Asia: Slow Breeders ; India's Parsees Community

An exhibition of photographs of India's ancient Parsees community, taken by Sooni Taraporevala.

     India’s culture is rich and unique in itself. The culture of India has been designed by its unique geography, long history, and diverse demography.  This article relies on its reference to secondary sources. The Parsees community is one of the smallest communities, a group of people who migrated to India centuries ago from Persia, now also known as Iran. Since then, they fully united and contributed to the economic, political, and culture life of India.  However, the sad truth is that the Parsees community is now dying off.  I strongly believe that the failure has been blamed on several factors, including migration, inter-community marriages and low fertility rate. Parsees communities have been counted separately from the first public census, since they are not a Hindu religious minority and have achieved popularity in Bombay for their significant economic and cultural help to the growth of the city.  

         Today, the Parsees community is more economically advanced and wealthy than it has ever been before.  Personally speaking, I have two final thoughts. One has to do with the issue of Parsees politics. When I was in India, people used to tell me that Parsees community is the oldest, which establishes Asians in Britain, but traditionally they have never drawn attention to themselves. That is the reason why Parsees girls will not pick Parsees boys for marriage. My second and final though would be based on the population decrease throughout each generation due to low rates of marriage and childbirth. In my point of view, Zoroastrianism will live or die depending on the selections that today’s Parsees community and Iranian Zoroastrianism make. This seems to be we are basically killing both a community and a religion by continuing without our current behavior of late marriage, non-marriage, and limited childbirth. This tragedy could be the greatest one the Parsees face today. Because of the tremendous contributions that the Parsees community has given to India and the rest of the world economically, it would be a shame for the Parsees people to become extinct. 

The creation of a Parsees settlement in India