Auditing Parsi History in India
Economic History in Gujarat Settlements and Contributions of Parsis to Bombay provided a glimpse into Parsi adaptability.
I like stories from history. I understand current events because I took history up to grade 12. But I’m not a history buff. Meaning, history classes have to grab my attention. Also, I’m more interested in ancient history than recent, probably because high school history covered recent, plus having lived long enough to have lived “through history.” Been there, done that, even though there’s more for me to learn. But ancient is like a glimpse into a humanity that’s like us yet unaffected by trends the Industrial Revolution sparked.
Unfortunately, I was too kaput to take the ancient Zoroastrian history course plus I had to resolve the fee situation before I took another course (at last, at last, I managed to find a way for India to accept my money, but I need to find a seamless, quick way going forward — don’t you like business jargon!).
Click on the story link below to read the first in this series on the TISS-PARZOR course.
Zoroastrianism: Introduction and Major Tenets
Last Wednesday, I emailed Parzor Foundation, alerting them that my father might be the last Burmese Zoroastrian alive and asking if they’d be interested in interviewing him for their UNESCO project. I found them because I’d started rereading the Gathas.
Anyhoo, I was encouraged to audit the Parsi History in India module of the TISS-PARZOR Zorastrian Perspectives course. I audited the first week’s two classes: Economic History in Gujarat Settlements and Contributions of Parsis to Bombay.
Dr. Meher Mistry covered Bharuch and Khambhat, as well as the usual suspects of Navsari and Surat from about 1500s to 1800s. (Note: “v” is pronounced like a “w.”) Dr. Rashna Poncha covered Parsis in Bombay from about the 1700s to a little bit in the 20th century.
Zoroastrianism: End of Empire and Refuge in India
The class was divided into two sections. Prof. Shernaz Cama talked about finding refuge in India after the Arab Muslim Conquest, and Divya Cowasji discussed her book in progress, due out in October 2026. One of her films was required watching before class, which I’ve embedded at the end of this post.
Time Periods
India’s medieval period spanned from the 7th century to the 16th century. Pre-modern India history covers the 17th to 18th century. Modern starts at about 1800. Although I had learnt some Indian history in high school, as well as through my own family and experiences, I am lacking in basic knowledge. It’s a problem because the classes presuppose knowledge of general Indian history, geography, and names. Perhaps a basic summary textbook or handout prior to the classes would help those of us who don’t have the required general background.
But even those who live in India, and presumably educated in Indian history and geography, found the speed and sheer volume of information formidable. When I tried later on to review the material, I discovered that I couldn’t recall much because I’d had no time to visualize and verbalize, which, as my regular followers know, is key to reading comprehension (learning) and recall. For these reasons, and others, I didn’t enrol in this module, but I write here a few things I took away.
Themes
Adaptability
Governor of Bombay Gerald Aungier wrote on 16 December 1673:
“[Parsis] are an industrious people and ingenious in trade, therein they totally employe themselves, they are at present but few of them, but we expect a greater number having gratified them in their desire to build a [burying] place for their dead in the Island.”
The burying place is the Tower of Silence.
As this quote indicates, Parsi history after arrival in India is one of looking about, spotting opportunities, diving into them, taking risks, creating companies and providing services either better than others or where none existed, making money, donating vast sums to where some became impoverished for it but still donated, suffering losses, moving to emerging new opportunities, repeat.
As discussed in previous modules, Parsis adapted to the environment they found themselves in. This adaptability led them to become disproportionately influential and charitable for their population numbers. For example, Parsis built 40 to 60 percent of higher education colleges, such as medical and legal ones, yet Parsis comprised only 6 percent of Bombay’s population. Once they funded the building of schools, hospitals, housing for low income, and such like, they handed them over to the government to run.
Sexism
Only Parsi men founded companies. Parsi women used their wealth from their husbands and inheritances to give lavishly to charitable causes from schools to sponsoring scribes in Iran to providing free services, food, shelter to the destitute with no boundaries of caste, creed, nationality, etc. Parsis advocated for equality for women in their newspapers, established girls’ schools, and Parsi women were known to accompany men in public and be socially active in the 1800s. In the 20th century, I think, Parsi women became influential in the running of businesses. Rather late in the game for a religion and culture that prides itself on equality between men and women.
This makes me wonder when exactly Zoroastrianism morphed from gender equality in practice and belief to patriarchy. Was it the European influence? Or did it start before then, at the time of the genocide by the Arabic Muslim invaders? Or even earlier during the Sasanian period when the kings elevated priests in status?
Entrepreneurship
I learnt I know more about Burmese Parsi history (which isn’t much) than the historians and my classmates did. However, I didn’t know that timber and gems were why Parsis moved to Burma, nor that Indians value Burma teak for its use in furniture and construction. It’s superior to oak for shipbuilding. This may be why my ancestors moved there. They had been sea traders from India to China; it’s logical to assume they’d want to be near the source of the wood for their ships. However, I don’t know if they were involved in the timber trade.
The breadth of Parsi entrepreneurship is mind blowing. For example, they got involved in the raw cotton trade. Then they established cotton mills to create textiles.
Side note: In high school history, I learnt that this is a way for a people to create more wealth. Raw goods garner the least profit. Products made from raw materials generate greater profit. This is why Canada selling oil instead of the refined products from it, which it used to do, is dumb economically as the governments allow corporations to transfer the greatest wealth of our assets out of our country to mostly the USA, which is now hellbent on destroying us economically.
Anyhoo…
Parsis built and owned the ships on which their goods sailed. They became brokers, insurers, and bankers. They bought land, constructed housing and flats, and rented them out to Europeans. At every step, they increased their wealth-generating capacity from being merely landowners to being landlords to wealthy renters. They set up factories (warehouses to store others’ goods) and manufacturing plants for diverse products, including motor cars in the early 20th century.
Opium Trade
My high school history teachers taught us nada about Parsi involvement in the opium trade to China. It was all about the British who smuggled opium to China so that they could generate funds needed to buy tea from China by creating an addictive culture. Tea is big in the UK. But wow, the consumption and cost must’ve been huge to have to make the kind of money that drug smuggling brings just to afford tea importation.
Apparently, Parsis are so well known in India for being opium traders that some Parsis today are tarred with that brush even though their ancestors were not involved in it.
Ten large Parsi families traded in opium. Some (all?) demanded and received Royal Navy protection for their ships sailing to China.
Putna opium was shipped from Calcutta to China. The British East India Company held a monopoly on opium trading in Calcutta. Malwa opium was shipped out of Bombay, where many had licences or before it became legal in 1833, were able to smuggle it out. The famous Jamshetjee Jeejeebhoy made his vast, unfathomable wealth through smuggling opium into Hong Kong and China, beginning as a 16-year-old. But you can Google my last name and learn all about him and his rise from destitute orphan in the 1700s to wealth beyond measure and immense donations to charitable causes. Am I related to him or one of those ten Parsi families? Who the heck knows!
Although 10 families accumulated vast wealth through the opium trade, which they used to establish schools, hospitals, newspapers, cricket teams, and so many more things I couldn’t write them all down, many Parsis outside those families got jobs inherent in trading any good (not just opium) across land, sea, and borders, such as Parsi agents in China who took in the opium at the docks and paid the shipowners and traders.
Risk and Wit
Of course, trading in illegal goods, as well as outside the British monopoly, incurred risk and danger. The stories I heard from my father and uncles on things like salt tax evasion and legal tussles between Burmese Parsis relate a kind of cleverness that enjoys outwitting others — as well as a certainty in justice — that also fuelled some Parsis’ involvement in Indian independence. My Uncle Homi was proud of being thrown into prison by the British during India’s war of independence. I think this kind of approach to life is why Parsis entered and flourished in trading, including the ccotton, opium, textiles, and timber trades. And why some became politically active and changed the course of history.