Malcolm M. Deboo has been president of the Zoroastrian Trust Funds of Europe since 2009. This post is based on his remarks at the AMAR International Charitable Foundation’s Windsor Dialogue Conference held at Cumberland Lodge, Windsor, England, 24 June 2024. It was published as part of the feature “Marking the 10th Anniversary of the Yazidi Genocide.”
In the West, members of my community are called Zoroastrians, based on the ancient Greek name for the Prophet Zoroaster. In Iran, however, where the faith was established, we are called Zarathushtis, after the Prophet Zarathushtra. In India, we are known as the Parsis, meaning “those who came from Persia”; that name was given by the Hindus to my religious ancestors who left Iran more than a millennium ago, sailed down the Strait of Hormuz via the Persian Gulf, and landed on the west coast of India, in South Gujarat, where they were allowed to stay as refugees. Although India is home to other communities from Iran, including Shiites, the name “Parsi” was reserved for my people. In many ways, they were some of the world’s first “boat people.”
According to legend, the king of Gujarat and his subjects were concerned about accepting these strangers and initially told them to move on. The king conveyed this message by holding up a pitcher of milk, full to the brim, indicating there was no room in the land. A Zoroastrian priest requested a few sugar crystals, sprinkled them in the milk, and demonstrated that—even with the addition of the sugar—the milk had not spilled. The message clearly communicated, If you allow us to stay, we will sweeten your kingdom.
For several centuries, our people lived fairly inconspicuously in India. However, when the Europeans came, because we were a tiny minority, we were able to act as mediators, which began to raise our profile. So in modern India, many Indians regard us as nation builders and have cited Parsis as example of how a minority community can help strengthen the nation. In India Zoroastrians as a whole have never been persecuted.
In Iran, however, the story was very different. Prior to the Arab invasions in the seventh century of the Common Era, the geographic area now comprising Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Central Asia was dominated by Zoroastrian practitioners. For more than a millennium, from the sixth century BCE to the seventh century CE, present-day Iran and surrounding lands was ruled by Zoroastrian kings. But by the 1850s, the Zoroastrian community had been practically decimated, with only an estimated 7000 Zoroastrians remaining in Iran.[1]
The Biblical book of Isaiah II[2] talks about Cyrus the Anointed, who was actually a Zoroastrian King and the founder of the modern Iranian identity state. Cyrus had an inclusive policy when he captured polytheistic Babylonia that allowed non-Zoroastrians, including monotheistic Jews, to practice their religions. This inclusivity was grounded in a concept of universality shared by Zoroastrians and Hindus, as Indo-Iranian faith communities, that is different from the Abrahamic faiths. In contrast to other faith traditions’ concept of missionary work, these communities share the concept of Sanatana Dharma, with Dharma meaning “religion” and Sanatana meaning “universality.” Because Sanatana Dharma has the universal vision to link all humanity together, Hindus thus see everyone as Hindu: You may not know it, but you and everyone else is a Hindu, so Hindus don’t need to convert you to Hinduism. The Zoroastrian perspective is similar in that, to go to heaven, you need to do good, and anyone of any faith can do good.
The Arab invaders of Iran were followers of Islam, with a different worldview. The Zoroastrians remaining in Iran eventually retreated to the inhospitable desert to maintain their religious practices, similar to the Yazidis, who retreated the Kurdish Region of Iraq, and early members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who were forced to migrate to the Salt Lake Valley.
I am currently the 26th elected president of the Zoroastrian Trust Funds of Europe, headquartered in the United Kingdom. That organization was created in 1861 to serve the Zoroastrian community. Its second and third presidents happened to be the first two ethnically Asian parliamentarians elected to the British Parliament: Dadabhai Naoroji (Liberal Party, 1892–95) and Mancherjee Bhownaggree (Conservative Party, 1895–1906). Shapurji Saklatwala, a member of both the Communist and Labour Parties, served as a member of Parliament from 1922 to 1929. So prior to World War II, only three Asians had been elected to Parliament, and all three were Zoroastrians.
In the 1890s, Great Britain was at the zenith of its imperial power—an era where “the sun never set on the British Empire.” But the Zoroastrian community had influence in India, with the Parsis lobbying the viceroys and British governors in India, and the MPs with Trust Funds lobbying Parliament in Great Britain. Iran was not a colony, but the north was under the influence of Czarist Russia, and the south was under the British colonial administration from India. As a result, the Zoroastrians in Iran in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were emancipated. During that time, jizyah was lifted after letters were sent pleading with the Shah of Iran to eliminate the tax and emancipate the Zoroastrians. Life improved for Zoroastrians in the 1920s during the Pahlavi era, but when the monarchy was toppled and the Islamic Republic established in the late 1970s, we once again became second-class citizens.
The current levels of prejudice and discrimination have not been as bad for Zoroastrians as they have been for the Yazidis. But prior to the 1890s, Zoroastrians in Iran were heavily persecuted in Iran. Life was similar to the Yazidis’ in that the governing or dominant class of Muslim overlords regarded and treated the minorities in a similar way. I would note that in India, on the whole, the Zoroastrian community coexisted with the Muslim community because both groups are minorities, but when India had Muslim overlords, life could be difficult at times, depending on individual rulers. In Iran, however, it has been a different story. The unjust and inaccurate “charges” leveled at Zoroastrians—of worshiping two gods (God and evil), being “fire worshippers,” and being polluted—were similar to those aimed at the Yazidis. Zoroastrians believe that evil does not originate from God and is an independent entity from God. God is only responsible for good and cannot have a taint of evil or anger. God cannot destroy. However, this Zoroastrian belief was characterized as a nonbelief in one God and belief in the devil, and thus Zoroastrians were targeted for conversion. The option given to the Zoroastrians, like the Yazidis, was to either convert to Islam or perish.
Yazidi stories of discrimination and persecution, as documented by Philip Kreyenbroek, from the University of Göttingen,[3] are very similar to Zoroastrian stories.[4] I know older members of the UK Zoroastrian community today from Iran who attended school during the 1930s and 1940s and immigrated after the Islamic Revolution. When I ask them “Did you suffer any persecution or prejudice at school in Iran?,” they would reply “Not really.” But when you ask them more pointed questions, a different picture would emerge. For example, if you asked “At lunch in school, did you sit with everybody?,” they would answer “No, we had to sit separately.” Or if you asked “Did you drink from the same water fountain as your classmates?,” they would answer “No, we had to go elsewhere.” The Zoroastrians in Iran, as a small minority, were charged with “polluting” society, even into the mid-twentieth century. If you touched an apple, the stallholder would get angry, because this apple now could not be sold. Zoroastrian women were often abducted, converted, and forcefully married, and there was no redress. Until the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, petty laws prohibited Zoroastrians from riding a horse or wearing spectacles, trousers, or other accessories and articles of clothing; instead, they could only ride a donkey and wear drab-colored, undyed clothing, to mark their religion and ethnicity.[5]
Two crushing taxes imposed on Zoroastrians by Muslim overlords included the aforementioned jizyah tax or poll tax. Pressure was imposed to motivate already-impoverished Zoroastrians to pay; if you could not pay, you were beaten or had to convert. Another form of tax dictated that if a member of your family converted to Islam, all inheritance would go to that family member; this tax was reinstated after the Islamic Revolution.
Since international sanctions were imposed on Iran after the Islamic Revolution, life has been very difficult, and Zoroastrians, like others, have left Iran to find better opportunities. Thus, while Iran’s Zoroastrian population prior to the Islamic Revolution numbered around 60,000, today the number has dwindled to 15,000. India and Iran have good relations, and the Iranian chargé d’affaires in India has said that Iran’s Zoroastrians are not persecuted. But while the treatment of Zoroastrians in Iran may not amount to persecution, it still too often qualifies, at minimum, as discrimination.
The portability of faith for Zoroastrians has been very challenging because, similar to the Yazidis, our religion is Iran centric. In the case of the Yazidis, the holy place is Lalish in Sinjar. Although persecuted Zoroastrians left Iran more than a millennium ago and were able to maintain our religion freely, without persecution, for 1000 years in pre-modern India, we came to the English-speaking world through the dealings of the English East India Company. After World War II and the partition of India and Pakistan, many Zoroastrians came to the United Kingdom for work, including in the newly established National Health Service (NHS). While our community has largely thrived economically, religiously things have been very challenging for the diaspora. Unlike the Latter-day Saints who have a strong, central leadership, we are very much drifting religiously. The youth will say “We are proud to be Zoroastrian,” but when asked “What is a Zoroastrian?” they have difficulty answering.
These are the same challenges facing the Yazidis. The new challenge is how to maintain a religion and way of life in a new land, and in a society that isn’t persecuting you but regards you as different and is ignorant of your rich history and heritage. Unlike other religious groups, such as Sikhs, who are more readily identifiable and known, Zoroastrians are a largely unknown entity, even though we once were rulers of the ancient world and created the world’s first multinational, multi-faith empire. In religious history, you see a shadowy presence of Zoroastrianism in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and even Hinduism. And yet today we are in many ways invisible. Like the Yazidis, we also come from an oral tradition. Prior to the Arab invasions, Zoroastrian scriptures were written down, comprising 21 volumes, but less than one-tenth of the 21 volumes survived. Since the oral tradition was prevalent, much has been lost as our priests were dispersed and killed. Zoroastrians continue to work and adapt, but religiously, our identity continues to shrink in many ways. The post-persecution challenge for us and the Yazidis is to ensure that our faith survives and continues to thrive in and through rising generations.
References:
[1] Malcolm M. Deboo, Seth Maneckji Limji Hataria: The Martin Luther King of Zoroastrianism & the Struggle for Zoroastrian Civil Rights in Iran 2000, Zoroastrian Ed. Inst. (last visited 11 Sept. 2024).
[2] Some biblical scholars refer to chapters 40–66 of the book of Isaiah as “Second Isaiah.” In the King James Version of the Bible, Cyrus the Anointed is mentioned in Isaiah chapter 45.
[3] See, e.g., 62 Philip Kreyenbroek, Yezidism—Its Background, Observances, and Textual Tradition, in Texts and Studies in Religion (Edwin Mellen Press 1995).
[4] See, e.g., 1 Delphine Menant, Les Parsis, at ch. 2 (The Zoroastrians in Persia) (M.M. Murzban ed., Bombay Danai 1994) (1917); 1 Dosabhai F. Karaka, History of the Parsis: Including Their Manners, Customs, Religion and Present Position, at ch. 2 (Zoroastrians in Persia) (Hansebooks 2020) (1884).
[5] Edward G. Browne, A Year Amongst the Persians 370–72 (1893).