From Dushanbe, with love

Parsiana got to meet two young Tajik beauties, the great-granddaughters of Zoroastrians, eyeing the prospect of a change of religion. Nazokat Gadoeva and Rukshona Bandishoeva are young Muslim women studying second-year economics in a college of the Technological University of Tajikistan in Khujan, a city on the ancient Silk Route. While they expect to work in the Tajik Central Bank after completing their course, they were delighted to be on a tour of India, specifically Delhi, Agra, Poona and Sanjan and a two-month study course at the Zoroastrian College of Meher Master-Moos. Master-Moos, a votary of Behramsha Shroff and the Maghavs of Mount Demavand, has been a source of inspiration to the nascent/latent Zoroastrian community of Taji­kistan. The India trip was a prize the girls had won in a competition in Tajikistan.

Clockwise from right: Nazokat Gadoeva, Rukshana Bandishoeva, Prof Gulbahor, Russian consul general Alexander Mantytsky, Andrei Nazarkin and Meher Master-Moos

Rukshona’s translation into Tajik of Behramsha Shroff’s What my mother taught me and Nazokat’s translation of a book on Meher Yazd were selected as the best entries in a national competition, Master-Moos informed Parsiana. The published edition of their works together with that of the Khordeh Avesta in Russian with explanations and illustrations, were released at the Russian Cultural Center in Bombay on August 8, 2007 in conjunction with the Moscow State University, said Master-Moos, adding that Prof Gulbahor and her daughter Gulpariz were also in Bombay as part of the Tajik team. Gulpariz’s navjote was performed in Sanjan on August 6, 2007 by Ervad Khushroo Madan, she added.

All these visitors from Tajikistan claim to be of original Zoroastrian-Aryan stock. Gulbahor’s great-grandfather was a mobed and king of the local principality of Kokandh, related Master-Moos. All four aim to teach their friends and relatives more about the Zoroastrians of India. According to Master-Moos, Rukshona, who knows more Persian and Russian than her native Tajik, is the daughter of the town’s deputy mayor with close links to the President of Tajikistan while Nazokat is the daughter of the deputy chief commissioner of police.