Editorial Viewpoint
Looking back
Looking back
A visitor to our office who occasionally acts in theater, films and commercials, asked us whether we would be interested in writing about old Parsi/Irani actors. They performed on the stage even prior to the advent of Adi Marzban and could provide insights as to what Parsi theater was in the earlier days, he opined.
We said we would be interested but were too short staffed to undertake such a project. Did he know of anyone who could interview them and write? The discussion ended on that note.
Thus it was reassuring to read in the latest FEZANA Journal of a Zarathushti Oral History Project to try and capture remnants of our past. “We are encouraging Zarathushti youth to interview elder community members and record their unique stories and experiences. In recent years, many communities in North America and elsewhere have used oral history as a way to create a living archive of knowledge for public references,” writes the initiator of the project, Dinyar Patel, a first year PhD history student at Harvard University. “(We) cannot restore forgotten knowledge, memories and understanding, but perhaps it can be a small first step toward ensuring that these losses will not happen again in the future.”
In India the PARZOR Foundation under the guidance of Dr Shernaz Cama similarly went about recording material from the elderly. In our March 21, 2007 issue Parsiana asked readers to write of their childhood days in India and/or abroad. The result was a brief historic record in print that might otherwise have been lost forever.
A community and a people are made up of their past and present. Without our history, we lose our moorings. Ask a Zoroastrian who he or she is and the response will include talk of a 3,500-year-old origin in Iran, a migration to India, the setting up of the country’s industrial base, of charities started, of housing colonies built. Their present day existence will be a brief part of the story.
Yet many are not aware of the value of historic records and memorabilia. Most Zoroastrians do not know what their great-grandparents did for a living. The Bombay Parsi Punchayet’s Framji Dadabhoy Alpaiwalla Museum stands forlorn in one corner of Khareghat Colony with the occasional visitor. [According to curator Nivedita Mehta (The Indian Express, December 16, 2007) “Alpaiwalla started with bottle tops, old scent bottles, old notes, anything that appealed to him.”] There are few speakers on community history at most forums. Present day controversies dominate the podium. Understandably we are most concerned with what affects us in our day-to-day existence.
Thus it is always a pleasant surprise when someone painstakingly compiles or pens a history of their local community. On a visit to Sri Lanka 10 years ago, Kairshasp Choksy, a prominent lawyer and former finance minister of the country and Pesi Pestonjee, another longtime prominent resident, when asked about historic data on the Zoroastrians there recalled a treatise The Parsees in Ceylon prepared by Behram Kaikhushroo Billimoria, a former trustee of the Ceylon Parsi Anjuman who was a solicitor and cinema owner.
Thus we were able to write not only about the modern day Sri Lankan Zoroastrians but their forefathers too and the story of their assets and institutions.
On a trip to Karachi, columnist Ardeshir Cowasjee handed us a book The Karachi Zoroastrian Calendar, a record of important events in the growth of the Parsi Community in Karachi that provided insights into the historical annals of the community. The writer Jehangir Framroze Punthakey, like his Sri Lankan counterpart, dove into the gazettes and other supporting records/documents to trace the footsteps of the pioneering Zoroastrians.
Thus we came to know of the history of the Jehangir Kothari Parade grounds and the magnanimous person Kothari was. His fame and benevolence extended even to Bangalore and in his book The Bangalore Parsis author Dastur Nadirshah P. Unvalla speaks of how Sir Jehangir and Lady Goolbai Kothari visited the Garden City in the south and donated money for the founding of the Lady Goolbai Jehangir Kothari Memorial Hall which was constructed in 1932.
Unvalla’s is the most recent historic narration. But due to his advanced age (he is 90) he was unable to delve into the relevant documents, files, gazettes, etc and thus much of what is stated is from personal experience and information handed over to him from his elders. Many of the anjuman’s records were discarded decades ago, bemoans Unvalla. Still it is undoubtedly one, if not the only, printed history of the Bangalore Zoroastrian community.
In all three cases — Billimoria, Punthakey and Unvalla — the writers were not historians or professional authors. They undertook the work as a labor of love just as Alpaiwalla, Cama and Patel did and do.
If there is a lesson to be drawn from their example it is that even lay persons can contribute to compiling history, be it of their own family, neighborhood or community. We need to put on paper our story so we have something to hand down to the generations after us. Long after the wealth, the titles, the glory and the glow have faded, the legacy remains. It is our history that differentiates us from others, not our race. That perspective needs to be reinforced.
We said we would be interested but were too short staffed to undertake such a project. Did he know of anyone who could interview them and write? The discussion ended on that note.
Thus it was reassuring to read in the latest FEZANA Journal of a Zarathushti Oral History Project to try and capture remnants of our past. “We are encouraging Zarathushti youth to interview elder community members and record their unique stories and experiences. In recent years, many communities in North America and elsewhere have used oral history as a way to create a living archive of knowledge for public references,” writes the initiator of the project, Dinyar Patel, a first year PhD history student at Harvard University. “(We) cannot restore forgotten knowledge, memories and understanding, but perhaps it can be a small first step toward ensuring that these losses will not happen again in the future.”
In India the PARZOR Foundation under the guidance of Dr Shernaz Cama similarly went about recording material from the elderly. In our March 21, 2007 issue Parsiana asked readers to write of their childhood days in India and/or abroad. The result was a brief historic record in print that might otherwise have been lost forever.
A community and a people are made up of their past and present. Without our history, we lose our moorings. Ask a Zoroastrian who he or she is and the response will include talk of a 3,500-year-old origin in Iran, a migration to India, the setting up of the country’s industrial base, of charities started, of housing colonies built. Their present day existence will be a brief part of the story.
Yet many are not aware of the value of historic records and memorabilia. Most Zoroastrians do not know what their great-grandparents did for a living. The Bombay Parsi Punchayet’s Framji Dadabhoy Alpaiwalla Museum stands forlorn in one corner of Khareghat Colony with the occasional visitor. [According to curator Nivedita Mehta (The Indian Express, December 16, 2007) “Alpaiwalla started with bottle tops, old scent bottles, old notes, anything that appealed to him.”] There are few speakers on community history at most forums. Present day controversies dominate the podium. Understandably we are most concerned with what affects us in our day-to-day existence.
Thus it is always a pleasant surprise when someone painstakingly compiles or pens a history of their local community. On a visit to Sri Lanka 10 years ago, Kairshasp Choksy, a prominent lawyer and former finance minister of the country and Pesi Pestonjee, another longtime prominent resident, when asked about historic data on the Zoroastrians there recalled a treatise The Parsees in Ceylon prepared by Behram Kaikhushroo Billimoria, a former trustee of the Ceylon Parsi Anjuman who was a solicitor and cinema owner.
Thus we were able to write not only about the modern day Sri Lankan Zoroastrians but their forefathers too and the story of their assets and institutions.
On a trip to Karachi, columnist Ardeshir Cowasjee handed us a book The Karachi Zoroastrian Calendar, a record of important events in the growth of the Parsi Community in Karachi that provided insights into the historical annals of the community. The writer Jehangir Framroze Punthakey, like his Sri Lankan counterpart, dove into the gazettes and other supporting records/documents to trace the footsteps of the pioneering Zoroastrians.
Thus we came to know of the history of the Jehangir Kothari Parade grounds and the magnanimous person Kothari was. His fame and benevolence extended even to Bangalore and in his book The Bangalore Parsis author Dastur Nadirshah P. Unvalla speaks of how Sir Jehangir and Lady Goolbai Kothari visited the Garden City in the south and donated money for the founding of the Lady Goolbai Jehangir Kothari Memorial Hall which was constructed in 1932.
Unvalla’s is the most recent historic narration. But due to his advanced age (he is 90) he was unable to delve into the relevant documents, files, gazettes, etc and thus much of what is stated is from personal experience and information handed over to him from his elders. Many of the anjuman’s records were discarded decades ago, bemoans Unvalla. Still it is undoubtedly one, if not the only, printed history of the Bangalore Zoroastrian community.
In all three cases — Billimoria, Punthakey and Unvalla — the writers were not historians or professional authors. They undertook the work as a labor of love just as Alpaiwalla, Cama and Patel did and do.
If there is a lesson to be drawn from their example it is that even lay persons can contribute to compiling history, be it of their own family, neighborhood or community. We need to put on paper our story so we have something to hand down to the generations after us. Long after the wealth, the titles, the glory and the glow have faded, the legacy remains. It is our history that differentiates us from others, not our race. That perspective needs to be reinforced.
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From the archive