On a linked in post Lord Karan Bilimoria writes:
Last Friday was very special.
We made history at Mansion House, the Lord Mayor’s home. The Rt Hon. the Lord Mayor Alastair King, and I co-hosted the first dinner ever to take place there for the Zoroastrian Parsi community, with a Parsi feast prepared by the famous chef Cyrus Todiwala and the Mansion House team.
As the first Zoroastrian Parsi in the House of Lords, this was a very proud moment.
The room was filled with people from business, finance, academia and public service. We talked, we laughed, we shared stories. It reminded me of what brings us together.
Our community is tiny, one of the smallest minority communities in the world: fewer than 5,000 in the UK and about 100,000 worldwide. Yet our impact is anything but small.
From Dadabhai Naoroji, the first Indian elected to the UK Parliament in 1892, whose 200th birth anniversary is this year, to the Tata family, to Freddie Mercury of Queen, to Farokh Engineer, the famous wicket-keeper batsman. There are countless others who have shaped business, education, science, sport and philanthropy.
This evening was a wonderful way to celebrate how our values of integrity and service make a huge difference at every level, wherever our community lives in the world. This spans from India, where we came as refugees from Persia over one thousand years ago, to the U.K., where we came three hundred years ago.
We honoured that legacy and looked ahead to everything to come.
As Mahatma Gandhi said, “In numbers Parsis are beneath contempt, but in contribution, beyond compare!”
My thanks to the Lord Mayor, the Mansion House team and every guest who made it a night to remember.
