Built by Bai Jerbai Wadia in memory of her late son, the residential colony, continues to be a ‘self-contained’...
History Articles
Carrom and camaraderie in the colony
With Rustom Baug just hitting a century, we revisit other Parsi enclaves founded by the community’s visionaries It’s a...
Streetwise Kolkata: Parsee Church Street, named after Kolkata’s 183-year-old Parsi fire temple
A significant part of the lane and the larger neighbourhood’s documented history starts during the 19th century when the Parsi and Jewish communities began settling here.Written by Neha Banka |...
175 years after Parsis flocked to Karachi, glimpses of the community’s fading history
On April 22, 1847, Parsis from across India assembled in Karachi as the foundation for the city’s first Tower of Silence was laid.Article by Ammad Ali | ScrollPhotos of long-time Parsi residents of...
Streetwise Kolkata: Parsi Bagan Lane, a neighbourhood that played important role in freedom struggle
What is less well known is the lane's association with the development of psychoanalysis in the subcontinent. Article by Neha Banka | Indian ExpressParsi Bagan Lane in Kolkata. (Express Photo by...
How Parsi-Irani Oral History Project is documenting the community
An aural archiving initiative records big-hearted Parsi-Iranian stories to inform the future of oral traditionsFreny Daruwalla with Mani BhagatThey are a community of stories. They understand life,...
Memories We Carry: Migration Stories of Zoroastrian South Asian Americans
The South Asian American Digital Archive announcesThis collection of oral histories represents the living and lived histories of Zoroastrians from South Asia who’ve migrated to the United States in...
Avabai Wadia: The lawyer who became India’s family planning pioneer
In 1933, a sari-clad teenager made international headlines.Avabai Wadia, 19, became the first woman from Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) to pass the bar exam in the United Kingdom. Her success encouraged the...
Godrej locks its history in Amar Chitra Katha in outreach to youth
The challenge, Godrej says, was to reach a younger audience and children who might have had very little association with the brand It is not the first time the history of the Godrej family is being...
Nariman Karkaria: How a young Parsi from Gujarat went to fight in World War I and had the adventures of his life
An excerpt from ‘The First World War Adventures of Nariman Karkaria: A Memoir’, translated from the Gujarati by Murali Ranganathan.Article in Scroll IndiaFrom Manchuria station, a separate line goes...
When the British asked the French to jail Madame Cama
When the British asked the French to jail Madame Cama, the ‘mother of Indian revolution’For decades, the British government surveilled the Parsi freedom fighter.Article by John O’BrienA postal stamp...
Khurshedben Naoroji: The singer who preached nonviolence to bandits
In most countries, the life of an elite, sophisticated woman renouncing her career as a classical soprano to preach nonviolence to bandits and kidnappers would merit significant study and attention....
Doyens of medical service: Byramjee Jeejeebhoy Medical College in Pune celebrates 75th foundation day
The hospital had played a crucial role during the 2009 Swine flu outbreak and even now, before PMC could upgrade its hospitals with ventilators and tertiary care, Sassoon was the only government...
Dadar Parsi Colony: Cherishing the Bombay that was
Inflatable pools, barbecues, open backyards…this is how architect Rooshad Shroff recalls the better part of his childhood spent with his parents in the Dadar Parsi colony. With the endless...
Ardaseer Cursetjee Wadia receives English Heritage blue plaque
Ardaseer Cursetjee Wadia (1808-1877), a pioneering naval engineer and former member of the Society has recently been awarded an English Heritage London blue plaque marking the 180th anniversary of...
Ardaseer Cursetjee Wadia: The esteemed Indian ancestor no one in my white British family knew about
Who do you think you are? The esteemed Indian ancestor no one in my white British family knew aboutImage: Ardaseer Cursetjee, the first South Asian Fellow of the Royal Society, has been awarded a...
Aspi Engineer And Winning the Aga Khan Race
Our dear friend Rusi Sorabji writes….I attach something I wrote about friend, ASPI Engineer*, the 17 years old should go down in the annals of World Aviation better than the likes of Alcock &...
A paradox revealed through portraiture
A photograph taken seven years before her passing says much about the life, times and character of the trailblazing Meherbai Tata The much-loved wife of Dorabji Tata and daughter in-law of Jamsetji...
The Parsis of Ceylon: The few that made the difference | Lost & Forgotten
Dr. Zameer Careem, a Sri Lankan historian speaks about the Parsis of Sri Lanka
Naoroji’s ‘Drain of Wealth’ Approach: Guiding Indian Nationalism
Beyond brief by-rote study of history at school about the ‘Grand Old Man of India’, not many Indians are aware of the true depth of the achievements of Dadabhai Naoroji. Mathematics prodigy at...
How Kipling wove a Parsi into his fantasy tale
Wonder how the world-famous author Rudyard Kipling, a Parsi artist and a Rhinoceros are connected? Look at the portrait of a Parsi artist, Pestonjee Bomanjee (1851-1938) with his long white beard,...
Imagining Zoroaster’s Domestic Life
How did medieval Zoroastrians imagine the family of Zoroaster, the founding figure of their religion?Unlike founders of many other religions about whose time and place we can reach a certain degree...
The pioneering lawyer who fought for women’s suffrage in India
Amid the pandemic gloom, it is easy to forget that the year 2020 marks an important anniversary for women's rights.In the US, it has been 100 years since women cast their votes for the first time. A...
Kesavananda Bharati Case And Friendship Between Nani Palkhivala & HM Seervai
Remembering an episode form legendary jurist Nani Palkhivala's life on his 18th death anniversaryWhen Nani Palkhivala entered the Supreme Court to argue Kesavananda Bharti, India's future rested on...
Mithuben Hormusji Petit: Indian Freedom Fighter
MITHUBEN PETIT, WHO FOUGHT FOR INDIA’s FREEDOM WITH GANDHIJI, RENOUNCED HER COMFORTS AND LUXURIES Petit surname has its roots in the French word ‘petit’ (meaning physically small). One of the women...
This is not the end. Apocalyptic comfort from ancient Iran
At its height, around 620 CE, the Sasanian empire ruled over a territory stretching from Jerusalem in the west to Samarkand in the east. The royal court at the ancient city of Ctesiphon, near...
Chinchani & India’s First Arab Governor
On the 28th of June 1955, The Times of India (Mumbai) carried a very interesting story of the discovery, by a farmer, of 9 inscribed copper plates from his field in the village of Chinchani near...
Naoroji Rustomji Manek: This Surat Man Sued East India Co. & Won
He was the first Zoroastrian to sail to England from India; not to mention the first Indian who sued the British and won! He sailed back in victory with his cause vindicated and putting his...
Memories of Living in Kashmere Gate: The Old Parsee Hub of Delhi
I was born in 1937 in The Lady Hardinge Hospital, New Delhi and spent the first two years at my maternal uncle’s house in Kasmeri Gate, Old Delhi, as it was known those days. Kashmere Gate or...
Saklatvala Mausoleum in New York
An email from my friend Kersi Shroff tipped me off on what turned out to be a great treasure hunt in search of the Saklatvala Mausoleum in the Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx in New York City. Kersi...
The Grand Old Man of India who became Britain’s first Asian MP
How was an Indian elected to the British Parliament in 1892? What relevance could this historical event have for us today?Dadabhai Naoroji (1825-1917) is an unfamiliar name these days.Yet, aside...
P. D. Patel: My Fifty Years in Burma
Mitra Sharafi, a legal historian writes in… I am very excited to say that P. D. Patel's My Fifty Years in Burma (Rangoon, 1954) is now up on my website. This remarkable out-of-print memoir tells the...
Story of Jamshedpur: Romance and Valour
Envisioned by a Parsi, planned by an American, named by a British Viceroy, landscaped by a German Botanist, the story of Jamshedpur is full of romance and valour.Once Sakchi, a village in the...
The Benevolent Businessmen From Aden
Meher Marfatia: The Benevolent Businessmen From Aden The Cowasjee Dinshaw Collection of the Adenwalla Archive reveals rare records of a family of merchant-princes, last of the philanthropic Bombay...
Navsari: Home to the Parsis
Live History India present a great visual treat about Navsari. Archeologist Kurush Dalal and historian and author Pheroza Godrej are featured on the video and explain some of the history of the...
Zanzibar’s forgotten religion
A CRUMBLING TEMPLE for an ancient religion lies hidden from the street, just beyond the fields of Mnazi Moja. All but forgotten, its doors are rarely opened; the once prominent Zoroastrians have all...
A reborn Persian Empire captured Rome’s lands—and its emperor
Inspired by their powerful ancestors, the Sassanian dynasty restored Persia to imperial glory, ruling lands that stretched from Turkey to Pakistan.By Miguel Ángel Andrés-Toledo | National...
Lord Chelmsford, Viceroy of India at Jamshedpur.
Our dear friend and eminent Parsi historian Marzban Giara writes…Lord Chelmsford the Viceroy of India visited the Tata Steel plant in 1919 after the First World War. Sakchi Village in Bihar was...
Manekji Limji Hataria
Tomorrow 15th February is the baj of Manekji Limji Hataria, the Parsi missionary to Iran. A jashan will be performed at Wadiaji Atash Behram 1st floor hall in the morning at 10 a.m.Below is an...
Eduljee Sorabjee: The Curious Case of the ‘First’ Indian-American Citizen
Los Angeles in the 1880s was a town reinventing itself. The Gold Rush was subsiding but the air was filled with promise and there were new opportunities for those who knew how to seize them. Among...
Gandhi & The Tatas
Revisiting the relationship between the Mahatma and the founders of the Tata group, from satyagraha to swaraj October 2019 | Tata.comThroughout his public service...
KM Nanavati vs State of Maharashtra: All we learnt about the landmark case from Bollywood
Before we watch web series The Verdict: State Vs Nanavati, we look back at the actual Nanavati case and how it has been presented in Gulzar's Achanak (1973), R.K. Nayyar's Yeh Rastey Hain Pyar Ke...
Sanjan: Digging Deep into History
On a dark and stormy night, a ship full of Zoroastrian refugees from Persia was lashed by the wind, rain and waves off the west coast of India. The refugees in the ship, fearful for their lives,...
Jubilee Diamond & How it Saved A Tata Company
In a country obsessed with the legend of the Kohinoor, little public attention is paid to the fact that there were far larger diamonds in India until very recently. In fact many made the Kohinoor,...
The Parsi burial ground is a sign of Rawalpindi’s rich heritage
On Murree Road, in the heart of the city, a lane leads towards a heavy iron gate that opens out on an era of Parsi historyArticle by Ammad Ali | Daily Times PakistanResting place of a WWII soldier...
JRB Jeejeebhoy: Mumbai has forgotten the ‘leading historian’ who once highlighted its forgotten past
JRB Jeejeebhoy, who wrote numerous pieces on the city and its heritage from the 1920s to the 1950s, has met the fate of his subjects. History unfortunately has been superseded in favour of flighty...
The opium trader who became one of India’s richest men
On his fourth trip to China, Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy was captured by the French. It was the middle of the Napoleonic Wars and hostilities between the British and the French had carried over to the...
Godrej and the Ballot Boxes for for India’s First Elections
When independent India was laying the groundwork for its first elections in 1952, clueless to the rest of the world, workers at a factory in Mumbai’s Vikhroli were making history.They were...
The Story of Sir Hormusjee N Mody and Hong Kong University
Our dear friend and the resident dasturji of the Hong Kong Anjuman Ervad Homyar Nasirabadwala speaks about the amazing contribution of Sir Hormusjee N Mody, a distinguished Parsi businessman and a...
Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata, a Swadeshi who tried to make India a manufacturing hub
On Jamsetji’s 180th birth anniversary, ThePrint’s Remya Nair remembers the industrialist who set up India’s most well-reputed business empire.Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata was the founder of the entity...
Behramji Merwanji Malabari: A Parsi in London
Historians have written not just pages, but books on his life; he is a wellknown figure in the Parsi historical hall of fame; it should be a polite yawn by now to read the writings of social...
Dr. Bomsi Wadia: The only Indian to have participated in London to Sydney Marathon rallies
50 years after the first London to Sydney Marathon took place, Dr. Bomsi Wadia says, "It was one of the most memorable adventures of my life. I loved it so much, that I even took part in the 1977...