ANCIENT RELIGION Zoroastrianism A Persian Religion

One of the world's oldest religions, Zoroastrianism might slowly be fading into obscurity.

- Khushi Makasare

The Dadar Parsi Colony in Mumbai, India is home to the largest concentration of Zoroastrians in the world. The colony is made up of about 15,000 Parsis, an ethnoreligious group of Persian descendants who follow the Zoroastrian religion.

Continuous political turmoil and draconian acts of religious persecution forced the community to flee Persia in the 7th century. The travellers set sail east, with no certainty of their destination, and landed in the western Indian state of Gujarat. Parsi communities can now be found in several regions across the country, including Mumbai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Pune, and Bangalore. Besides India, a substantial number of Parsis are also located in neighbouring Pakistan.

An ancient pre-Islamic religion with a rich history tracing back to the era of Iranian empires, Zoroastrianism is followed by no more than 120,000 globally, and numbers are dwindling, with orthodox Parsis refusing to allow the remit for new members to be widened.

ORIGINS

Zoroastrianism gets its name from its spiritual founder, Zoroaster (also known as Zarathustra), who inaugurated a movement that challenged the pagan beliefs that existed in ancient Persia. Scholars disagree on when Zoroaster lived. Some insist the religion's roots date back as far as the second millennium BCE, while others suggest he belongs to the 6th or 7th century BCE, prior to the first Persian empire of Cyrus the Great.

Zoroastrianism was the dominant religion during the Persian empires for well over 1,000 years. But with the Arab Muslim conquest of Persia (633-654 CE), Zoroastrian temples were destroyed, Persian libraries were burned, and Zoroastrians were forced to convert to Islam.  It was this widespread persecution of the Rashidun Caliphate that led to a mass migration of Zoroastrians to India, where they have enjoyed refuge ever since.