not assimilate, at the same time we will not make the milk overflow and yet we will also enhance it."
          Whether it was, a spoonful of sugar or a ring of gold, permission to settle was granted by Jadhav Rana on four conditions. The strangers had to adopt the local language Gujarati and give up their own language Persian, their women had to dress as the local women in saris, the men had to give up their weapons and their marriage ceremonies had to be held in the dark.
The refugees prostrated themselves full length on the ground. They picked up handfuls of earth and pressed it to their eyes and forehead, with tears of gratitude streaming down their faces.30
These strangers were called Parsis-to denote the region from where they had come; Pars, (Persia), once the birthplace of mighty empires, now the distant dream of a band of refugees.
                                                                    
                                                                                                 ( Continued........... )
 
                                                 | Footnotes | Bibliography |