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I am writing from Iran and interested in knowing more about the culture of our Zoroastrian Parsi brothers in India, which brought your magazine to my attention. Since I was a teenager I have always wondered why the Parsi Zoroastrians, who claim to be Iranian (which they truly are; even most of their names are pure Iranian and Persian), do not speak or know the Persian language. It was very strange for me to see a Parsi not being able to read, write and understand Persian. It is like a German, Arab or Russian not being able to read, write and understand German, Arabic or Russian language.

Years later I read more about the Parsis in books and learnt about the conditions and circumstances under which they were allowed to settle in India. One such was apparently to use the Gujarati language. It might have been logical in those days to do so, but the world has changed and today even your magazine does not use Gujarati. I find it strange that our Parsi brothers in India do not want to use their ancestral language.

I believe in diversity and am not against any language. Persian, English and Gujarati belong to the same family and group of Indo-European languages. But we all know that every language has a very strong cultural context that can hardly be expressed and explained in other languages. Many of the cultural elements of Zoroastrianism are seen in the language, literature and poetry of Persia. Parsi Zoroastrians are known for being keen to retain their cultural identity. By ignoring and forgetting the Persian language they will be losing a huge part of the identity which they are so keen to keep.

Every religion, even when practiced in many nations with different languages, does use one main language for its sacred scriptures and books. The language of the Gathas is Avesta which is not much used, though it is a very close relative of Persian. Whoever learns Persian can easily understand a lot of the Zoroastrian meanings because Zoroastrianism is installed in the core body of Persian. Can you imagine Christian Catholicism without Latin, Islam without Arabic and Judaism without Hebrew? Then how can you imagine Zoroastrianism without Persian?

Persian is the only language capable of uniting Zoroastrians all over the world. It is the language of our ancestors created and preserved for us. Persian is the heritage and birthright of Parsis as well as other Iranians.

I hope to see articles in your magazine encouraging the spread of the Persian language among our Parsi brothers.