Zoroaster Shows the Way

MOHENJODARO PATA HAI? (Do you know of Mohenjodaro)” a man in a maroon shirt asks. A middle-aged man with a curious set of eyes, he has appeared almost out of nowhere. From one shoulder hangs a sling bag, perhaps containing the vegetables he has shopped for the day.

“Woh (that),” he points out, across the ground, to a spot adjacent to a large stone pillar. “Woh Parsi log ka Mohenjodaro hai. (That is the Mohenjodaro of the Parsis),” he says, explaining that there are Zoroastrian artefacts buried at that spot, which individuals, centuries down the line, long after the Parsi community has vanished and been forgotten about, could dig up—not unlike the discovery of the Indus Val­ley Civilisation in the last century—and learn about the existence of such a set of people.

“Aap dekho (You see),” he says, after introducing himself as the manager of a guesthouse for Parsis, located within the same compound, and walks away.

Video: The First Dastoor Meherjirana Library in Navsari

We are at Sanjan, a small unremarkable coastal town in Gujarat, where it is believed the Parsis, fleeing persecution in their homeland in Iran, first landed on Indian shores (after having spent a few years in Diu), sometime around the eighth century. The ‘Qissa-i-Sanjan’, a Persian poem believed to have been written in about 1599 by a Parsi priest, tells a colourful story of how the Parsis, caught in a ferocious storm after sailing off from Diu, reached Sanjan after praying to their god.

The pillar that is visible today at the ground celebrates this arrival. Erected in 1920, it is made of granite and, topped with the image of a flaming torch, stretches some 50 feet in the air. Beside the column, a plaque marks the spot where the contents described by the guest­house’s manager lie buried. This burial was conducted in 2000. Overseen by mem­bers of the Parsi clergy and others, items such as Zoroastrian scriptures, photo­graphs of saints, clothes like embroi­dered saris, ritual utensils, garlands and diyas were packed into a stainless-steel cylinder filled with nitrogen to prevent decay and lowered into the ground. The idea, a news report from that time men­tions, was to consign “Parsi culture to posterity after it inevitably dies out.”

The arrival of the Parsis to India is shrouded in myths and stories. It is wide­ly believed that they migrated to India because they were being persecuted by invading Muslims. Zoroastrian traders from Iran were known to be present here before that period, and some scholars have even suggested that the Zoroastrian immigrants to India, both before and after the Muslim conquest of Iran, pri­marily consisted of merchants, and that competition with Muslims over trade routes might have contributed to their immigration. Then there are stories such as that of the milk bowl and Sanjan’s local king Jadi Rana (he is said to have presented a bowl filled to the brim with milk indicating his kingdom had no space for the refugees, and they in turn responded by adding sugar to the milk, suggesting their presence would only make the land more prosperous) that have been passed down orally and are impossible to probe for accuracy. There are very few historical sources about these events. One of the oldest mentions of the immigration is the poem ‘Qissa-i- Sanjan’, which is considered unreliable since it was written many centuries after the event. The writers Ruksana Nanji and Homi Dhalla, who discussed the archaeological evidence supporting the arrival of Zoroastrians in Sanjan in a chapter in the book Parsis in India and the Diaspora, are sceptical about the story recounted in the poem. “During the nineteen-year stay at Diu, it is logical to suppose that they had contact with the mainland and would therefore have taken an informed decision to relocate themselves at the most hospitable and suitable point on the west coast. The idea that a ship-load of migrants buffeted by the winds was tossed ashore at Sanjan by sheer chance needs to be recognised as a myth,” they write.

Video: The house where Dadabhai Naoroji is believed to have been born

 

Essential to the Zoroastrian faith in India is their holy fire known as the Iranshah. Many believe that this fire was brought from Iran by fleeing Parsis, but historians think this is unlikely and that the fire was probably consecrated after their arrival in Sanjan. What is known is that the fire remained in Sanjan for many centuries, before an invasion by Muslim forces (probably around the late 14th or early 15th centu­ry), led to it being hidden in some caves in the hills of Bahrot nearby for some 12 years, and from thereon to a small town called Vansda for some years, and then to the city of Navsari, where it remained for around three centuries. A dispute be­tween two groups of the clergy then led to the fire being taken to Udvada, where it remains till this day.

ON THE SURFACE, NAVSARI appears to carry little of its Parsi heritage today. But probe a little, in the signage on some shops and the names of some structures, or into the records of names of its illustrious past resi­dents, and the past comes spilling out. Shernaz Cama, the director of Parzor Foundation, points out that even the city was probably named by Parsis after another Persian city. “Nav means ‘new’ and Sari is the name of a city in Iran. So Navsari was the new Sari, a place with a climate very similar to the old Sari by the Caspian Sea,” she says.

Parsi migrants began settling in Navsari around the 12th century, some 400 years or so after their arrival in San­jan. The city today looks like any other unremarkable Indian city. But several centuries ago, during the time of the Mughal empire, it rose to be a thriving trade centre, along with Surat nearby, and Parsi merchants are believed to have played a big role in its rise.

The most notable Zoroastrian structure in the city today is the city’s grand Atash Behram, which housed the Iranshah for around three centuries. A number of cars arrive today outside its gate, its Parsi occupants arriving from nearby cities like Surat, the men fixing their skull caps as they make their way to the fire temple, and then stopping at the Kolah store outside on their way back, no doubt picking up their supplies of cane vinegar and fish roe pickles that are considered Parsi kitchen essentials.

We walk around the Atash Behram, and making our way through one lane, find ourselves in front of another Zoroastrian structure. This is the Vadi Daremeher, a seminary which also contains what is believed to be the oldest existing fire temple (said to be consecrated around 1140) outside Iran. Navsari was also known as “dharamni tekri” or “the summit of the religion”, and this term probably owes some of its origin to this structure. But today, you can only see glimpses of its grand past from the outside. Rimmed in by the shops and building that have arisen around it, the passage to its entrance is now used as a parking spot for scooters and motorbikes by nearby residents. A 2020 Guardian article mentions that the seminary no longer has any students.

Another hint to the importance of the city as a centre for Zoroastrian learning comes from the First Dastoor Meherjirana Library. First set up in 1872, it relocated to its current address not far from Vadi Daremeher in 1906. The library contains priceless ancient Zoroastrian texts and manuscripts written in a variety of languages. One important possession is a firman (deed) issued under the Mughal emperor Akbar’s seal granting land near Navsari to Meherji Rana, after whom the library is named. He is believed to have been awarded the firman after impressing Akbar when he was invited to discuss the Zoroastrian religion. Cama, whose Parzor Foundation has been involved in the restoration of some of the works in the library, points out the importance of the collection in the library. “The priests in Navsari at some point realised they had lost a lot of spiritual information during their wanderings with the holy fire. The priests got into correspon­dence with the priests in Iran, and a lot of that knowledge and correspondence, apart from other works, are present in that library,” she says.

The library itself is a beautiful structure restored a few years ago. We make our way up a flight of steps, and finding the main door closed, find our way inside through an entrance on the side. Our hearts sink almost immedi­ately. Instead of finding ourselves in the library’s restored reading room, a space filled with light from the large doors and windows, where people can draw up old teak chairs to read at the room’s centre, we find a room plunged in darkness and filled with rows and rows of poorly arranged bookcases, to pass through which you must contort your body.

It turns out that the library’s annexe, erected in 1967, was beginning to lean on the main structure. Undergoing renovation now, its collection has been transferred to the reading room.

We are instead shown to an adjoin­ing library, built in 2009, in the same space, where sensing our disappoint­ment, the librarian pulls out a few ancient texts to view. One of these is the copy of a 19th-century illustrated and lithographed Shahnameh, the Persian epic believed to have been completed by the poet Firdausi between 977 and 1010 CE. Flipping its pages with gloved hands, and pausing every few minutes when an illustration comes up, a sort of wonder fills the librarian’s face.

Video: The Atash Behram in Navsari

The Parsis who settled in Navsari had a strong entrepreneurial spirit, and some of them went on to start impor­tant business families. Two such indi­viduals were Jamsetji Tata, the founder of the Tata Group, and the merchant and philanthropist Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy. Born in the same neighbourhood, in houses that look a lot like each other, these homes are today maintained as museums. Many Parsis in Navsari made their fortune trading with China, and the author Amitav Ghosh, in a blog post after visiting the two homes, points to the similarities between these homes— with bedrooms branching off from a corridor, a ladder leading to a loft above, and a small outhouse in a courtyard out­side—to the “shophouses” of Southeast Asia and Guangdong in China. “Should this be true, it would provide yet more reason to believe that in many respects the coastal regions of the Indian Ocean have more in common with each other than with their hinterlands. Small won­der that enterprising young men born under these roofs would go eastwards to seek their fortunes,” he writes.

OVER THE YEARS, THE numbers of Parsis have been declining rapidly across the country. But this is most noticeable in places like Navsari and Udvada, where the young have moved to other places. A lot of this migration is believed to have begun in the 1950s and 1960s, when socialist poli­cies like the Land Ceiling Act and Prohi­bition were introduced in Gujarat. But one can probably trace the origins of this migration to even earlier, to the late 17th and 18th centuries, when Maratha raids into Gujarat led to the decline of cities like Navsari and Surat, British trade and taxation policies inflicted a heavy blow to the indigenous cotton and silk textile industry, and the later rise of Bombay as a commercial centre. Dinyar Patel writes about some of this in Naoroji, his book on Dadabhai Naoroji, who is believed to have been born in Navsari. “By the beginning of the nineteenth century, Naoroji’s grandfather had been reduced to being a humble agriculturalist… Dadabhai’s father, Naoroji Palanji, worked as a practicing priest and also tilled the soil in Dharampore. But he ea­gerly sought escape from rural poverty. In previous decades, this would have meant migration to Surat. Now, how­ever, the erstwhile Mughal entrepot had been, in the words of one English observer, ‘humbled to dust’… Instead, Naoroji Palanji, like thousands of other destitute Gujaratis, trained his eyes on a new destination: Bombay,” he writes.

Seeking the help of the librarian, and asking directions from locals, we find the house where Naoroji is believed to have been born, towards the end of the day. Located in Tarota Bazaar, it is in utter ruins. It was acquired by Kersi Deboo, currently the vice-chair­man for the National Commission for Minorities, a few years ago, and, according to one local, there are plans to convert it into a museum.

Nowhere is the disappearance of Parsis more stark than in Udvada. Walking through this tiny coastal village set in the midst of chikoo and mango orchards the following morning, we move away from the grand Atash Behram here, and into narrow lanes that open up into the sea. All across these lanes are signs of what must have once been a thriv­ing Parsi settlement. There are spectacular mansions here, with porches and bal­conies, but most are abandoned, and some have long fallen apart, overrun with trees and creepers. Some have been stripped of anything of value, and Cama even mentions thefts of entire rosewood staircases.

It is said only around 80 Parsi fami­lies now live here. And the Zoroastrian museum in Udvada estimates that 40 per cent of all the buildings here are abandoned. Walking through the lanes, one gets the impression that it would be a lot more. The Parsis who have stayed back in their crumbling mansions, most of them old and with impaired faculties, can give the traveller an impression of being trapped in a miasma of sorrow and loneliness.

Some families with the means, living in cities like Mumbai, have how­ever restored their bungalows here. Walking away from the museum, we come upon the restored house of Havove and Asppi Tarapore. The two, who live in Canada, finished restoring the house about a year ago. It is now a beautiful single-storey structure set amidst trees, from the back of which Havove runs an information centre where she hopes to reconnect young Parsis with their Zoroastrian faith. “It was terrible,” she says, referring to the condition of the house when she acquired it. “There was a tree growing right in the middle of it.”

Udvada is currently at the centre of some debate within the Parsi commu­nity, with some wanting it to remain how it is, an undisturbed space for the devout, and those who want the place to attract more Parsis, especially youths. Later this year, the village will host a festival for Parsis, where the prospect of music and dancing, has set off the hackles of the more conservatively-inclined. Earlier editions of the festival have even witnessed boycotts. “It is a bit complicated,” Tarapore says, as she shows us around the centre, and to a table of books she has published for Parsi youths to reconnect to their heri­tage. “For us, Udvada is like our Vatican. It is a place of pilgrimage, not a tourist site. But there are worries that we need to get the young to come here too.”

Later that day in Sanjan, at the site of the pillar that marks the arrival of the first Parsis in India, we follow the path that takes us away from the column and into the guesthouse, where the manager sits with the only guest, a Parsi woman from Mumbai, who is helping him with some accounts.

Just a few days before, on November 14, a large number of individuals from the Parsi community had gathered at the ground to observe Sanjan Day, the day where the arrival of their ancestors to Sanjan is celebrated. But only one of them, the Parsi woman from Mumbai, had stayed back.

The manager describes what trans­pired that day in great ebullience. “You should have been there that day. It was such a big gathering,” he says.

Today, there is only silence here, broken occasionally by the sound of a speeding vehicle outside.

historymythsNavsariParsi settlementsSanjanUdvadaZoroastrians