Hindu India was kind to us. My ancestors suffered no persecution,
no fear. They were allowed to prosper and grow. They built a fire
temple, installed with due ceremony the holy fire which they called
the Iranshah, the King of Iran; lived largely peaceful, obscure existences
in various villages and towns of Gujarat as farmers, weavers and carpenters.
However,
Islam did follow them even to India. In 1465 Sanjan was sacked and
destroyed by the Muslim Sultanate. Parsis fought valiantly, side by
side with their Hindu benefactors. Many lost their lives, but the
priests managed to rescue the sacred fire and carried it safely to
a cave on a hill, where, protected by jungle and sea, they guarded
it for the next twelve years.31
Though
they didn't completely lose touch with the Persian language, Gujarati
(their version of it), started to become their mother tongue. They
adopted many Hindu customs. Parsi women dressed like their Indian
counterparts. They even wore nose rings.
In the
book The Last Empire, there is an old photograph of a Parsi
family in which the woman is wearing a nose ring. I showed it to various
relatives and friends. They all said, "The author's made a mistake.
The caption is wrong. This family look like Muslims or Hindus. Parsis
never wore nose rings!"
Yet a
Parsi historian, D. F. Karaka, in his book dedicated to the Prince
of Wales, writes:
In imitation of Hindu and Mohamaden women, the Parsi
ladies were, until the last generation, in the habit of wearing a
nose ring. This ornament was made of three pearls set in a gold ring
an inch in diameter, one of the pearls being a pendant supposed to
fall gracefully over the upper lip; but their good taste at last led
them to abandon the barbarous practice of perforating the nose.32
It was our contact with yet another Empire, this time the British
Empire, that deeply affected us in every way, sometimes even giving
us selective amnesia. When Alexander encountered the Persians, he
was permanently altered. We underwent a similar change, only in the
reverse direction. Alexander, a westerner, became a man of the east.
We, being of the east, leapt into the western world.
Our first contact in India, with the western world, was in the port
town of Surat, in Gujarat, where in the fifteenth century, Europeans
(the Portuguese, the British and the Dutch) had been given permission
by the Mughals to establish trading factories. Unhampered by caste
prejudices, Surat provided an ideal opportunity for Parsis to engage
in occupations that they had never attempted before. Farmers became
traders and chief native agents, carpenters became shipbuilders.33
An adventurous
few left Surat and moved south to Bombay, then only a set of islands,
in the wilderness. Here, they acted as brokers between the Indians
and the Portuguese. They were in Bombay when it was ceded by Portugal
to England in 1665 and three years later when the Crown handed over
the island to the East India Company, Parsis were already a presence.
"They
are an industrious people," wrote Governor Aungier in a letter
to England, "and ingenious in trade, therein they totally employe
themselves. There are at present but few of them, but we expect a
greater number having gratified them in their desire to build a bureing
place for their dead on the Island."34
The East
India Company had grand plans for Bombay. They had visions of making
this settlement a vibrant trading and commercial centre. In order
to do so they needed to attract Indian traders, merchants and craftsmen
to settle in and develop this frontier land. The terms they offered
to native communities were generous and to an immigrant community
like the Parsis must have seemed almost heaven-sent.35
All persons
born in Bombay would become natural subjects of England. All communities
migrating to Bombay were guaranteed religious freedom and were permitted
to build their houses within the fort walls, alongside the British,
where they would be protected from any hostile attacks.36
Though
the Parsis were quicker to recognise and seize this unique historical
opportunity and came to Bombay earlier than most and in larger numbers,
they weren't the only ones. There were Muslim weavers from Ahmedabad,
Bohras, Beni-Israeli Jews, Jains, Armenians. And though the residential
area was divided into the white and native parts, in the real life
of the city, in the counting houses, markets, docks, everybody jostled
together in a cooperative venture.37
It has been said that it was not the British merchant but the Parsi
shipbuilder who was the real creator of Bombay. In 1736, East India
Company officials, very impressed with the work of a young Parsi foreman
in their Surat dockyard, invited him to Bombay, with ten of his carpenters,
to build the Bombay shipyard. Lowji Nusserwanji Wadia came to Bombay
and put in fifty years of service, at a salary of forty rupees a month,
handing down his skills to his sons and grandsons. For many decades,
it was the success of the shipyards alone that persuaded the East
India Company to keep this otherwise expensive settlement going.38
The Wadias
made ships of Malabar teak for an international clientele. Their Bombay
Frigates were ordered by the British Admiralty and used in the Battle
of Trafalgar. One of their ships sailed the world for years with the
following message carved on her kelson by the chief shipwright, Jamshetji
Wadia, "This ship was built by a d----d Black Fellow AD 1800."
39
The Wadias
weren't the only stars in the Parsi firmament. Parsi entrepreneurs
began springing up in every direction, attempting new professions
and being enormously successful. It is said that the Bombay of those
days was a level playing field where there were fortunes to be made,
caste, colour, creed, no bar; though in the colour-conscious world
of British India, it could not have hurt to be light-skinned like
some Parsis.
The first
and most revered of our merchant-princes, Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy, is
a rags-to riches story. Born into a poor priestly family in Navsari,
orphaned at a young age, he started his career as a seller of old
bottles. He made his maiden voyage to China when he was sixteen and
it was in trade that he made his fortune. He was to make several more
trips-some of them uneventful, others arduous and dangerous. He was
to lose most of his money in the great Bombay fire and start from
scratch again. With Bombay as his centre, he traded with China, sent
them opium, brought back tea and silks and traded with Europe, bringing
back the English goods needed to sustain the empire in India. He made
a vast amount of money and gave back an equally massive amount to
the city. Hospitals, colleges, roads, housing for the poor, all still
bear his name. In 1842 he was the first Indian to be knighted. In
today's times his charities would add up to millions of rupees.
He suddenly
became very real to me when I was photographing his statue in the
J J Hospital, which is now a free public hospital. A man came up to
me, "Do you know who this is?" he asked in Hindi pointing
to Sir J J's statue. I pretended ignorance. "Batliwala,"
he said, miming carrying a sackful of bottles. "That is what
he was. He used to sell empty bottles. He was a poor man who became
very rich. The money came pouring in. Anybody who needed help would
go to him."
"How do you know all this?" I asked him. "My father
told me," he replied. "And when I was a child, in the night,
I would hear his cry on the road, selling his bottles, 'batliwala!
batliwala!'"
I didn't tell him that the batliwala in question died in 1859,
but meeting him illustrated the legacy Sir J J left behind. He continues
to inspire hope in the poor who consider him one of their own, even
one hundred and forty years after his death: the seller of old bottles
who rose from the streets and became a king.
As our
fortunes changed, so did our names. Names that sounded strange to
English ears became easier to remember. Thus some of us became what
we did; Lawyer, Doctor, Paymaster, Engineer, Confectioner, Readymoney
(first to loan money to the British).
By 1800,
Parsis owned half of Bombay and were even renting out their magnificent
houses to the British. Later, with industrialisation, they established
the first cotton mills and were instrumental in founding the Indian
steel industry. These entrepreneurs, shethias, as they were
called, followed in Sir J J's footsteps and in accordance with Zoroastrian
doctrine, dispensed large portions of their fortunes to charities
that benefited both the community and the city at large.
To the Parsis of those days it must have indeed seemed that Ahura
Mazda dispatched the British to India and specifically to Bombay.
It changed us irrevocably. From farmers and weavers we became gentlemen,
philanthropists, even merchant-princes.
By the early nineteenth century, another force came into play that
was to change the community without coercion or threats. In 1820 Monstuart
Elphinstone established the Bombay Native Education Society, where
Indians could for the first time receive, "A systematic inculcation
of the literature, languages, science and philosophy of Europe."40
In 1835,
Lord Macaulay expressed the goal of this new educational system with
the following words: "To rear a class of people who maybe interpreters
between us and the millions we govern; a class of persons, Indian
in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals
and in intellect." 41
Parsis
of the middle and poorer classes made quick and extensive use of this
new opportunity, branching out from the traditional occupations of
trade and commerce into the professions and the colonial administration.
Once they began to receive an English education, Parsi men embarked
on a conscious path of reform in community matters. Having banished
the social evils from their own community, the young Parsi reformers
felt themselves responsible for initiating similar reforms amongst
Hindus and Muslims. When attacked by orthodox Hindus as being, "only
a Parsi," the social reformer B. M. Malabari replied:
If my Hindu friends take this line of argument that
I am 'only a Parsi', I will be forced to reply that I am as good a
Hindu as any of them, that India is as much my country as theirs...In
another place I am gently asked to look after the reform of Parsi
customs. Well, as a matter of fact, we Parsis have got rid of infant
marriages, bigamy, polygamy and several other evils...and it is after
having reformed ourselves that we are appealing to the educated sense
of the mother community to do likewise.42
As early as 1860 Parsi women were educated in schools, ate with their
husbands instead of after them and accompanied them in public.
Macaulay's plan paid rich dividends but it also backfired. It was
the Indians educated in British classrooms, now liberal and humanistic
in their thinking, in accordance with their education, who were the
agitators for political change and Independence. Amongst them were
the Parsi stalwarts Dadabhai Naoroji, Madame Bhikaiji Cama and Sir
Pherozeshah Mehta.
Dadabhai
Naoroji , (1825- 1917) the "Grand Old Man of India" was
the first to formulate and articulate the 'drain theory' in his book,
Poverty and Un-British Rule in India. He fought for the Indianisation
of the Indian Civil Service and protested vehemently against the extravagant
expenditure on military expeditions against Afghanistan, Burma and
Egypt, undertaken at the Indian tax-payer's expense for the glory
of England. To educate the British public and to fight for Indian
rights, in 1892 he stood for elections to the British House of Commons
as a liberal from Central Finsbury. He won by three votes and his
constituents nicknamed him 'Mr Narrow Majority'. He was the first
Indian to beat the British at their own game. The conservative press
did their best to stir up racial prejudice against him.
Central Finsbury should be ashamed of itself at having
publicly confessed that there was not in the whole of the Division
an Englishman, a Scotsman, a Welshman, or an Irishman as worthy of
their votes as this fire-worshipper from Bombay.43
Madame Bhikaiji Cama (1861-1936) our radical firebrand, was exiled
from India and Britain and lived in France. Bhikaiji was a tireless
propagandist for Indian Independence. Russian comrades used to call
her India's Joan of Arc. Lenin reportedly invited her to reside in
Russia but she did not accept the invitation.44
In 1907,
she addressed an audience of 1,000 Germans at the Stuttgart Conference.
After her impassioned speech she unfurled a flag, a tricolour, which
became, with some changes, India's national flag forty years later.
As her activities grew more radical the British requested the French
to extradite her. The French refused. In 1936, alone and seriously
ill, wishing to die in her own country she petitioned the British
government to be allowed to return home. Her request was granted,
provided she sign what she had refused to all her life; a statement
promising she would take no part in politics. She returned to Bombay
and after an illness of eight months, died lonely, forgotten and unsung
in the Parsi General Hospital.
In 1890, as President of the Indian National Congress, Pherozeshah
Mehta (nicknamed Ferocious Mehta) delivered the presidential address
in which he said,
In speaking of myself as a native of this country,
I am not unaware that, incredible as it may seem, Parsis have been
both called and invited and allured to call themselves, foreigners.45
He saw through the British tactics of binding Parsi loyalty to the
crown. They repeatedly made Parsis feel superior by showering them
with decorations and praise. Up until 1946, a total of sixty-three
Parsis had been knighted; of the four Indians who had been made hereditary
baronets until 1908, three were Parsis.46 In
1877, Sir J. R. Carnac, Governor of Bombay, declared:
Then, gentlemen Parsis, I would ask you to remember
that you have what is called the very bluest blood in Asia.47
In 1893, Dadabhai Naoroji expressed the spirit of an emerging national
identity when he stated:
Whether I am a Hindu, a Mohamaden, a Parsi, a Christian,
or of any other creed, I am above all an Indian. Our country is India;
our nationality is Indian.48
Though some Parsis supported Congress and others were staunch Gandhians,
many in the community followed the shethias whose maxim was, "Loyal
to the British, friendly to the Indians." The nationalists who
were spearheading the Congress movement were not regarded as in any
way representative of the community. Rather, they were characterised
as "a handful of mischievous Parsis." Ironically, despite
their trouble-making activities, the community took great pride in
their subsequent successes-never mind their "misguided politics"
they were Parsis after all.
Many a Parsi tear was surely shed when God Save the King played
for the last time. Though our fears subsided when we realised that
the new India was going to be as kind to us as the old, our sense
of love and gratitude to the British remained undiminished.
Born ten years after Independence, I had no personal knowledge of
the Raj. In 1975 I left India for America, where I began my own liberal,
humanist education. I began to question and reject violently, my community's
fascination with the British. I'd cringe when I'd read in the history
books about how Parsis had offered public prayers and invoked Zarathustra's
help when George V was unwell. Eastern thought and tradition began
to appear to me to be filled with wisdom; the west I began to think
was the source of all the world's problems.
I wrote
a paper in college, a critical essay, a brief history of the Parsis.
The main argument, written in sarcastic undergraduate style, was that
Parsis had denied their 'Indianness', ignored their own priesthood,
turned their backs on their rural roots in their rush to be 'English.'
I made fun of the shethia pretensions and mocked D. F. Karaka's
dedication to the Prince of Wales. Pleased with my efforts, I brought
the paper home that summer vacation to show Maneck kaka. Enormously
hurt, he was for once unable or unwilling to even argue it out. I
returned to America shortly after; he died six months later in Bombay.
That was eighteen years ago.
I'm older
now, maybe wiser. I can look back and wonder at the hypocrisy of my
undergraduate thought. If it wasn't for the English education my ancestors
embraced so readily, I wouldn't be sitting in my American college
and writing my critique of the English in English. Theories are all
very well, but I'm thankful that I wasn't brought up in a traditional,
orthodox family, happy that I was born in Bombay and not some sleepy
village. There's no going back to some idealised state. My forefathers
understood the concept of change. Without their ability to change
I would never have had parents who allowed their only child, an eighteen-year-old
girl, to travel halfway around the world to study.
Of all
the three virtues: Good Words, Good Thoughts, Good Deeds, Zarathustra
rated good deeds the highest. We did fulfill our ancient promise to
be the sugar (or the gold ring) in the milk of Indian kindness. Our
contribution has been out of proportion to our numerical insignificance.
We have, without seeking any special privilege under the Constitution,
played a large role in the development of our adopted country. The
Parsi presence is palpable in India to this day.
Modern
India owes a large debt to the visionary Jamsetji Tata who had the
foresight to lay a firm foundation that would allow India to be economically
independent. His descendant JRD Tata, a keen aviator, was the first
Indian to start a national airline (Tata Airlines) that later became
Air-India. Parsis also established the first cotton mills in India,
the first newspaper, the first Indian owned bank. In the navy we had
Admiral Jal Cursetji, in the airforce Air Marshal Engineer and the
Indian army was commandeered by another Parsi-Field Marshal Sam Maneckshaw.
And of course there is apro (our) Zubin Mehta who belongs collectively
to every Parsi mother.
I'd like
to think that our love for the British was not motivated solely by
economic interests, nor was it an exercise in servile bootlicking
as I had once thought. I wonder whether in the pomp, civility and
pageantry of the British Empire, my ancestors saw the reincarnation
of their own lost Persian Empire?
Fifty-three years after Independence, we have nothing to fear but
ourselves. We are the only community in fertile India that has a diminishing
birthrate. We intermarry amongst ourselves, marry late, have few children
and have so confused religion and race, that many would like to lay
down laws that prohibit anybody from ever becoming either a Parsi
or a Zoroastrian. In a political climate where religions vie with
each other to gain converts, we zealously try to keep them out.
In 1986,
Joseph Peterson, a twenty-seven-year old chemical engineer chanced
upon a copy of the Avesta in a library in Minnesota. Fascinated, he
went on to study it and found in it answers to difficult questions
about life. He began to think of himself as essentially Zoroastrian.
Two liberal Parsi priests in New Rochelle initiated him into the religion,
performed his navjote ceremony, invested him with the sacred
girdle (kusti) and shirt (sudrah), the badge of all
believers. News of the navjote unleashed a storm back in Bombay
and Joseph Peterson became a household name.
"Our
ancestors knew what they were doing when they kept themselves separate
and did not allow conversions!" an old priest thunders. "Some
Japanese people once asked Darwin- 'What will happen if we intermarry
with the English?' Do you know what he said? Darwin replied- 'Just
as the big fish swallows the little fish, so also the big nation will
swallow you up after three generations and your Japanese culture will
be demolished, finished!' Can you imagine, with our tiny numbers how
careful we have to be?"
"It's
shameful," says Homi Sethna, a documentary filmmaker, who is
on the other side of the conversion divide. "I've heard with
my own ears Parsis at a public meeting saying that they would beat
up both Peterson and the priests who performed his navjote.
I feel all they want is to safeguard the funds and properties of the
Parsi Panchayat. What do they think? Joseph Peterson became a Zoroastrian
just so he could avail himself of Parsi charitable housing in Bombay?"
Heated arguments, impassioned opinions, fights and factions are not
new to us. When there are only two Parsis left in the world, they'll
still be sitting there and arguing about whether or not to allow conversions.
As we enter this Millennium, Parsis continue to live in several centuries
simultaneously, inhabit several identities; a balancing act that takes
us from Stone Age rituals to Freddy Mercury (real name Farrokh Bulsara).
Out of these diverse elements we have created a culture that is uniquely
our own. Fifty years from now, will we still be around? Will Zarathustra's
Good Religion be a living faith, or will the world's first messianic
prophet having survived four thousand years, finally be relegated
to the history books?
Maneck
kaka, who was able to laugh at the quirks, eccentricities and pretensions
of the Parsis, yet was intensely proud to be one, once responded to
my 'youthful pessimism' in the same assured manner that an agitated
V. S. Naipaul was once told by a placid R. K. Narayan, "India
will go on."
"We
have survived so many centuries, against so many obstacles. Do you
think we've come all this way just to die out now?"
I hope
Maneck kaka is proved right. It is to him that this book is dedicated;
to my grandparents Aloo and Ader; my parents Freny and Rumi; my husband
Firdaus. And to our children Jahan and Iyanah, with the hope that
the world of this book will not have vanished by the time they grow
into adults.
Sooni Taraporevala
BOMBAY,
AUGUST 2000
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Footnotes | Bibliography
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