Long after families and communities disappear, the written accounts of their existence and preserved artefacts continue. So it is not surprising that much of contemporary Parsis’ energies have been directed to maintain that legacy in India and abroad. At the long anticipated reopening of the F. D. Alpaiwalla Museum this March, speakers at the inauguration stressed the importance of preserving the community’s past and its culture. Aside from creating and sustaining physical structures to preserve our history, the written word also leaves behind equally lasting memories.
Two coffee table books, The Ruttonjees: Industry, Foresight, Charities by scholar Carl Shu-Wai Lau and At Home in the Capital: The Parsis of Delhi by academician Rukshana Shroff, narrate the story of the Parsis in Hong Kong and Delhi. The first book traces the beginnings and successes of the Ruttonjee and Shroff families in the former British enclave which is now a special administrative region of China (see "Wealth and welfare,” pg 30). The second narrates the evolution of the Parsi community in the north India metropolis. Both are important contributions in chronicling the community’s legacy from infancy to modern times.
At a more modest level, Dr Hosang Mogal has written a 40-page booklet in Gujarati, Amé Mogal Mahuvana (We, the Mogals of Mahuva). Aside from narrating the south Gujarat family’s history, photographs and a genealogical tree are included. Language and financial resources need not be a constraint to preserving a family legacy; effort and motivation are. Once a tale is committed to paper it has a claim to perpetuity.
So also if the story is narrated in digital format. Dinyar Jalnawala, originally from Jalna, a city located in the Aurangabad district of Maharashtra, relates on social media a brief history of the place and his family. A fire temple was established in 1842 and there were around 200 Parsis residing in the city. At Parsiana’s request he sent some photographs to illustrate the piece which we will publish in a forthcoming issue.
On April 4, 2025 at the annual garlanding of the statue of Sir Hormusji Cowasjee Dinshaw (Adenwalla) at Churchgate (see "Hormusji honored,” Events and Personalities, pg 16), a family member read extracts from a typewritten manuscript of the businessman and philanthropist’s autobiography. One para dealt with Hormusji presiding at "crowded, hostile” public meetings where "controversial subjects such as juddin marriages, introduction of (a) crematorium, Parsi girls participating in cinemas and dramas with male members of sister communities, navjotes of children of Parsi fathers and non-Parsi mothers at the hands of Zoroastrian priests, and also meetings connected with the ‘Back to Persia’ movement” were discussed. Probably a 100 years have passed since and some of the issues remain unresolved. Others have lost their relevance with the passing of time and changing mores. The participation of women in the entertainment and other related professions is now more or less accepted. One would also be hard put to find Parsis who want to return to Iran where any form of dissent can result in imprisonment or even death.
Researching history takes years. But the works are of great value. Sapur Desai’s History of the Bombay Parsi Punchayet 1860-1960, the only reliable chronicle of the community’s one-time premier welfare institution, was released only in November 1981, eight years after the trust completed its 300th year. As the then Bombay Parsi Punchayet (BPP) trustee Dr Aspi Golwalla noted, the tercentenary celebrations "should have taken place in 1973… Some critics may say the wheels of the Parsi Punchayet do move slowly (see "BPP Tercentenary: A New Age Dawns,” Parsiana, January 1982).”
Without Desai’s book one would know little of the origins of this once prestigious institution. For happenings after 1960 readers would have to refer to sporadic write-ups in the Parsi Press. Whether the BPP’s archival papers are carefully preserved or digitized is unknown. In most cases institutions dump their files in godowns and, when they need working space or the papers are decimated by termites, they discard them.
Another crucial reason to preserve the past is the threat that some deviants may attempt to erase, amend or distort history. The right wing, nationalistic, militant Hindu party in power has directed the National Council of Educational Research and Training to remove all references to the Mughals and the Delhi Sultanate from its class 7 Social Science textbooks as part of a recent curriculum revision.
Names of places, roads, institutions are regularly changed to erase the memory of certain individuals, communities and even countries. As British author George Orwell wrote in his prescient novel, 1984, "Who controls the past, controls the future. Who controls the present, controls the past.” Videos have been circulating claiming that Parsis came to India to exploit its wealth; the governor of Gujarat echoing that sentiment labelled Parsis looters. He later apologized terming the remarks "a slip of the tongue” (See "Parsi plunderers?” Events and Personalities, pg 12).
The Ruttonjees book, though released in Hong Kong on June 25, 2024, reached us nearly six months later on December 13. The government of India views any foreign literature suspiciously and creates endless bureaucratic hurdles to thwart its entry into India.
Long after the Parsis disappear, these books will continue to tell our story. That is why it is so essential that more community biographies are written. The Delhi based Parzor and the Houston based FIRES [FEZANA (Federation of Zoroastrian Associations of North America) Information, Research and Education System] are preserving the past. One doesn’t have to be moneyed, though finance helps. Mogal on a shoestring budget took the initiative himself to narrate his family’s tale. If a scholar is roped in, that helps greatly. She or he will bring a more objective viewpoint to the narrative and assist in rounding off the story. All histories may not be of public interest but they reflect a time and place. The last survivors of the Nazi concentration camps and those who served in World War II are dying out. Their stories are critical in correctly narrating the horrors of war and human prejudices. Without them the narration of our history would be subject to the whims and fancies of the people in power, instead of the truth.