Parsis

• 1. Introduction

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  The Parsis, also spelled Parsees, numbered 57,264 in India at the 2011 census. That is a small figure for a country of such size. Yet one member of this community was the rock musician Freddie Mercury.

  The Parsis are a Zoroastrian ethnic group of the Indian subcontinent. By tradition, they descend from Persian refugees who left Iran during and after the Arab-Islamic conquest in the 7th century. They found sanctuary mainly in Gujarat and Maharashtra, and they stayed.

  This documentary follows several questions. How did a band of refugees persuade an Indian king to take them in? Who may call themselves a Parsi, and who may not? How did a farming people end up as brokers, shipowners and philanthropists? What do they do with their dead? And why do their numbers keep falling, even as DNA studies trace their ancestry back to the Neolithic?

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• 2. Sugar In The Milk

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  King Jadi Rana of Sanjan feared that his kingdom was already full. According to the legend, a Parsi priest answered by adding sugar to a vessel of milk. The point was that the newcomers would blend in and enrich local culture without causing disruption. The tale is known as Sugar in the Milk, and it is the foundational story of the Parsis in India.

  The king set conditions. In one telling, the refugees had to adopt Gujarati, the local language, and their women had to wear the sari. In another, the rules were to speak the local language, follow local marriage customs and carry no weapons. After the refugees pointed out many similarities between their faith and local beliefs, they were granted a plot of land for a fire temple.

  The settlement they founded was called Sanjan. It is said to be named after their city of origin near Merv, in modern Turkmenistan. The first group came from Greater Khorasan, a historic region of Central Asia that takes in part of northeastern Iran, parts of Afghanistan, and the republics of Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. A second group followed within five years, this time carrying religious implements called the alat. Both groups were reportedly known as Khorasanis or Kohistanis, meaning mountain folk. At least one more party is said to have come overland from Sari in Iran.

  The Qissa-i Sanjan is a 16th-century epic, composed at least six centuries after the tentative date of arrival. It is vague or contradictory about some elapsed periods. Scholars have therefore proposed three landing years: 716, 765 and 936. The disagreement has caused "many an intense battle... amongst Parsis". Parsi texts give no dates before the 18th century, so every proposed year remains speculation.

  The legend matters for another reason. It shows how the Parsis have come to see themselves and how they relate to the dominant culture. One scholar judged that even if the verbally transmitted chronicle is no more than a legend, it remains "an extremely informative document for Parsee historiography."

  The Qissa also leaves open why the refugees left. Henry Lord, a chaplain with the English East India Company, wrote in the 17th century that the Parsis came seeking "liberty of conscience". He added that they also arrived as "merchantmen bound for the shores of India, in course of trade and merchandise." If the traditional 8th-century date holds, the migration began while Zoroastrianism was still the main religion in Iran. Economic motives may then have come first, especially for people used to Silk Road trade.

  Zoroastrians were on the subcontinent even earlier. The Sasanian Empire (226-651) kept outposts in coastal Sindh. The 9th-century Arab historiographer Al-Masudi noted Zoroastrians with fire temples in al-Hind and al-Sindh. The harbours of Gujarat lay on maritime routes that complemented the overland Silk Road.

  Whatever brought them, the Sanjan settlers and their descendants moved on to South Gujarat. There they remained for about 800 years as a small agricultural community.

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• 3. A Name And Its Claimants

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  In 1322, a French monk named Jordanus briefly mentioned a people living in Thane and Bharuch. It is the first reference to the Parsis in a European language. Later travellers, first French and Portuguese and then English, wrote down a Europeanized form of an apparently local word.

  The Portuguese physician Garcia de Orta wrote in 1563 of merchants "known as Esparcis". He added, "We Portuguese call them Jews, but they are not so. They are Gentios."

  The people themselves were slower to adopt the word. Until the 17th century, Indian Zoroastrian texts used the Persian-origin terms Zartoshti, meaning Zoroastrian, and Vehdin, meaning "of the good religion". The earliest attested use of Parsi for Indian Zoroastrians is the 12th-century Sixteen Shlokas, a Sanskrit text in praise of the Parsis.

  The word itself was ancient. Parsi is a Persian demonym meaning inhabitant of Pars, and hence an ethnic Persian. An Assyrian inscription of Shalmaneser III, from about 854-824 BC, holds the earliest reference to Persians. Darius the Great, who ruled 521-486 BC, recorded at Naqsh-i-Rustam near Persepolis: "parsa parsahya puthra ariya ariyachitra". It means "a Persian, the son of a Persian, an Aryan, of Aryan family".

  In the 1750s, Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron made the first detailed report on the Parsis and their religion. He coined "Parseeism" because the word "Zoroastrianism" did not yet exist. He mistakenly assumed the Parsis were the only remaining followers of the faith. Scholars also note that Indians used Parsi for anyone from Greater Iran, much as Iranians used Hindu for anyone from the subcontinent. By the Qissa-i Sanjan's own account, heredity alone would make the Parsis Parthians.

  Who counts as a Parsi is a matter of great contention within the Indian Zoroastrian community. It is generally accepted that a Parsi is directly descended from the original Persian refugees and has been formally admitted to the faith through the navjote ceremony. The designation is ethno-religious, and the argument over it resembles the identity question among Jews. Some insist a child must have a Parsi father to be admitted. Most consider that a violation of the Zoroastrian tenet of gender equality.

  The courts weighed in with a ruling of 1909 by Justices Davar and Beaman. It held that a person could not become a Parsi by converting. It defined the community as Parsis of Zoroastrian parentage descended from the original emigrants, Zoroastrian Iranians, and the children of Parsi fathers and alien mothers who had been properly admitted to the religion. The equality principles of the Indian Constitution void the third clause. The second clause was overturned in 1948. On appeal in 1950 that ruling was upheld, and the entire 1909 definition was deemed an obiter dictum, a collateral opinion that is not legally binding. The finding was reaffirmed in 1966.

  Parsis are the elder of the subcontinent's two Zoroastrian communities. The other, the Iranis, descend from Zoroastrians who migrated from Qajar-era Iran, and they should not be confused with Iranians. Parsis speak Gujarati, while Iranis speak Dari. Law distinguishes the groups by origin and era of migration, yet the terms Parsi and Zoroastrian are commonly used interchangeably. No substantial differences exist in their religious principles, convictions and customs.

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• 4. Brokers Of Bombay

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  In 1702, an agent named Rustom Maneck was appointed the first broker to the East India Company, acquiring the name "Seth" in the process. He had probably already amassed a fortune under the Dutch and Portuguese. In the following years he and his Parsi associates widened the horizons of the larger Parsi community. By the mid-18th century, the brokerage houses of the Bombay Presidency were almost all in Parsi hands.

  Treaty had prepared the ground. In the early 17th century, Mughal emperor Jahangir and James I of England agreed a commercial treaty. It gave the East India Company exclusive rights to reside and build factories in Surat and other areas. Many Parsis, until then farming across Gujarat, moved to the English-run settlements to take the new jobs. In 1668 the Company leased the Seven Islands of Bombay from Charles II. Their deep harbour on the east coast suited the Company's first port in the subcontinent, and in 1687 it moved its headquarters there from Surat. The Parsis followed and soon held posts of trust in government and public works.

  Schooling gave them an edge. Literacy had once belonged to the priesthood alone, but British schools taught Parsi youth to read, write and understand the British establishment. That let them "represent themselves as being like the British", which they did more diligently than perhaps any other South Asian community. Colonial authorities often saw other Indians as "passive, ignorant, irrational, outwardly submissive but inwardly guileful". They credited the Parsis with the traits they ascribed to themselves.

  Observers kept saying so. Johan Albrecht de Mandelslo, in 1638, called the Parsis "diligent", "conscientious" and "skillful" in business. James Mackintosh, Recorder of Bombay from 1804 to 1811, described them as a small remnant of one of the mightiest nations of the ancient world. James Forbes, Collector of Broach, wrote in his Oriental Memoirs of 1770: "many of the principal merchants and owners of ships at Bombay and Surat are Parsees."

  The community had also quietly shed most of its social ladder. Perhaps soon after arriving, the Zoroastrians dropped every estate except the hereditary priesthood. Nobles, soldiers and civil servants, farmers and herdsmen, and artisans and labourers were folded into a single class, today called the behdini, "followers of daena". One translation of that term is "good religion". The change opened the gene pool somewhat, since marriage between classes had been exceedingly rare. It also erased boundaries along occupational lines. Colonial authorities, who had little patience with the complications of the Hindu caste system, were glad of that. In one example, a clerk from one caste would not deal with a clerk from another.

  In the 18th century, Parsi skill in shipbuilding and trade paid off in commerce between India and China, chiefly in timber, silk, cotton and opium. Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy gained most of his wealth through cotton and opium. Certain families gradually rose to prominence, among them Sorabji, Modi, Cama, Wadia, Jeejeebhoy, Readymoney, Dadyseth, Petit, Patel, Mehta, Allbless and Tata.

  Troubles between the remnant Mughal authorities and the rising Marathas isolated Surat politically and economically in the 1720s and 1730s. A number of Parsi families moved to the new city. In 1700, fewer than a handful of individuals appear as merchants in any records, yet by mid-century Parsi traders were one of Bombay's important commercial groups. Maneck's resources helped make Bombay the primary centre of Parsi habitation and work in the 1720s.

  In 1728, Rustom's eldest son Naoroz, later called Naorojee, founded the Bombay Parsi Panchayet. It began as an instrument of self-governance to help newly arriving Parsis with religious, social, legal and financial matters. By 1838 it was under attack for impropriety and nepotism. In 1855 the Bombay Times noted that it had no moral or legal authority to enforce its statutes, called the Bundobusts. A July 1856 ruling of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council denied it jurisdiction over Parsi marriage and divorce. The Panchayat was reduced to a government-recognized "Parsi Matrimonial Court". It was later reestablished to administer community property.

  The 1881 census counted 85,397 Parsis in colonial India, of whom 48,507 lived in Bombay. They made up around 6.7 percent of the city. It was the last time they would be considered a numerically significant minority there.

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• 5. Charity And Public Life

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  In 1689, the Anglican chaplain John Ovington wrote of the Maneck family at Surat that they "assist the poor". He praised their "universal kindness" and said they did not "suffer a beggar in all their tribe". Maneck's generosity is the first documented instance of Parsi philanthropy.

  A maxim runs, "Parsi, thy name is charity". In Sanskrit, the word parsi means "one who gives alms", although the people's name comes from the Persian word for a Persian. Mahatma Gandhi wrote in a much misquoted statement: "I am proud of my country, India, for having produced the splendid Zoroastrian stock, in numbers beneath contempt, but in charity and philanthropy perhaps unequaled and certainly unsurpassed."

  By the mid-19th century, the Parsis were keenly aware that their numbers were declining, and they saw education as a remedy. In 1842, Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy established the Parsi Benevolent Fund to improve the condition of poor Parsis around Surat through education. In 1849 the community opened its first school. It was co-educational, a novelty then, though it was soon split into separate schools for boys and girls. In 1854, Dinshaw Maneckji Petit founded the Persian Zoroastrian Amelioration Fund to help his co-religionists in Iran. The fund persuaded a number of Iranian Zoroastrians to emigrate to India, where they became known as Iranis. Its emissary, Maneckji Limji Hataria, helped win a remission of the jizya for them in 1882.

  A dense network of institutions followed. The Parsis ran community medical centres, ambulance corps, Scouting troops, clubs and Masonic Lodges. They kept their own charitable foundations, housing estates, legal institutions and courts. The old symbols of language, arts, crafts and dress grew into Parsi theatre, literature, newspapers, magazines and schools. No longer weavers and petty merchants, they established banks, mills, heavy industry, shipyards and shipping companies.

  Dadabhai Naoroji, the first Asian to hold a seat in the British Parliament, spoke for the community's loyalties: "Whether I am a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a Parsi, a Christian, or of any other creed, I am above all an Indian. Our country is India; our nationality is Indian." Pherozeshah Mehta, Naoroji and Bhikaiji Cama were prominent in the independence movement. Most Parsis opposed the partition of undivided India.

  In science and industry, the physicist Homi J. Bhabha and the nuclear scientist Homi N. Sethna stand out. Jamsetji Tata is regarded as the "Father of Indian Industry", and J. R. D. Tata and Ratan Tata carried the name forward. The construction tycoon Pallonji Mistry and Cyrus Mistry belong to another leading family. The Godrej, Petit, Cowasjee, Poonawalla and Wadia families are also important industrial names, and Cyrus Poonawalla's son is Adar Poonawalla. Nariman Point in Mumbai is named after a Parsi, and Malabar Hill is home to several prominent Parsis.

  Marriage tied some of these families to larger stories. Rattanbai Petit, wife of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, was born into the Petit and Tata families. Their daughter Dina Jinnah married the Parsi industrialist Neville Wadia. Feroze Gandhi, husband of Indira Gandhi and son-in-law of Jawaharlal Nehru, was a Parsi with ancestral roots in Bharuch.

  The military also drew Parsi officers. Sam Manekshaw, architect of India's victory in the 1971 war, was the first Indian Army officer appointed Field Marshal. Admiral Jal Cursetji was the first Parsi Chief of the Naval Staff. Aspy Engineer served as the second Chief of Air Staff after independence, and Fali Homi Major as the 18th. Vice Admiral R. F. Contractor served as the 17th Chief of the Indian Coast Guard. Lieutenant Colonel Ardeshir Burjorji Tarapore was killed in action in the 1965 Indo-Pakistan war and received the Param Vir Chakra posthumously. Some link the Zoroastrian Faravahar symbol, a winged figure, with the community's affinity for flight.

  In cricket, Nari Contractor, Rusi Modi, Farokh Engineer and Polly Umrigar were renowned. The composer Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji and the conductor Zubin Mehta came from the community. So did the authors Rohinton Mistry, Firdaus Kanga and Bapsi Sidhwa, and the film pioneer Rattana Pestonji of Thailand. The law produced Fali S. Nariman, Nani Ardeshir Palkhivala, Soli Sorabjee and Dorab Patel, Pakistan's first Parsi Supreme Court Justice. Mithan Jamshed Lam was the first female barrister. The roll of names ends with Homai Vyarawalla, India's first female photojournalist, and Kobad Ghandy, a Naxalite leader and intellectual.

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• 6. Disputes Of Faith

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  Between the 13th century and the late 16th century, the Zoroastrian priests of Gujarat sent twenty-two requests for religious guidance to their co-religionists in Iran. The replies were carefully preserved as the rivayats, or epistles, and span the years 1478-1766. The Gujarat priests apparently believed the Iranians were better informed and had kept the old tradition more faithfully. Some questions seem trivial today. Rivayat 376 asks whether ink prepared by a non-Zoroastrian is suitable for copying Avestan texts. The ink question betrays a fear of assimilation and lost identity that dominates the collection and persists into the 21st century. Asked whether non-Zoroastrians, called Juddins, could be admitted, the reply in R237 and R238 was that it was acceptable, even meritorious.

  Jurisdiction caused trouble at home. Two centuries after the landing, Parsis began settling elsewhere in Gujarat, and priestly boundaries became hard to define. By 1290 the problem was settled by dividing Gujarat into five panthaks, each under one priestly family and its descendants. Disputes over the Atash Bahram, the Fire of Victory established at Sanjan and later moved to Navsari, ended with its move to Udvada in 1742. Jurisdiction there rotates among the five panthak families.

  Inscriptions at the Kanheri Caves near Mumbai suggest that Middle Persian remained the literary language of the hereditary priesthood until at least the early 11th century. In the 12th and 13th centuries, priests produced "masterly" Sanskrit translations of the Avesta and its commentaries.

  Until about the 12th century, all Zoroastrians followed the same 365-day religious calendar, little changed since the reforms of Ardashir I, who ruled 226-241 AD. It ignored the fractional days of a solar year, so it drifted out of step with the seasons. Sometime between 1125 and 1250, the Parsis inserted an embolismic month to correct the drift. They were the only Zoroastrians to do so, and they did it once. Their calendar and that of Zoroastrians elsewhere now differed by thirty days. Both kept the name Shahenshahi, meaning imperial, presumably because nobody knew they had diverged.

  In 1745, the Parsis in and around Surat switched to the Kadmi calendar on the advice of priests convinced that the calendar of the ancient homeland must be correct. They denigrated the Shahenshahi calendar as "royalist". In 1906, attempts to reunite the two camps produced a third calendar, the Fasli, modelled on an 11th-century Seljuk calendar. It had a leap day every four years and a New Year on the vernal equinox. It was the only calendar always in harmony with the seasons. Most Parsis rejected it because it did not accord with injunctions in Zoroastrian tradition (Dēnkard 3.419).

  Today the majority of Parsis follow their version of the Shahenshahi calendar. The Kadmi calendar keeps adherents among the Parsis of Surat and Bharuch. The Fasli calendar has no significant Parsi following. It is compatible with the Bastani calendar, an Iranian development, and predominates among the Zoroastrians of Iran.

  Some prayers name months or belong to certain times of year, so the question of which calendar is correct has theological weight. In the late 18th or early 19th century, Phiroze Kaus Dastur, a highly influential head priest of the Dadyseth Atash-Behram in Bombay, was a staunch Kadmi. He became convinced that visitors from Iran pronounced the prayers correctly. He altered some prayers, and all Kadmi adherents accepted the changes as more ancient. Scholars of Avestan counter that the difference comes from a vowel shift that happened only in Iran. The Iranian pronunciation is therefore the more recent one.

  In the 1780s, emotions over the calendar ran so high that violence occasionally erupted. In 1783, a Shahenshahi resident of Bharuch named Homaji Jamshedji was sentenced to death for kicking a young Kadmi woman and causing her to miscarry. Of the eight Atash-Behrams in India, three follow the Kadmi pronunciation and calendar, and five are Shahenshahi. The Fasalis have none of their own.

  Pressure also came from outside. John Wilson wrote in 1843 that Zoroastrians practised "polytheism", which English and American missionaries ranked below their own "monotheism". Zoroastrianism then lacked theologians of its own, so the community was poorly equipped to reply. The linguist Martin Haug supplied an answer in the 1860s and 1870s by reading Zoroastrian scripture in Christian terms. He compared the yazatas to angels, and the Amesha Spentas to the archangel retinue of Ahura Mazda. The Parsis gratefully accepted this reading. Today the gloss of yazata as angel is almost universally accepted.

  A different school, the Ilm-e-Khshnoom, meaning science of ecstasy or science of bliss, reads the religious texts in a mystic and esoteric way. Its adherents say their faith is preserved by a clan of 2,000 people called the Saheb-e-Dilan, or Masters of the Heart. These people are said to live in isolation in the Caucasus or in the Alborz range around Mount Damavand. The sect was founded in Surat in the last decades of the 19th century. Its largest community lives in Jogeshwari, a suburb of Bombay. There it has its own fire temple, the Behramshah Nowroji Shroff Daremeher, its own housing colony, Behram Baug, and its own newspaper, Parsi Pukar.

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• 7. Rites And Towers

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  Zoroastrians do not initiate infants by baptism. A child enters the faith at the navjote ceremony, once old enough to recite the required prayers with the priest. No age is fixed, though the ideal is before puberty and preferably after seven years. A navjote cannot be performed on an adult. Parsis traditionally do not hold adult navjotes, except for descendants of Parsis who want to join. The Iranian equivalent, the sedreh-pushti, can be done at any age for anyone wanting to convert.

  The ceremony begins with a ritual bath and a prayer of spiritual cleansing. The child changes into white pajama pants, a shawl and a small cap. After introductory prayers, the child receives the sacred shirt, called the sudre, and the cord, called the kusti. The child faces the main priest, and fire is brought in to represent God. When the priest finishes the prayers, the initiation is complete.

  Purity and pollution, called nasu, lie behind many such rites. Purity is held to be the essence of godliness, and pollution exists to destroy it through the death of a human. A Zoroastrian priest spends his entire life dedicated to a holy life. Fasting is considered forbidden because it weakens the body, and weakening the body is sin. Parsis nonetheless took from the Hindus the idea of fasting at a funeral.

  Marriage is very important to the Parsis, who believe they must procreate to extend God's kingdom. Child marriages were common until the mid-19th century, though they were never part of religious doctrine. The practice ended when social reform arrived in India. Today the problem is a shortage of brides. Women in the community are 97 percent literate, 42 percent have completed high school or college, and 29 percent hold jobs that pay substantially. Many therefore delay marriage or skip it.

  The wedding begins, like the initiation, with a cleansing bath. The bride and groom travel to the ceremony in florally decorated cars, and priests from both families officiate. The couple first face each other with a sheet blocking their view. Wool is passed over them seven times to bind them together. Each then throws rice at the partner, symbolizing dominance. Finally they sit side by side to face the priest.

  Fire stands for the presence of Ahura Mazda, and temples are ranked by the grade of their fire. Festivals were originally held in the open air, and temples were uncommon until later. Wealthy Parsis built most of them, wanting centres that housed purity. The Atash Behram is the highest grade. Its fire is prepared for an entire year before installation, and is then cared for to the highest possible degree. The Dar-i Mihr is the second type, with less intense preparation. About 160 of them stand across India.

  Death brings the strictest rules. A separate part of the home is set aside for the corpse. The priest arrives to say prayers that cleanse sins and affirm the faith of the deceased. Fire is brought in, and the washed body is clothed in a sudre and kusti. A circle is drawn around the body, and only the bearers may enter it. The procession walks to the cemetery in pairs, linked by white fabric. A dog is essential because it can see death.

  The body goes to the tower of death, where vultures feed on it. Once the sun has bleached the bones, they are pushed into a circular opening in the centre. Earth, fire and water are sacred and must not be defiled by the dead, so burial and cremation have always been prohibited. Mourning lasts four days. Instead of graves, charities are founded in honour of the dead. Most Parsis still follow the practice and see it as the final act of charity by the deceased.

  In Mumbai and Karachi, the vulture population has fallen sharply. The causes are urbanization and antibiotics and the anti-inflammatory drug diclofenac, used on humans and livestock, which harm vultures. The result is the Indian vulture crisis. Bodies now take much longer to decompose. Solar panels installed at the Towers of Silence to speed the process have only partly worked, especially in the monsoon.

  A Parsi graveyard established in Peshawar in the late 19th century is unique because it has no Tower of Silence. The Mumbai tower stands at Doongerwadi on Malabar Hill. In Karachi it stands in Parsi Colony, near the Chanesar Goth and Mehmoodabad localities.

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• 8. Numbers And Roots

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  The British census of 1891 counted 89,904 Parsis in India. Of these, 47,458 or 52 percent lived in Bombay. Another 5,893 lived in Surat, 4,452 in Navsari, 2,243 in Bharuch, 1,695 in Poona and 1,375 in Karachi. The remaining 24,141, or 26 percent, lived elsewhere.

  The National Commission for Minorities lists a variety of causes for the steady decline since, the most significant being childlessness and migration. Migration explains one-fifth of the decrease, with sizeable Parsi communities in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and the United States. A birthrate lower than the deathrate accounts for the rest. As of 2001, Parsis over 60 made up 31 percent of the community. Only 4.7 percent were under 6, which translates to 7 births per year per 1,000 individuals. The population did rise by 233 between 2013 and 2020.

  The 2001 figures show other contrasts. The ratio was 1,050 women to 1,000 men, up from 1,024 in 1991, against a national average of 933 women. The cause is a high median age, because elderly women outnumber elderly men. Literacy among Parsis was 99.1 percent, the highest of any Indian community, against a national 78.5 percent. About 97.1 percent lived in urban areas, compared with 27.8 percent nationally. In the Greater Mumbai area, about 13 percent of Parsi women and 24 percent of Parsi men do not marry.

  Some Parsis have gone back to Iran, though their number is small beside the Zoroastrian community there. Their presence strengthened ties between Iranian and Indian Zoroastrians. They also served as a reminder of Iran's ancient heritage, and showed that one could be modern and culturally authentic at once.

  In 1932, Reza Shah invited Dinshah Irani, founder of the Iranian Zoroastrian Anjoman and the Iran League in India, to visit as part of a Parsi delegation. Irani received honours and a message for the Parsi community. It said: "You Parsis are as much the children of this soil as any other Iranis, and so you are as much entitled to have your proper share in its development as any other nationals." The Shah added: "We do not want you to come all bag and baggage; just wait a little and watch." Reza Shah and Muhammad Reza Shah both encouraged Parsis to invest. Reza Shah adopted Zoroastrian calendar names and placed the Fravahar symbol on prominent government buildings. He also kept a close relationship with the Zoroastrian parliamentary representative Keikhosrow Shahrokh.

  In the 1930s, Parsis discussed buying land in Iran for a Parsi colony. Sir Hormusji C. Adenwala proposed raising funds in Bombay for the purpose, with support from the Iranian government and Reza Shah. The Iran League Quarterly gave information on the legal and economic aspects of land purchase. Land near Bandar-e Shapur was thought particularly valuable because of government plans for the port. Similar colonies were considered for Yazd and Kerman. Textiles were seen as a promising field, which led to the Khorsovi Textile Mill in Mashhad under joint Parsi and Iranian ownership.

  DNA tests have brought mixed results. A study in Genome Biology using high-density SNP data found the Parsis genetically closer to Iranian populations than to their South Asian neighbours. They share the most haplotypes with present-day Iranians, and mixing with Indian populations was estimated to have occurred about 1,200 years ago. They are closer to Neolithic Iranians than to modern Iranians, who received more recent genes from the Near East.

  A 2023 study was the first to examine maternal ancestry with high-resolution mitochondrial markers. Parsi mitogenomes, marked by the haplogroup M3a1 + 204, share a clade with both Middle Eastern and South Asian individuals. This haplogroup was also common among the medieval Swat valley population and appeared in two Roopkund A individuals. A 2017 study found 48 percent South-Asian-specific mitochondrial lineages in ancient samples. That would make the Parsis about three-quarters Iranian and one-quarter Indian.

  The Parsis of Pakistan show a sharp split between their two kinds of DNA. Their Y-chromosome DNA resembles that of Iranians, which agrees with historical records. Their mitochondrial DNA is another story. Haplogroup M, common in India, appears in 55 percent of Parsis but only 1.7 percent of a combined Iranian sample. Despite the small population, the diversity in both lineages makes a strong drift effect improbable. The studies point to a male-mediated migration, in which Parsi ancestors from Iran joined the local female population during early settlement. That explains the loss of Iranian mitochondrial DNA.

  The studies also note an absence of lung cancer-related mutational signals, which fits the community's non-smoking customs. Parsis show a high prevalence of longevity as a genetic feature. They have also shown high rates of breast cancer, bladder cancer, glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency and Parkinson's disease.

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