Revival of ancestral links between Iranians and Kurds and Parsis picking up pace around the world

[hussain0216]

Its funny how under the garb of "culture" and "revivalism", tjese communities are targetted and funds come from rich indians or the west. Its actually a ploy to unite a section of these people and use them for their interests. Otherwise who would want to go back to thousanda of yrs old faith based on worshipping fire. Yeah could be understood ppl worship fire thousands of yrs ago as it was something syrange for them, but in this modern times?? These micro communities are always playing in hands of one or another and working for their agenda, the same goes for parsis. But i doubt any peraon with a couple of brain cells would go back to fire worshipping.
I am all in favour of minorities and their rights but when a minority takea up foreign funding and embark on a "revival" of old faith then it can caise problems. Anyhow, i doubt parsis can do much except spend money to fiddle with things.
Iqbal had said
Kis ne thanda kia atishkada iran ko,
kis ne phir zinda kia tazkara yazdan ko

Exactly

The problem is their mask keeps slipping


Let me explain, up north in Pakistan we have zero Hindus

They are either dead or run off a long time ago

If a Hindu came to our area and said I am a poor Hindu my family used to live in this area please can I make a small temple for worship, I mean no one any harm

I would say sure,,, I am.no fan of Hinduism but the guy has a right to his personal beliefs

but if I then overheard that Mofo saying "This is the first temple to make our akhand Bharat ha ha ha"
I would be reaching for my gun to slay that screwball


these people think they are going to spread fireworship amongst Muslim states and people's without repercussions or that Muslims aren't going to click on to their frankly thinly veiled desires


The problem Iran has created is that it has made a religious state that kind of forces religiousness on its people
big mistake
when you do that populations react, if a women dosent want to wear a hijab then forcing one on her dosent make her a religious woman

But if the yazidis or parsis started to to daft things in that part of the world it would be a bloodbath

 

[TNT]

Exactly

The problem is their mask keeps slipping


Let me explain, up north in Pakistan we have zero Hindus

They are either dead or run off a long time ago

If a Hindu came to our area and said I am a poor Hindu my family used to live in this area please can I make a small temple for worship, I mean no one any harm

I would say sure,,, I am.no fan of Hinduism but the guy has a right to his personal beliefs

but if I then overheard that Mofo saying "This is the first temple to make our akhand Bharat ha ha ha"
I would be reaching for my gun to slay that screwball


these people think they are going to spread fireworship amongst Muslim states and people's without repercussions or that Muslims aren't going to click on to their frankly thinly veiled desires


The problem Iran has created is that it has made a religious state that kind of forces religiousness on its people
big mistake
when you do that populations react, if a women dosent want to wear a hijab then forcing one on her dosent make her a religious woman

But if the yazidis or parsis started to to daft things in that part of the world it would be a bloodbath

Notice the use of the word "birth right" by this indian and his thinly veiled desires, which only will remain a desire. They are trying to copy jews and revive their kingdom, that too with the help of india . They forget there will be another saad bin abi waqas sent if they do mischief again in the land.

 

[padamchen]

Qissa e Parsi : The Parsi Story

@Arian @Cthulhu @Philosopher @Dariush the Great @Salmanov @LittleFish @925boy @Surenas

Cheers, Doc

 

[padamchen]

Irani Cafes and Parsi Food : LEGENDARY Mumbai Restaurants

Something for the foodies

Cheers, Doc

 

[Sharma Ji]

sali boti and the thin fries ftw

 

[padamchen]

View attachment 719918

sali boti and the thin fries ftw

@Sharma Ji check this out.

Delhi Parsi Dharamshala. I stayed here with my dad years ago in the 80s as a boy.

The catering has now been taken over by Rustom's.

Here's Karl Rock and his friend Manisha having a go at the fusion Parsi-Irani food on offer.

Cheers, Doc

P.S. The "thin fries" is the sali. The mutton pieces are the boti.

 

[padamchen]

The Navjote ceremony which is the holy investiture thread ceremony of a child into the Mazdayasna religion. It is only after this Navjote (Iranians call it Sudreh Pooshi) ceremony that the child actually becomes a Zarthosti.

Cheers, Doc

 

[Juggernaut_Flat_Plane_V8]

Book Review: Exile and the Nation – The Parsi Community of India and the Making of Modern Iran
BY EDITORIAL BOARD · PUBLISHED 4. FEBRUARY 2021 · UPDATED 4. FEBRUARY 2021

By Katja Rieck
Rethinking (Iranian) Nationalism from a Transnational and South-South Perspective

​

Afshin Marashi, Exile and the Nation – The Parsi Community of India and the Making of Modern Iran.


In his most recent monograph, Exile and the Nation – The Parsi Community of India and the Making of Modern Iran (2020), Afshin Marashi provides a new perspective on Iranian nationalism. Dissatisfied with approaches that “have tended to focus more on the role of the cultural and intellectual encounter with European thought in shaping debates within Persian-language modernist texts of the 19th and 20th centuries” that “draw on diffusionist models of modernity based on the assumption that modernization is intimately linked to westernization and rooted in the dissemination of ideas from a European place of origin outward to the various colonial and semi-colonial regions of Asia and Africa” (12-13). It is a critique Marashi insists is applicable to both classical scholarly accounts of nationalism as well as to post-colonial paradigms. This study focusses attention on the role of non-Western intellectuals and South-South exchanges in the shaping of Iranian modernity and nationalism. Central to this process, Marashi insists, is the continuing legacy of the “Persianate zone” or “Persianate cosmopolis” that historically linked cultures and societies from Belgrad to Bengal from roughly the late 7th century. Taking inspiration from scholars like Kathryn Bayaban, Mana Kia, Daniel Sheffield, and Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi, as well as Nile Green and Monica Ringer, he seeks to move beyond historiographical approaches limited by disciplinary divides of periodization (early modern vs. modern) and regional specialization (Middle East vs. South Asia).

At the center of his account lies the cultural and intellectual engagement between Bombay Parsis and Iranian Zoroastrians, particularly at the close of the 19th century up until World War II. This engagement, as Marashi insists, drew on pre-existing, early modern strands of the Persianate historical legacy from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. However, the shifting contexts of their respective political situations in the 19th and early 20th centuries “produced different historical outcomes for strands of culture emerging from the Persianate cultural landscape” (16). Hence a recurring theme throughout the book’s five chapters is the implicit and explicit tensions between differing understandings of Zoroastrianism and a shared classical Persianate heritage. Hence, Bombay Parsis looked on their religious and cultural heritage from the perspective of a favored minority community under multicultural colonial rule and so tended to articulate liberal, cosmopolitan and ecumenical readings of Zoroastrianism and Indo-Iranian classical heritage. Zoroastrian and non-Zoroastrian Iranian intellectuals, on the other hand, looked to this classical heritage and Zoroastrianism as “a cultural blueprint to serve as the basis for a radical project of compensatory transformation characteristic of defensive nation-building projects” (16). The resulting interpretations were culturally assertive and exclusionary (particularly towards Iran’s Arab-Islamicate heritage). By looking at the contrasting trajectories that resulted from Iranian-Parsi exchanges, Marashi aims to explore how to conceptualize networks of connection that were made possible in the Indian Ocean world due to steam and print technologies. While it is generally assumed that the resulting increased density and intensity of exchange networks would create an ethos of cosmopolitanism, the story of Parsi-Iranian exchange shows the picture to be far more complicated: “A close reading of the Parsi-Iranian exchange will therefore detail a fuller range of cultural, emotional, and philosophical complexities emerging from one such encounter in the Indian Ocean ecumene, as well as the concomitant cultural and political outcomes that those encounters produced” (19).

Combining a Focus on Biographies and Actor Networks with Analysis of Seminal Texts

Marashi’s study analyses developments in emergent Iranian nationalism by examining the intellectual biographies and networks of key actors in the Zoroastrian revival and Iranian nationalism and the discursive structures of their most influential works. Chapter 1, entitled “To Bombay and Back – Arbab Kaykhosrow Shahrok and the Reinvention of Iranian Zoroastrianism”, focuses on the contradiction between liberal Parsi and Iranian nationalist readings of Iran’s Zoroastrian heritage as played out in a family drama between Kaykhosow Sharokh, the liberal Zoroastrian reformer, longtime Majles Deputy, and Persian cultural activist and his son Shah-Bahram Shahrokh. The chapter details Kaykhosow Shahrokh’s political activities, not least his seminal role in anchoring a definition of Iranian citizenship that institutionalized the legal equality of non-Muslim minorities as “Iranian subjects” in the emergent Iranian nation-state as well as his efforts towards promoting Zoroastrian life in Teheran. His lasting influence, however, can also be attributed to two important works he penned following a stay among the Parsi community in Bombay, the A’ineh-ya A’in-e Mazdayasna (1907) and the Fourugh-e Mazdayasna (1909). In these works, he formulated the doctrines of a modernist and reformed interpretation of Zoroastrianism for schoolchildren and lay Zoroastrian readers, but also for an audience of non-Zoroastrian Iranian readers exploring Iran’s (pre-Islamic) cultural, religious, and political heritage. While both texts play a seminal role in “authenticating modernity” in a Zoroastrian/Persian context (39), Marashi also shows how Shahrokh’s openness to re-evaluating Zoroastrian thought in light of contemporary intellectual developments did not preclude problematic tendencies to integrate ideas concerning language, race (particularly Aryan race theory), cultural purity, and exclusionary understandings of the nation that were in tension with his liberal, democratic, and politically pluralist politics. This discursive ambivalence, Marashi argues, is reflective of the same conditions of possibility that fostered some Iranians’ sympathies to Nazi ideology and the Nazi regime in Germany, reflected in the activities of Shahrokh’s own son Bahram, who became head of Nazi-Germany’s Persian-language programming on Radio Berlin. This tension between cosmopolitan and ecumenical readings of a progressive Zoroastrianism and exclusionary assertions of the authenticity and cultural/racial purity as foundations of Iranian national heritage is a theme that is revisited in all chapters that follow.

Chapter 2, “Patron and Patriot – Dinsha J. Irani, Parsi Philanthropy, and the Revival of Indo-Iranian Culture”, turns to the life and work of Dinshah Irani, a civic leader among Bombay Zoroastrians and co-founder of the Iran League and the Iranian Zoroastrian Anjoman as well as a prolific author of books on Zoroastrianism intended for export to Iran. It highlights the important role the Bombay Parsi community played in the rediscovery of Iran’s pre-Islamic/Zoroastrian cultural heritage that would come to shape the refashioning of an Iranian national culture commensurate with the demands of modernity. As Bombay Parsis became increasingly concerned and engaged with their ancestral place of origin to bolster their revivalist efforts to bring Zoroastrianism in line with the demands of modern life, they became aware that their brethren in Iran were not so well situated. This sparked a flow of philanthropic interventions from South Asia back to Iran, targeted at their Zoroastrian brethren but available to all, that also included opportunities for educational and economic advancement. Book publishing was part of this project of upliftment, to which Dinshah Irani also actively contributed as an author. His works aimed not only to educate Zoroastrian youth and lay readers on modernist understandings of the Zoroastrian religion (as formulated by the Parsi community in South Asia), but also served to promote the Zoroastrian historical and cultural heritage vis-à-vis non-Zoroastrian Iranians. Ultimately, Irani, and other members of the South Asian Zoroastrian revival, sought to foster a dialog between Zoroastrians and Muslim Iranian society to bring Zoroastrianism more fully into the center of emerging notions of Iranian national identity, thereby uplifting the place of Zoroastrian brethren in Iranian society. Aryan race theory, again, provided a means of generating a shared (racial) genealogy that linked ancient and modern Zoroastrians to contemporary (Muslim) Iranians by casting them as their ancestral predecessors. The language of Iranian gnostic Sufism (‘erfān) had already in Safavid Iran and Mughal South Asia intermingled with Zoroastrianism and so provided Irani and other Zoroastrian activists an additional discursive tradition on which to draw to communicate the message of Zoroastrianism in an ecumenical context and to reconcile Iran’s Zoroastrian with its Islamic heritage. Irani’s texts thus show how a place was carved out for Zoroastrianism to become part of a liberal, pluralistic Iranian national identity. Noteworthy with regard to the role of circulating texts and emergent conceptions of Iranian nationalism is that while classical works on nationalism have focused on the role of local print capitalism in the formation of imagined national communities (Anderson [1983]1991), Marashi shows that it was rather a transnational print philanthropy that enabled the circulation of texts between Bombay and the Zoroastrian communities in Iran and contributed to the formation of modern Iranian national identity.

Chapter 3, “Imagining Hafez – Rabindranath Tagore in Iran”, examines Tagore’s month-long visit to Iran in 1932 that ultimately served to bolster the moral and intellectual authority of Indo-Iranian civilization in the Iranian nation-state as it was being institutionalized under Reza Shah Pahlavi. A closer study of this event, however, shows that its organization and execution involved numerous actors, each with their own agendas. For the Indian poet, artist, and cultural activist Tagore, Iran was an important site for his pan-Asian anti-colonial project of cultural revival as it represented a greater Indo-Iranian civilization with its own unique moral and aesthetic spirit that was counterposed to that of ‘the West’ with its Greco-Roman roots. Much like Dinshah Irani, Tagore’s vision of Indo-Iranian classical heritage, valued not only in the culture and civilizational achievements of pre-Islamic (Zoroastrian) Iran but also mystical Islam and the poetic legacy of Sa‘di and Hafez that had long linked Central and South Asia via religious, literary and artistic contacts sustained not only through the flow of texts but also through migration and travel. For Tagore’s Iranian hosts, not least the Pahlavi regime, their honored guest represented the embodiment of a lost Iranian cultural authenticity defined by deep Indo-Aryan roots. Hence, the visit was seen as a symbolic return and cultural assertion of a (non-Muslim) cultural authenticity. So, while for Tagore the poetry of Sa‘di and Hafez were part of Indo-Iranian civilization by virtue of a shared spiritual essence that had its roots in earliest times of the pre-Islamic period that connected Zoroastrianism and Islam by a shared civilizational essence, for Reza Shah and other members of the emergent nationalist project in Iran this poetic legacy was a symbol of how Indo-Iranian Aryan civilization had resisted Islamic cultural hegemony. The chapter closes with a discussion of the voices critical of Tagore’s visit (of which there were rather few). The Muslim-Indian poet Muhammad Iqbal, the Parsi scholar G.K. Nariman, and the Iranian-Tajiki Persian poet and socialist activist Abolqasem Lahuti expressed their concerns about how Tagore’s visit and his vision of an inclusive liberal Indo-Iranian civilization played into political projects that united Hindu nationalists, Parsis, and Iranian nationalists in a shared anti-Muslim project while also tacitly giving support to the oppressive authoritarianism of the Pahlavi state. These critiques again highlight how contemporaries were quite aware of how formulations of Iranian national identity that drew on a “classical” Zoroastrian heritage were also feeding authoritarianism and exclusionism.

The life and work of Ebrahim Purdavud is the focus of chapter 4 “Ebrahim Purdavud and His Interlocutors – Parsi Patronage and the Making of the Vernacular Avesta”. As Marashi argues, Purdavud, himself from a pious Shi’ite family in Northwestern Iran and not a member of the Zoroastrian community, made the most significant contribution to Parsi-Iranian exchanges. The chapter traces Ebrahim Purdavud’s physical travels and intellectual development from poet and activist to independent scholar of pre-Islamic Iran whose commented translations of key Zoroastrian texts into lyrical modern Persian were seminal to linking Persian identity with a pre-Islamic “classical golden era” among a broader (non-Zoroastrian readership), making it available as the foundation of modern Persian nationalist thought. In so doing, the chapter highlights the importance of the complex networks of exchange between Iranian expatriates living in Europe or other parts of the Middle East, European Orientalists, and the German Foreign Ministry, each in pursuit of their own multiple political projects and interests, in the formulation and propagation of Iranian nationalist thought. It also discusses the continued role again played by Bombay Parsi individuals and philanthropic institutions not only in facilitating and financing the production of works, like those of Purdavud, that would become key to the formulation of modern nationalist Persian identity, but also in shaping the knowledge on which these works were based by acting as cultural mediators, gatekeepers, and experts. As Marashi argues, it is ultimately the multiple agendas at play that overdetermine the project of excavating an Indo-Iranian classical heritage. The cosmopolitan and inclusive interpretations of this heritage, such as those paradigmatically propagated by members of the Bombay Parsi and Iranian Zoroastrian communities, existed alongside exclusivist interpretations shaped by projects to salvage an Aryan authenticity by breaking with Central and South Asia’s Arab-Turkic-Islamicate past, as would become the case with Reza Shah’s cultural policy and was implicitly the case in Purdavud’s scholarly engagement. As Marashi notes, “… the Zoroastrian revival was always more about distinguishing the real and authentic Iranian culture from the layers of inauthentic cultural accretions that Iran’s national heritage had acquired over the long duration of its history” (185). The non-classical elements of this history, most notably the Arab, Turkic and Muslim ones, came to be decried as foreign impositions from which the nation must liberate itself. However, during the interwar period, the tension between Iranian Zoroastrian and Bombay Parsi inclusionary interpretations of Iran’s pre-Islamic heritage and the tendentially more exclusionary understandings of Iranian nationalists like Purdavud remained implicit and did not lead to conflict. However, with the shifting political climate in the context of the rise on Nazi ideology and the approach of the Second World War this would change.

The effects of this shift in political climate are taken up in chapter 5 “Sword of Freedom – Abdulrahman Saif Azad and the Interwar Iranian Nationalism”. By tracing the biographical trajectory of Abdulrahman Saif Azad tensions between the contrasting interpretations of Zoroastrianism and Iran’s classical heritage become explicit, leading to a break with the Bombay Parsi community. The chapter recounts the activities of Abdulrahman Saif Azad, an anti-colonial activist and by the 1930s also a Nazi sympathizer. Saif Azad sought out Parsi financial support to publish Iran-e Bastan (“Ancient Iran”) a Tehran newspaper that appeared between 1933 and 1935. Initially promoting liberal and cosmopolitan interpretations of Iran’s Zoroastrian and Persianate heritage, in line with the agenda of his Parsi benefactors, Saif Azad began to change the newspaper’s focus and ideological orientation as he became increasingly supportive of the Nazi cause and found new supporters in the Nazi government’s propaganda bureau. As a result, the Parsis withdrew their support of Saif Azad’s enterprise, and the newspaper ceased publication by 1935. Saif Azad, however, continued his anti-imperial, anti-British, pro-Nazi politics by starting a new English-Persian paper, Salar-e Hend, that put the focus on topics of economic and social autonomy and portrayed local Indian Rajas as worthy leaders of an (independent) India, including Nazi symbols and references along the way. Marashi’s account of Saif Azad’s political trajectory illustrates the conflicts in interwar Iranian nationalist politics that were shaped by transnationally circulating conceptions of Iranian nationalism, and the cultural heritage in which it was ostensibly rooted, as well as by the larger political contexts in which anti-imperialism, post-colonial nationalism, and Nazi fascism intermingled.

Marashi’s Take-Away Lessons from the Indo-Iranian Exchange

The book’s conclusion is brief and returns to the point that in the formative decades of Iranian nationalism from the early 20th century until the end of World War II numerous ideological strands existed side by side: liberal pluralistic and democratic versions as well as exclusionary ones that advocated policies of cultural authenticity and purification and aligned themselves with fascist movements. These strands provided the conditions of possibility for subsequent developments in Iranian nationalism, most notably the conservative politics of official Pahlavi nationalism of the late 1960s. Further, Marashi returns to the importance of giving greater attention to South-South exchanges, like the ones between Bombay Parsis and Iranian Zoroastrians and nationalists portrayed in this account that have been integral to the formation and development of nationalist movements outside of Europe. Such exchanges highlight the lasting legacies of historical entanglements, such as those of the Persianate world, without which the culture of Neo-Zoroastrianism or conceptions of an (Indo-)Iranian classical heritage would not have been possible.

Less convincing is his final assessment that conceptions of Iranian neoclassicism have greater relevance to Iranians in the diaspora than in Iran proper. This overlooks developments in the past few decades during which Iranians have been critically reassessing the state of their nation, and in so doing have once again looked to their pre-Islamic heritage for inspiration and orientation (Abdolmohamadi 2015, Fozi 2016). Marashi’s account thus also shows itself to be relevant for contextualizing contemporary developments in cultural and political discourse in Iran itself, and not just in its diaspora communities, which like the actors in this book are linked by manifold exchanges and flows.

So, Was It Worth the Read?

Definitely. The account is extremely complex, linking the Parsi community in Bombay with Iranian nationalists in Iran, and with Iranian and Parsi expatriates in France, Germany, Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq and the United States. The perspective in this study is truly transnational, and its approach offers methodological as well as substantive inspiration for future studies. For example, a number of personalities make cameo appearances in this account and would warrant further attention, not least someone like Madam Bhikaiji Rustom Cama, a leading anti-colonial activist residing in London and Paris whose activities not only highlight the interconnections between anti-colonial and nationalist movements in the global South, but also the role of women in these networks. Also important is the explicit attention to South-South exchanges in the shaping of nationalisms, and on the role of philanthropic networks in that process that in this case overshadow the capitalist interconnections (that are, however, not discussed). In this sense the monograph is valuable reading for all scholars of nationalism. That said, the complexity of the narrative means that the author cannot explicate regionally specific background information for those without previous knowledge of Iran or the Persianate world. Hence, some of the nuances of the account are lost on non-specialist readers, particularly the references to elements of the early modern Persianate legacy, which are referred to but not presented in detail. One can also find oneself a bit lost with regard to dating developments in the account, as the narrative is structured around five key actors and does not follow a strictly linear timeline. However, because Marashi focusses on biography and interpersonal networks, a non-specialist reader interested in cultural revivalism, nationalism, anti-colonialism, and transnational approaches to historiography will still find the account an intellectually provocative and engaging read.

Bibliography:
Anderson, Benedict ([1983]1991): Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.
Abdolmohamadi, Pejman (2015): The Revival of Nationalism and Secularism in Modern Iran. LSE Middle East Centre Papers, 11.
Fozi, Navid (2016): “Neo-Iranian Nationalism: Pre-Islamic Grandeur and Shi’i Eschatology in President Mahmud Ahmadinejad’s Rhetoric”, Middle East Journal, 70(2): 227-248.
Kia, Mana and Afshin Marashi (2016): “Introduction: After the Persianate”, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 36(3), 379-383

Citation: Katja Rieck, Book Review: Exile and the Nation – The Parsi Community of India and the Making of Modern Iran, in: TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research, 04.02.2021, https://trafo.hypotheses.org/26466.

Book Review: Exile and the Nation – The Parsi Community of India and the Making of Modern Iran

By Katja Rieck. In his most recent monograph, Exile and the Nation – The Parsi Community of India and the Making of Modern Iran (2020), Afshin Marashi provides a new perspective on Iranian nationalism.

trafo.hypotheses.org

Quite fascinating, and ties in well with what I have been educating various successive generations of PDF readers here (Indian, Pakistani and Iranian) over the past 10 years in my various allowed and tolerated avatars.

@waz @WebMaster @SQ8 @AgNoStiC MuSliM @masterchief_mirza @fitpOsitive @peagle @Baibars_1260 @El Sidd @Cookie Monster @Indus Pakistan @OldenWisdom...قول بزرگ
@third eye @Sam. @Bagheera @Chhatrapati @Sharma Ji @Juggernaut_Flat_Plane_V8 @T90TankGuy @Joe Shearer @IMARV @
@Cthulhu @Arian @Dariush the Great @aryobarzan @Xerxes22 @Bahram Esfandiari @925boy

Ushta te.

Cheers, Doc

Phew!!! Powered through the whole thing..took around 1 hour and 20 mins...Thought it might be an important piece of literature to understand your worldview...But The author became quite repetitive Chapter 2 onwards..The whole thing could have been a breezy 1,000 word affair...I really hate this sort of ornate ,abstruse language..but more than that I hate convoluted, long winded sentences...You really need an MA in English, to follow such long running trains of thought.

Now to the meat and potatoes of the piece

It is but natural that an Iranian plateau based Zoroastrianism would have to emphasize on "Iranic purity" (both ideological and ancestral) to get the ball rolling..Else no way can a broad-based Iranian Zoroastrianism set itself apart from the very forces against whom it would be inevitably drawn into conflict/competition. May be after Zoroastrianism retrenched itself on the plateau and beyond for a couple of hundred years, can a home-based Mani reform Zoroastrianism into something more cosmopolitan and universal

It is interesting to see that the process of separating the authentic Persian legacy from later Arabo-Turkic-Islamic accretions had really picked up during the Pahlavi dynasty

I think the 2,500th anniversary celebration of the establishment of Iranic Empire was a culmination of the process...May be if it was carried out in a less opulent and more tasteful manner, the cause of Zoroastrianism would have been furthered...as the celebrations were filled to the brim with Zoroastrian motifs and symbolism


coming to now..I have had close friendship and companionship with close to 10 to Iranians in my life..and had a romantic relationship with one (still on very good terms with her)...and each and every one of those close acquaintances gave me the feeling that the Ancien Régime (political, cultural,ideological) that came into power in 1979 has really no broadbased support among the youth..The Generation X (born between 1st Jan 1964 to 1st Jan 1982) may still be beholden to the Ancien Régime...but by the time the Millenials and Gen Z (1982-2000 cohort and 2000-2018 cohort respectively) come into power in the next 20 years, expect the current dispensation to dissolve...That doesnot mean destruction of patriotic fervour in Iran, but rather the reorganisation of the ample energy of the Iranian people under the banner of a more authentic identity..One that is truly rooted in the soil....A more "Blut,Boden und Glauben" ideology...the only sort of ideology worthy of the magnificent Iranian peoples

 

[padamchen]

Phew!!! Powered through the whole thing..took around 1 hour and 20 mins...Thought it might be an important piece of literature to understand your worldview...But The author became quite repetitive Chapter 2 onwards..The whole thing could have been a breezy 1,000 word affair...I really hate this sort of ornate ,abstruse language..but more than that I hate convoluted, long winded sentences...You really need an MA in English, to follow such long running trains of thought.

Now to the meat and potatoes of the piece

It is but natural that an Iranian plateau based Zoroastrianism would have to emphasize on "Iranic purity" (both ideological and ancestral) to get the ball rolling..Else no way can a broad-based Iranian Zoroastrianism set itself apart from the very forces against whom it would be inevitably drawn into conflict/competition. May be after Zoroastrianism retrenched itself on the plateau and beyond for a couple of hundred years, can a home-based Mani reform Zoroastrianism into something more cosmopolitan and universal

It is interesting to see that the process of separating the authentic Persian legacy from later Arabo-Turkic-Islamic accretions had really picked up during the Pahlavi dynasty

I think the 2,500th anniversary celebration of the establishment of Iranic Empire was a culmination of the process...May be if it was carried out in a less opulent and more tasteful manner, the cause of Zoroastrianism would have been furthered...as the celebrations were filled to the brim with Zoroastrian motifs and symbolism


coming to now..I have had close friendship and companionship with close to 10 to Iranians in my life..and had a romantic relationship with one (still on very good terms with her)...and each and every one of those close acquaintances gave me the feeling that the Ancien Régime (political, cultural,ideological) that came into power in 1979 has really no broadbased support among the youth..The Generation X (born between 1st Jan 1964 to 1st Jan 1982) may still be beholden to the Ancien Régime...but by the time the Millenials and Gen Z (1982-2000 cohort and 2000-2018 cohort respectively) come into power in the next 20 years, expect the current dispensation to dissolve...That doesnot mean destruction of patriotic fervour in Iran, but rather the reorganisation of the ample energy of the Iranian people under the banner of a more authentic identity..One that is truly rooted in the soil....A more "Blut,Boden und Glauben" ideology...the only sort of ideology worthy of the magnificent Iranian peoples

Short answer ... since the debate about blood and conversion is a very deep one that needs a LOT of study for a religion this old .... is look at the example of Hinduism - in India and its spread by conquest and rule as part of the religion of the ruling dynasties to south east Asia.

Hinduism reigned as the state religion there for around 300 years, before the fall of the Cholas and other southern and south eastern dynasties and the advent of Islam.

Similarly Zoroastrianism was the state religion of Rome for ... get this ... 500 years. And most of central Eurasia. And spread as part of our three major empires to as far as China and as south as Arabia and Africa.

But this was political state sponsored Zoroastrianism.

Much as Vietnam and Indonesia were political state sponsored Hinduism.

Our religion is very detailed and clear on the difference between organic faith by divinely ordained bloodlines, and political spread by conquest and rule.

We believe that God is One.

And He sends His message to a people when they are ready and evolved to the point of receiving it.

And at a time of their greatest need.

And from a man from within them.

The religion and the message spread to those people by the Prophet (Paigambar) himself and his special disciples (Emperor Vishtaspa - Greek Hystaspes, and his sister) are those who have been divinely chosen for the message.

All spread after him, by man, is inorganic political state religion and not that which has come from God for His people.

Hope that very briefly explains the crux of our ancient beliefs. And how it differs radically from later faiths like Christianity (not Judaism, which maintained the organic paradigm of blood) and Islam, which spread via conquest and missionary zeal. Long after their Prophets had passed. Way beyond their chosen people.

Cheers, Doc

 

[Baibars_1260]

Wow ! My Zoroastrian friend from just shared this with me :
I could read the script:
Good Thoughts:
Pindaar Nek,
Good Speech:
Guftar Nek
Good Deeds:
Kirdaar Nek
There is one Path in the world and we are followers of this Path:

Raahe Jehan Yaki ast, va aan raah e rasti ast."

Am very familiar with the entities below;
The Ruk ... ( Rukh in Urdu also known as a chess piece )
Simurgh ...
Karkadan ...
Rustom ...
Folk lore during our Urdu class in Class 5, "Tales of Afrasiyab "

 

[Baibars_1260]

Wow ! My Zoroastrian friend from just shared this with me :
I could read the script:
Good Thoughts:
Pindaar Nek,
Good Speech:
Guftar Nek
Good Deeds:
Kirdaar Nek
There is one Path in the world and we are followers of this Path:

Raahe Jehan Yaki ast, va aan raah e rasti ast."View attachment 720236
Am very familiar with the entities below;
The Ruk ... ( Rukh in Urdu also known as a chess piece )
Simurgh ...
Karkadan ...
Rustom ...
Folk lore during our Urdu class in Class 5, "Tales of Afrasiyab "View attachment 720239

Apologies for misleading. The terms are different in the Avesta script.
Just got an update from my friend :
In the Avesta Script:
So good thoughts would be HUMATA
Good words would be HUKTA and
Good deeds HUVARSHTA

My modern Farsi bias gets the better of me.

 

[peagle]

And how it differs radically from later faiths like Christianity (not Judaism, which maintained the organic paradigm of blood) and Islam, which spread via conquest and missionary zeal. Long after their Prophets had passed. Way beyond their chosen people

I would be interested if you could briefly expand on the above paragraph.

 

[padamchen]

@Juggernaut_Flat_Plane_V8 - on the issue of conversion (or re-version in the case of ancestral Iranic stock), a long time ago on this forum I had posted a piece that went into some depth from the website www.pyracantha.com

I went through it again just now, and found it (in retrospect, in light now of the further reading and discussing on the topic in the intervening years) pretty basic and a bit superficial and shallow and a tad simplistic.

I quote below with a slightly better researched piece from the Encyclopaedia Iranica, which has some good information, but a tad Iranian-dominant, or should I say, modern Iranian scholastic dominant (translation - modern Iranian scholastic under current regime).

Be that as it may, it seems to have as part of it Bibliography most of the oft quoted experts and authors as well as interestingly one of the epistles, Rivayats, passed from Iran to India between the 14th and 16th centuries (smuggled though basically, via convoluted routes and deceptions, past hostile Muslim forces across both lands) that spoke in detail on all matters of the religion and rituals and texts and their interpretations and laws and customs.

One of the early questions sent to Iran from the fledgling community in India was whether they could convert to the religion some of the growing community who were the results of unions between Persian men and local Indian women. As well as in some cases, favoured local Indian help of many generations, who were except by blood and the Navjote, almost Parsis by culture and customs and every other way of life.

The answers that came back (after months and years usually) were pretty clear, and forms the basis of Indian Parsi and Iranian Zoroastrian community laws till today.

Please note that Mazdayasna is the original ancient religion of all of us that predates Zarathushtra by many thousands of years. Zoroastrianism as we (the world basically) call it is the codified, reconstructed final version of the same by a follower of Mazdayasna, and a born Magi. Our Prophet Zarathushtra. Who taught us that the One supreme God was Ahura Mazda, and did away with the earlier polytheist and dualist versions of the religion as it evolved on the land and among our people over millennia (Mithraism, Manicheism, etc).

CONVERSION vii. To the Zoroastrian faith in the modern period

CONVERSION
vii. To the Zoroastrian faith in the modern period

Modern Zoroastrians disagree on whether it is permissible for outsiders to enter their religion. Now scattered in small minority communities in Persia, India, Europe, and North America and without a religious hierarchy, the Zoroastrians are governed by councils and high priests whose authority is only local. Even within a community an individual may choose not to accept the ruling of the council or high priest. Zoroastrian communities and individuals thus have differing views on conversion. They tend to cluster around two general tendencies, reformist and traditionalist, but even within these groups the variation is considerable. Reformist liberals generally urge acceptance of any individual who chooses of his or her own free will to practice Zoroastrianism. They distinguish between “acceptance,” which implies complete free will, and conversion and proselytism, which carry connotations of coercion or pressure. Nevertheless, there are those who believe in the missionary nature of Zoroastrianism and go so far as to encourage active proselytism. On the traditionalist side some moderates permit the acceptance of spouses and the offspring of mixed marriages, but the strict constructionists refuse to accept as coreligionists even Zoroastrians who marry outside the faith and consider children born of such unions illegitimate. This controversy has become exacerbated in this century, as the scattered Zoroastrian communities are shrinking and experiencing increasing intermarriage. Opponents of conversion argue that, precisely because the community is so fragile, the acceptance of converts will dilute the ethnic strength of the religion and lead to its complete annihilation. The issue is of practical importance, for it affects admission to fire temples (Boyce, 1984, p. 153) and “towers of silence,” as well as the legal privileges attached to membership in the community.

The Gathas (the part of the Avesta attributed to Zoroaster), as well as other Avestan and Pahlavi texts, are cited by both sides to justify their positions (see i, above). The passage quoted most often by those who favor accepting converts is Yasna 31.3 (yā jvantō vīspəˊng vāurayā “by which I might convert all the living”; Insler, p. 182), cited as proof of the universal character of Zoroaster’s message. Several other verses of the Gathas, especially Yasna 46.12, in which a non-Iranian family (the Turanian Fryāna; Taraporewala, p. 251 n.; Pūr-e Dāwūd, p. 104 n.) is named among the followers of Zoroaster, have furnished liberals with a textual basis for their argument against confinement of Zoroastrianism to a specific race or nationality (letter from Kankāš-e Mūbadān-e Tehran, published in Māh-nāma Markaz-e Zartoštīān-e Kālīfornīā [Monthly newsletter of the California Zoroastrian Center], Westminster, 1/5, Ḵordād 1362 Š./June 1983, p. 2). Moreover, liberals hold that the intrinsically nonritualistic doctrine of the Gathas degenerated into an Iranian ideology as a result of language and other barriers (Antia, pp. 7-9) and of such alterations as the incorporation of stringent purity rituals (Boyce, Zoroastrianism I, p. 295) entailed by the establishment of an organized religion.

Traditionalists, on the other hand, accuse proponents of conversion of heretical distortion of scripture and maintain that blood and faith are a linked heritage. They suggest that the term mazdāyasna (Mazda worshiping) in scriptural sources—especially in the prayer Yasna 12, in which one declares “I am a Mazda worshiper” before declaring “I am a Zoroastrian”—refers to the religion into which Zoroaster and all his early followers were born (Irani, pp. 6-8). The mission of Zoroaster was thus to purify the mazdāyasna religion from alien doctrines, and there was no question, even at the beginning, of forcing or convincing people to abandon their ancestral religion or of accepting people not born into the mazdāyasna religion (Mirza et al., n.d., p. 7). Therefore only a child born of Zoroastrian parents is mazdāyasna by birth, and only such a child may be properly admitted into the Zoroastrian fold through receiving the traditional authorization to wear the outward symbols of the faith—the sacred undershirt (ṣodra) and the girdle (koštī)—at the Nowjat (lit., “new birth”) ceremony (Irani, p. 8).

The divergence in interpretation also extends to history. Traditionalists cite the general tolerance of other religious populations by the Achaemenid and Parthian dynasties as evidence that Zoroastrianism was intended to be the religion of a single ethnic group (Irani, pp. 29-31). Those liberals who hold that the individual must accept the religion of his or her own free will maintain that Zoroaster’s message could have provided no impetus to aggressive proselytizing. On the other hand, those favoring active proselytism cite such incidents as Xerxes’ destruction of the daivadānas (XPh, ll. 37-41; Kent, Old Persian, p. 151: “I destroyed that sanctuary of the demons . . . . Where previously the demons were worshipped, there I worshipped Ahuramazda”) as evidence that Zoroastrianism had been imposed by force and thus that the early Zoroastrian kings considered conversion of non-Zoroastrians both permissible and desirable (Antia, p. 30). Sasanian history provides ample evidence for use of both force and persuasion to win over non-Zoroastrians, but traditionalists argue that such instances as the endeavors of the Sasanian high priest Kerdīr recorded in the inscription on Kaʿba-ye Zardošt (“And there were many who had held the religion of the dēvs, and by my act they abandoned the religion of the dēvs and accepted the religion of the yazads”; Boyce, 1984, p. 113; interview with a member of the California Zoroastrian Center, November 1990) and the forced reconversion by Yazdegerd II (438-57) of Zoroastrian Armenians who had converted to Christianity took place primarily for political reasons (Antia, p. 13; Mirza et al., n.d., p. 7).

After the Arab conquest of Persia in the 7th century and the establishment of Islam as the religion of the new rulers, some Zoroastrians emigrated to India (the Parsis). Whereas the Zoroastrians who remained in Persia were not permitted to proselytize under Muslim rule and the conversion of a Muslim could result in persecution of the entire community, liberals point out that the Zoroastrian literature from after the conquest does include discussions of the possibility that a non-Zoroastrian might seek admission to the faith (Rivayat-i Hemit, pp. 184-88). They also cite the response of the Persian priests to a Parsi inquiry about the conversion of Hindu servant boys and girls (Persian Rivayats, tr. Dhabhar, p. 276), arguing that conversion to Zoroastrianism was certainly considered possible, at least in theory, and that the guidelines stipulated in such medieval sources reflect faithfully the Zoroastrian practice that prevailed in Sasanian times and thus conform to orthodox Zoroastrian beliefs.

Whereas the Persian Zoroastrian communities never explicitly opposed the acceptance of converts, since the 18th century Indian Parsi councils have generally refused to accept as Zoroastrians persons other than children of Parsi parents, though there have been sporadic rulings allowing acceptance of the children of mixed marriages. This rigor may be ascribed to the pressures of the caste structure in India, reinforced by the growing prosperity of the Parsi social-welfare system, a possible incentive for seeking admission to the Zoroastrian fold.

In Persia the majority of Zoroastrians lived in extreme poverty and suffered intermittent persecution up to the beginning of the 20th century. The question of conversion to Zoroastrianism would scarcely have arisen there. After the intervention of the Parsis on behalf of their Persian coreligionists, as well as changes in attitudes after the Constitutional Revolution, the condition of Persian Zoroastrians gradually improved. Owing partly to the policies of Reżā Shah (1304-20 Š./1925-41), for example, the adoption of Zoroastrian names for months, in the 1930s there was an awakening of interest in pre-Islamic history and religion. The efforts of several Persians to win recognition of the nobility of the Zoroastrian faith through translations of the Avesta contributed to increased respect for the old religion among the educated (Boyce, 1986, pp. 219-20). Nevertheless, only a few Persian Muslims became Zoroastrians: The Muslim dictum against conversion is very strong. In addition, Persian Zoroastrians, though theoretically adhering to the principle of acceptance, deemed it permissible only if it did not result in harm either to the Zoroastrian community or to the religion into which the individual was born (interview with Mrs. Susan Varjavand). Since the Islamic Revolution of 1357 Š./1978 the Persian Zoroastrian community has evidently become even more cautious about accepting converts.

The issue of conversion has been the cause of great disturbance within the new Zoroastrian communities in North America. Only a handful of non-Persians have been officially admitted to the fold. In the two instances in which information is available to the author, the converts were married to Zoroastrians. So far the religious councils in India refuse to acknowledge these initiates as true Zoroastrians (information provided by the California Zoroastrian Center; Mobad N. Hormuzdiar, who performed the controversial initiation of an American in New Rochelle, N.Y., on 5 March 1983; and Mrs. Susan Varjavand, a recent convert from Christianity).

Bibliography:
K. Antia, The Argument for Acceptance, Chicago, 1985.
M. Boyce, Textual Sources for the Study of Zoroastrianism, Manchester, 1984.
Idem, Zoroastrians, repr. London, 1986.
S. Insler, The Gathas of Zarathustra, Acta Iranica 8, Leiden, 1975.
R. A. Irani, “Acceptance”—Never Ever!, Poona, 1985.
H. K. Mirza, K. M. JamaspAsa, and F. M. Kotwal, Conversion in Zoroastrianism. A Myth Exploded, Bombay, 1983.
Idem, Antia’s “Acceptance.” A Zoroastrian "Ahrmogih" (Heresy), n.p., n.d.
[E.] Pūr(-e) Dāwūd, Gatha I, Bombay, 1952.
Rivayat-i Hemit-i Ashawahistan—A Study in Zoroastrian Law, tr. N. Safa-Isfehani, ed. R. N. Frye, Harvard Iranian Series 2, Cambridge, Mass., 1980.
I. J. S. Taraporewala, The Religion of Zarathushtra, Bombay, 1965.
(Pargol Saati)
Originally Published: December 15, 1993
Last Updated: October 28, 2011
This article is available in print.
Vol. VI, Fasc. 3, pp. 242-243

https://iranicaonline.org/articles/conversion-vii

Happy reading!

Cheers, Doc

 

[Arian]

You have to be born a Zoroastrian. Or be of ancestral Zoroastrian stock and revert.

I had never heard that. Maybe that's the way it is in the Parsi community of India?
I have seen Iranians convert to Zoroastrianism who were born to Muslim families.

I think the Parsi community of India is a conservative community that has isolated itself from the Indian society. At this point, they have their own unique culture that has elements from both Iranian and Indian sides, yet it's unique to themselves. I watched your video about Iranian foods in Mumbai, and most of them bore no resemblance to our typical Iranian cuisines, except for Berry Pulav (Zereshk Polo), which looked different from ours. But that was probably because she had ordered a vegetarian Zereshk Polo and here we serve chicken with Zereshk Polo.

 

[padamchen]

I have seen Iranians convert to Zoroastrianism who were born to Muslim families.

Where have you seen this?

Surely not IN Iran.

Eitherways, if Iranians won't revert to Zoroastrianism, who will? Kinda superfluous question no? Lol

Cheers, Doc