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Edited extracts from an article in Scroll reprinted with permission.

In November 1890, Crown Prince Nicholas II set off from St Petersburg on an epic 290-day, 51,000-km journey to Vladivostok and back via southern Europe and Asia. He was accompanied by Prince Esper Ukhtomsky, a poet and close confidant who was passionate about India.

Ukhtomsky knew more about India than most other Russians. His book Travels in the East of Nicholas II When Cesarewitch, 1890-91 is a document of Nicholas II’s "Grand Tour to the East.”

Ukhtomsky was disappointed to find Bombay "too European” on the surface. Nevertheless, the city’s architecture fascinated him, inspiring him to remark that the buildings which looked cold and "unpicturesque” from a distance were actually attractive at a nearer glance.

About one of Bombay’s prominent buildings, the Elphinstone College, he wrote, "Here is a building, in a medieval style of architecture — a school for natives of India, erected chiefly at the expense of a rich Parsi gentleman, in memory of Mountstuart Elphinstone, the best of the former governors of Bombay.”

At a state dinner organized by Governor Harris in Nicholas II’s honor, he was disappointed to see how Anglicized most of the Indian guests were, with the exception of two Parsis and their wives. Ukhtomsky said the attire of the Parsi women attracted the attention of the Russian visitors. "Black-eyed, pale-faced (with a yellowish tint), with hair parted down the middle, they wore silk shawls (saris) on their heads, golden-tinted folds falling gracefully over their shoulders and waists,” he wrote.

Among the guests at the state dinner was Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy, a wealthy merchant and philanthropist who made his fortune in part by selling opium in China. Ukhtomsky mentioned that Jejeebhoy held the title of baronet and had received the title of Star of India from Queen Victoria.

"The part played by the fire-worshippers, or speaking more correctly, the sun-worshippers, in India, is in many respects similar to that played by Jews in Western Europe,” Ukhtomsky wrote. "There are Jews too, on the Bombay coast, of Mesopotamian origin, with their own Rothschilds, the millionaire Sassoons, at their head.”

The British authorities organized another reception where Nicholas II could meet more members of the Indian elite. This time it was at the old residence of the governor, now the Haffkine Institute in Parel.

The majority of the guests at the Parel reception were Parsis, prompting Ukhtomsky to write about them in more detail.

"Side by side with the successes of the English, the importance of the Parsi element kept increasing… They became very skillful shipbuilders, tradesmen, bankers, enterprising merchants, etc. The opium trade with China and the development of the trade with the seaports of the Celestial Empire, their own capacity for adapting themselves to the requirements of the day, their successful attempts, finally, at self-education, soon raised the Parsis to a position of great prosperity. (This) made them invaluable to the English (even in their campaigns against Afghanistan), and have thus given rise to the exceptional position occupied by the 100,000 sun-worshippers in the empire of her Majesty the Queen Empress.”

Ukhtomsky noted that wealthy members of the Parsi community made donations to all sorts of charitable institutions "without reference to the creed of those who were to avail themselves of their lavish assistance.” He felt there was a degree of interdependence between the British and the Parsis: without the British, the Parsis would not have thrived so much, and without the community, the British would not quite be what they were on the western coast of India.

He recounted with great annoyance that the Parsis had supported the British, and not the Russians, in the Crimean War. "Calling on the powers of heaven to assist the British troops in their war with the Russians, the Parsis went so far as to appoint a feast day in memory of the fall of Sevastopol. Now, of course, more than a quarter of a century later, such a historical reminiscence can only bear an anecdotal character, but as a fact, it is significant. In the dim chronicle of the indifferent and passive relations of the majority of the inhabitants of India to the foreign policy of the British, this exhibition of sympathy and enthusiasm on the part of the Parsi community stands quite alone, and strikes one by the unreasonable ardor of their desire to please and flatter the rulers of the land.”

Still, Ukhtomsky maintained that his country had nothing against the Parsis. He only asked them to remember that many Zoroastrian archeological sites in the Russian empire were being diligently preserved.