“Parsis and prejudice”

Kudos to archeologist Shereen Ratnagar on her article "Parsis and prejudice” (Parsiana, August 7, 2014). Maneckji Limji Hataria is indeed the great 19th century emancipator of his much persecuted co-religionists, the Zoroastrians of Iran suffering under the fanatical Muhammadan Qajar dynasty.
That very same ruler had earlier imprisoned and tortured the Bab, forerunner of Baha’u’llah, before exiling him and his entire family to the Ottoman empire in the city of Bagdad, Iraq. He later executed Baha’u’llah and slaughtered thousands of his followers.
In Bagdad Baha’u’llah, still an exile, granted an audience to Hataria in 1854 while the latter was en route to India from his 1854 visit to Iran where he had seen first-hand the deplorable conditions which his Iranian Zoroastrian brethren had had to endure over the last few centuries under the Shia rulers who regarded them as not being on par as their own faith, or Christianity and Judaism which were clearly mentioned in the Koran. During that memorable audience Hataria learnt that Zoroaster too had been inferred in the Koran (Suras 25:38 and 50:12) which mentions the people of Rass and river Aras, Zoroaster’s native land, implying it was also one of the locations, together with Sinai (Moses), Sier (Jesus) and Paran (Muhammad) of divinely revealed religions.
Instead of proceeding to India, Hataria returned to Iran and, on being granted an audience by the Qajar monarch Nasirudin Shah was able to prevail upon him to ameliorate the conditions of the Iranian Zoroastrians. Is it any wonder that the Baha’is who had been able to show their Zoroastrian compatriots from their own scriptures the validity of Baha’u’llah’s claim to be the much awaited Shah Behram, were able to attract many Zoroastrians including my maternal forebears in Yazd to accept the Baha’i faith and with it, also on many occasions, martyrdom at the hands of the fanatical Iranian Muhammadans?
Upon his return to Bombay, Hataria employed, from 1876 to 1882, the renowned Baha’i scholar Mirza Abu’l Fadl as his personal secretary, through whom he kept in touch with Baha’u’llah. The latter revealed a special tablet in Hataria’s honor titled, The Tabernacle of Unity. Hataria also commissioned the publication of Baha’u’llah’s tablet titled Tarikh-i-Jadid.
My own humble contribution to the Zoroastrian faith, the religion of my distant forebears, was in ensuring, albeit for the first time in this epoch, Zoroastrianism being listed as one of the major world religions on the first historical ecumenical postage stamps issued by the governments of Sri Lanka and Singapore. JAMSHED K. FOZDAR
Singapore
jkfozdar@singnet.com.sg