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Caught between Two Nationalisms: The Iran League of Bombay and the political anxieties of an Indian minority

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 June 2020

DINYAR PATEL*
Affiliation:
S.P. Jain Institute of Management and Research Email: dinyar.patel@gmail.com

Abstract

In 1922, a group of wealthy Parsis in Bombay founded an organization that they dubbed the Iran League. Originally designed to assist their fellow Zoroastrians in Iran, who had suffered from centuries of oppression, the League quickly expanded its objectives to include the promotion of broader Indo-Iranian cultural and economic relations. It became a major player in the flow of ideas, literature, business, and tourist traffic between the two countries. Parsi fervour for Iran stemmed from the brand of Iranian nationalism promoted by Reza Shah, which celebrated the country's Zoroastrian past. In response, the League's leaders argued that the Parsis of India could play a special role in the ‘regeneration’ of Iran under the shah's supposedly benign rule. By the 1930s, however, Parsis’ embrace of Iranian nationalism became a clear reflection of their deep concerns about Indian nationalist politics: they cast Iran as an idealized alternative to contemporary India, where the Indian National Congress had supposedly taken an ominously ‘anti-Parsi’ turn. The Iran League, therefore, was caught between two nationalisms. Worry about India's future even prompted some Parsis to argue that their community should ‘return’ to their ancestral homeland of Iran. The story of the Iran League thus demonstrates the complex position of minorities vis-à-vis the brands of nationalism in development during the interwar years. The Parsis, a wealthy but microscopic minority, responded to political anxieties at home by romanticizing a foreign country and taking part in a wholly foreign nationalist project.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

The author would like to thank Isabel Huacuja Alonso, Afshin Marashi, and Murali Ranganathan for reading earlier drafts of this article and providing their comments and suggestions. He is particularly grateful to Marashi for sharing the unpublished manuscript of his forthcoming book, Exile and the Nation: The Parsi Community of India and the Making of Modern Iran (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2020). Exile and the Nation has been cited as an unpublished manuscript in the footnotes that follow.

References

1 In 1934, Reza Shah changed the name of his country from Persia to Iran, a decision that reflected many of the particular politics and nationalist ideas discussed below. For the sake of consistency, I have chosen to only use the term Iran in this article. Marker, Kekobad Ardeshir, A Petal from the Rose (Karachi: Rosette, 1985), p. 164Google Scholar.

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3 By the 1930s, the Zoroastrian population of Yazd was estimated to number around 12,000. This was a major increase from the 1850s, when Manekji Limji Hataria stunned Bombay Parsis with his findings that only 7,000 Zoroastrians remained in all of Iran. Boyce, Mary, Zoroastrians: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices (New York: Routledge, 1979), pp. 222, 210Google Scholar; Marker, A Petal from the Rose, pp. 163–64.

4 Marker, A Petal from the Rose, pp. 164–65, 169.

5 For work on the longer, pre-nineteenth century history of interaction between Parsis and Iranian Zoroastrians, see, in particular, Maneck, Susan Stiles, The Death of Ahriman: Culture, Identity, and Theological Change among the Parsis of India (Bombay: K. R. Cama Oriental Institute, 1997)Google Scholar; and Sheffield, Daniel J., In the Path of the Prophet: Medieval and Early Modern Narratives of the Life of Zarathustra in Islamic Iran and Western India (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 2012)Google Scholar. For scholarly work covering Parsi assistance to Iranian Zoroastrians in the second half of the nineteenth century, including the career of Manekji Limji Hataria, see Boyce, Mary, ‘Manekji Limji Hataria in Iran’, in K. R. Cama Oriental Institute Golden Jubilee Volume (Bombay: K. R. Cama Oriental Institute, 1969), pp. 1931Google Scholar; Amighi, Janet Kestenberg, The Zoroastrians of Iran: Conversion, Assimilation, or Persistence (New York: AMS Press, 1990)Google Scholar; and Ringer, Monica M., Pious Citizens: Reforming Zoroastrianism in India and Iran (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2011)Google Scholar. For Manekji and Iranian nationalism, see n. 7 below.

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10 For a recent work that demonstrates that the idea of Pakistan was popularly debated among North Indian Muslims—rather than simply being a vague political slogan or a matter of high politics—see Dhulipala, Venkat, Creating a New Medina: State Power, Islam, and the Quest for Pakistan in Late Colonial North India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015)Google Scholar. For work on Muslims who contested the two nation theory and the idea of Pakistan, see Qasmi, Ali Usman and Robb, Megan Eaton (eds), Muslims against the Muslim League: Critiques of the Idea of Pakistan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018)Google Scholar.

11 For more on Sikh demands in the 1940s, see Jalal, Ayesha, Self and Sovereignty: Individual and Community in South Asian Islam since 1850 (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 433–36Google Scholar.

12 The 1931 Indian census recorded a Parsi population of 108,988 people. This number had increased to 114,890 by the time of the 1941 census. At the time, most Parsis lived in Bombay (home to 63,757 Parsis according to the 1941 census) and southern Gujarat, with other large centres in Poona, Karachi, and Calcutta. There were also smaller, but still influential, communities in Rangoon, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Delhi, Madras, and elsewhere in India, in addition to notable settlements abroad in Hong Kong, Shanghai, London, Singapore, and Aden. For census data, see Leela Visaria, ‘Demographic Transition among Parsis: 1881–1971: I—Size of Parsi Population’, Economic and Political Weekly, 12 October 1974, p. 1737.

13 The League's objectives were occasionally published at the beginning of the Iran League Quarterly. See, for example, the January–April 1938 edition.

14 For more on Parsi philanthropy, see Hinnells, John R., ‘The Flowering of Zoroastrian Benevolence: Parsi Charities in the 19th and 20th Centuries’, in Acta Iranica: Papers in Honor of Professor Mary Boyce (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1985), pp. 261326Google Scholar.

15 Joshi, Ambelal N., Life and Times of Sir Hormusjee C. Dinshaw (Bombay: D. B. Taraporevala Sons and Co., 1939), p. 117Google Scholar.

16 ‘Persia for Parsis: Aga Khan's Advice to Iran League’, Times of India, 25 January 1926, p. 11.

17 ‘Notes and News’, Iran League Quarterly, October 1930, p. 235.

18 ‘Notes and News’, Iran League Quarterly, July 1930, p. 112.

19 ‘Feroze Behram Middle School’, Iran League Quarterly, January 1933, pp. 109–11.

20 Many of these girls’ schools were funded and administered by the Iranian Zoroastrian Anjuman, a sister organization led by the Iran League's vice-president, Dinshah J. Irani. Boyce, ‘Manekji Limji Hataria in Iran’, p. 29; Hinnells, ‘The Flowering of Zoroastrian Benevolence’, p. 283.

21 ‘The Education Movement among the Zoroastrians of Iran’, Iran League Quarterly, July 1930, pp. 77–78, 80.

22 ‘Feroze Behram Middle School’, pp. 109, 111.

23 K. A. Fitter, ‘Summary of Work Done by the Iran League between September, 1931 and September, 1934’, Iran League Quarterly, April 1937, p. 190.

24 ‘Anowshirwan Dadgar High School in Teheran’, Iran League Quarterly, January 1940, p. 89.

25 For an article by Hedayat, see ‘The Zand-e Vohuman Yasn’, Iran League Quarterly, April 1938, pp. 18–29 (Persian section); for an article by Iqbal, see ‘“Soul-Image”, Zoroastrianism, and Islam: A Philosophical Critique’, Bulletin of the Iran League, August 1928, pp. 19–20.

26 ‘To Our Advertisers and Subscribers’, Iran League Quarterly, April 1937, p. 137.

27 ‘The Editor's Notes’, Iran League Quarterly, October 1931, pp. 5–6, 3, 4.

28 For a translation of and commentary on the most famous account of this migration, see Williams, Alan, The Zoroastrian Myth of Migration from Iran and Settlement in the Indian Diaspora: Text, Translation and Analysis of the 16th Century Qesse-Ye Sanjān, ‘The Story of Sanjan’ (Leiden: Brill, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Navroze C. Mehta, ‘Rumi and His Teachings’, Iran League Quarterly, October 1937, pp. 49–60; N. C. Mehta, ‘Teachings of Sa'adi’, Iran League Quarterly, July 1938, pp. 205–08; N. C. Mehta, ‘Some Well-Known Doctrines of the Sufis’, Iran League Quarterly, January 1939, pp. 101–08.

30 ‘Persian Gems’, Iran League Quarterly, July 1930, p. 25.

31 ‘Notes and News’, July 1930, pp. 108–09.

32 Paymaster, Rustom Burjorji (ed.), Writings of G. K. Nariman (Bombay: Captain Printing Works, 1935), p. iiGoogle Scholar.

33 ‘Suggestion Made by Mr. G. K. Nariman Regarding Publicity Visit of Mr. Nariman to the Malabar Disturbed Areas’, 1922: National Archives of India, New Delhi (hereafter NAI), Home Department—Political, p. 320.

34 Introductory Note’, in Rezwi, Syed M. Taher, Parsis: A People of the Book (Calcutta: Imperial Art Cottage, 1928), p. xliGoogle Scholar.

35 Sic. Nariman, G. K., Persia and Parsis (Bombay: Iran League, 1925), pp. v, viii–ixGoogle Scholar. For more on the series of publications funded by Peshotanji Marker, see Marashi, ‘Parsi Textual Philanthropy’.

36 Paymaster (ed.), Writings of G. K. Nariman, pp. iv, i.

37 Rezwi, Parsis: A People of the Book, p. 95.

38 Rezwi, Syed M. Taher, ‘Parallel Thoughts in Islam and Zoroastrianism’, in Dinshah Irani Memorial Volume (Bombay: Dinshah J. Irani Memorial Fund Committee, 1943), p. 154Google Scholar.

39 Rezwi, Parsis: A People of the Book, pp. xli, v.

40 For more on Irani, see Marashi, ‘Patron and Patriot’.

41 ‘Address and Souvenir Presented to Prof. Pour-e Dawoud’, Iran League Quarterly, July 1934, p. 229.

42 Marashi, ‘Patron and Patriot’, pp. 196, 201.

43 Bose, Sugata, A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), pp. 235, 261CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44 Dinshah J. Irani, ‘Regenerated Iran’, Iran League Quarterly, July 1932, pp. 191–92. For a detailed study of Tagore's visit, see Marashi, Afshin, ‘Imagining Hāfez: Rabindranath Tagore in Iran, 1932’, Journal of Persianate Studies 3, no. 1 (2010), pp. 4677CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 Irani, ‘Regenerated Iran’, pp. 203–04.

46 Fitter, ‘Summary of Work Done by the Iran League between September, 1931 and September, 1934’, April 1937, p. 191.

47 Persian Pictorial Series (Bombay: Iran League, n.d.).

48 For more on the Firdausi Millenary, see Marashi, Nationalizing Iran, Chapter 4.

49 K. A. Fitter, ‘Firdawsi Memorial Clock Tower in Yezd’, Iran League Quarterly, January 1935, p. 94.

50 ‘Firdausi Tusi: Great Patriot and Poet of Iran’, Iran League Quarterly, January 1941, n.p.

51 The road retains the name to this day. ‘Firdausi Road’, Iran League Quarterly, April 1935, n.p.

52 For more on the multifarious connections between Bombay and Iran, see Green, Nile, Bombay Islam: The Religious Economy of the Western Indian Ocean, 1840–1915 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53 One Jeena advertisement can be found at the beginning of the April–July 1930 Iran League Quarterly edition.

54 Kharegat, Rustam, A Tourist Guide to Iran (Bombay: Caxton Press, 1935), p. viiGoogle Scholar. As is hinted by Bulsara's suggestion concerning ‘young men’ and Jeena's tours ‘For Gentlemen Only’, Parsi tourism to Iran had much to do with Parsi ideas of masculinity in the early twentieth century. By the 1930s, there were deep worries in the community that Parsi men were becoming less industrious and enterprising. A reminder of ‘past glories’ in Iran, therefore, could serve as a powerful antidote to this perceived trend. For more on Parsi masculinity, see Luhrmann, The Good Parsi, Chapter 3.

55 For more on the Government of India Act and its ramifications, see Muldoon, Andrew, Empire, Politics and the Creation of the 1935 India Act: The Last Act of the Raj (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009)Google Scholar.

56 ‘The Editor's Notes’, Iran League Quarterly, January 1937, p. 82.

57 ‘Parsis and Regenerated Iran’, Iran League Quarterly, October 1931, p. 49.

58 ‘Notes and News’, July 1930, p. 107.

59 Ibid.; Marker, A Petal from the Rose, p. 178.

60 Rustom P. Masani, ‘With Dinshah Irani in New Iran’, in Dinshah Irani Memorial Volume, pp. xv–xvi.

62 K. A. Fitter, ‘The Khosrovi Spg. & Wvg. Co., Ltd., Meshed—Iran’, Iran League Quarterly, July 1936, p. 232.

63 Fitter, ‘Summary of Work Done by the Iran League between September, 1931 and September, 1934’, April 1937, p. 195.

64 Pherozshah Sorabji Gazdar, ‘Impressions of a Second Visit to Iran’, Iran League Quarterly, October 1938, pp. 64–65. Marker, A Petal from the Rose, p. 178, notes that Parsis later divested their interests in the Khosrovi Spinning and Weaving Company.

65 Fitter, ‘Summary of Work Done by the Iran League between September, 1931 and September, 1934’, April 1937, p. 193.

66 Saklatvala, Phiroz D., The Rich Fields in Persia (Bombay: Iran League, 1933), pp. 1920Google Scholar.

67 K. A. Fitter, ‘Summary of Work Done by the Iran League between September, 1931 and September, 1934’, Iran League Quarterly, July 1937, p. 263.

68 Fish, Laura, ‘The Bombay Interlude: Parsi Transnational Aspirations in the First Persian Sound Film’, Transnational Cinemas 9, no. 2 (2018), pp. 197211CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘Dokhtar-e-Lore’, Iran League Quarterly, June 1933, pp. 272–73; ‘Bombay Films for Persia’, Times of India, 16 July 1934, p. 3.

69 ‘A Persian Talkie of “Leila-Majnoon”’, Times of India, 12 June 1936, p. 7.

70 Naficy, Hamid, A Social History of Iranian Cinema (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), Vol. 1, pp. 274–75Google Scholar.

71 F. J. Vaziri, ‘Women's Rights in Ancient Iran’, Iran League Quarterly, October 1934, p. 39.

72 Marashi, Exile and the Nation, Chapter 5.

73 ‘Notes and News’, Iran League Quarterly, July 1931, pp. 387–91; Saif Azad, ‘Iran-e-Bastan’, Iran League Quarterly, April 1932, pp. 158–60.

74 ‘Distinguished Persian Journalist in Bombay’, Bombay Chronicle, 9 July 1931, p. 7.

75 ‘The “Messenger” from Persia’, Bombay Chronicle, 20 June 1931, p. 13.

76 ‘Parsis Must Go to Persia’, Bombay Chronicle, 6 July 1931, p. 7.

77 Marashi, Exile and the Nation, Chapter 5; ‘The Editor's Notes’, October 1931, p. 3.

78 Meherban S. Irani, ‘His Majesty Reza Shah Pehlavi’, Iran League Quarterly, July 1930, pp. 4, 9.

79 Irani, ‘Regenerated Iran’, p. 205; Masani, ‘With Dinshah Irani in New Iran’, p. xxiii; ‘The Editor's Notes’, Iran League Quarterly, April 1938, p. 73.

80 Katouzian, State and Society in Iran, pp. 328–37.

81 Irani, ‘Regenerated Iran’, p. 194.

82 See, for example, pictures of the newly completed White Bridge in Ahwaz in the Iran League Quarterly, January 1937, or an image of unveiled women and fedora-hatted men walking along a Tehran street in the Iran League Quarterly, October 1937. ‘The Iranians are in their elements in Western garments’ reads the caption of the latter image.

83 Katouzian, State and Society in Iran, p. 331.

84 Sic. ‘Opening Ceremony of the Trans-Iranian Railway’, Iran League Quarterly, July 1938, p. 209.

85 For the earliest example of a celebratory account in the English language, see Karaka, Dosabhai Framji, The Parsees: Their History, Manners, Customs, and Religion (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1858)Google Scholar.

86 Ardeshirji Reporter, ‘Iran Revived’, Iran League Quarterly, April 1932, p. 155; ‘The Editor's Notes’, Iran League Quarterly, April 1932, p. 73.

87 Gool Burjorji Pavree, ‘Old Iranian Society’, Iran League Quarterly, July 1938, p. 191.

88 ‘The Editor's Notes’, Iran League Quarterly, July 1938, pp. 153–54; ‘The Editor's Notes’, Iran League Quarterly, October 1932, p. 3.

89 Sohrab N. Batliwalla, ‘Some Great Poets of Iran: Were they Zoroastrians?’, Iran League Quarterly, January 1937, pp. 68–74.

90 Navroze C. Mehta, ‘Sufism and Symbolism in Persian Poetry’, Iran League Quarterly, January 1937, p. 89.

91 Sohrab Bulsara, ‘Persia, Past and Present’, Iran League Quarterly, October 1931, pp. 40–41; Sohrab Bulsara, ‘Ancient Iranian Civilization’, Iran League Quarterly, January 1933, pp. 119–29.

92 Behram H. Suntook, ‘Ancient Iran: A Retrospect’, Iran League Quarterly, January 1937, p. 105; Behram H. Suntook, ‘Ancient Iran: A Retrospect’, Iran League Quarterly, April 1937, pp. 172–73.

93 For the pseudo-scientific ideas of Turkish linguists, see Aytürk, Ilker, ‘Turkish Linguists against the West: The Origins of Linguistic Nationalism in Atatürk's Turkey’, Middle Eastern Studies 40, no. 6 (November 2004), pp. 125CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For discussion of how Tamil intellectuals received and reinterpreted the late-Victorian idea of the lost continent of Lemuria, which they dubbed Kumarikkantam by the 1930s, see Ramaswamy, Sumathi, The Lost Land of Lemuria: Fabulous Geographies, Catastrophic Histories (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

94 For roughly contemporaneous writings by Hindu ideologues which have become foundational works of Hindu nationalist pseudo-history, see Savarkar, V. D., Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? (Bombay: Veer Savarkar Prakashan, 1969) (first published in 1923)Google Scholar; and Golwalkar, M. S., We, or, Our Nationhood Defined (Nagpur: Bharat Publications, 1939)Google Scholar.

95 ‘Address and Souvenir Presented to Prof. Pour-e Dawoud’, p. 233.

96 ‘The Editor's Notes’, October 1931, p. 4.

97 For more on the controversy concerning Nariman and Kher, see Guha, Ramachandra, Gandhi: The Years that Changed the World, 1914–1948 (Gurgaon: Penguin Random House India, 2018), pp. 527–28Google Scholar.

98 ‘The Editor's Notes’, Iran League Quarterly, July 1937, p. 219.

99 ‘The Editor's Notes’, Iran League Quarterly, April 1939, pp. 153–55.

100 Ibid., p. 155.

101 ‘The Editor's Notes’, Iran League Quarterly, January 1940, p. 51.

102 John Hinnells notes that in 1905 some community members floated the idea of establishing a ‘Parsistan’ somewhere in the rugged borderlands between Iran and Afghanistan. This seems to be the closest that Parsis came to flirting with the idea of their own nation. See Hinnells, ‘Social Change and Religious Transformation’, pp. 194–95.

103 Irani, ‘Regenerated Iran’, p. 206.

104 O. G. Ohanian [Ovanes Ohanians], ‘The Parsi Community and the Indian Film Industry’, Iran League Quarterly, October 1938, p. 59. For more on Ohanians, see Naficy, A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Vol. 1, pp. 209–21.

105 H. I. Mookri, ‘Rationalism in Youthful Iran’, Iran League Quarterly, October 1937, p. 41; Shahrookh Y. Mobasser, ‘My Rambles Round the World’, ibid., p. 44.

106 Fitter, ‘Summary of Work Done by the Iran League between September, 1931 and September, 1934’, April 1937, p. 189.

107 Sohrab N. Batliwalla, ‘Modern Iranians’ Homage to Zarathushtra and his Religion’, Iran League Quarterly, April 1939, p. 188.

108 Jehangir C. Tavadia, ‘The Best Form of Aryanism is Zoroastrianism’, Iran League Quarterly, October 1935, pp. 17–21.

109 Nanabhai F. Mama, ‘The Rev. Dr Otoman Zar'adusht Ha'nish’, Iran League Quarterly, October 1937, pp. 45–48. The Iran League also gave coverage to ‘Dastur Sraosha’ A. Kaul, a German immigrant who formed a ‘Reorganized Mazdaznan Temple Association’ in San Diego in 1917. For more on the Mazdaznan movement and Kaul, see Stausberg, Michael, ‘Para-Zoroastrianisms: Memetic Transmission and Appropriations’, in Parsis in India and the Diaspora, (eds) Hinnells, John R. and Williams, Alan (London: Routledge, 2007), pp. 236–54Google Scholar.

110 Marashi, Exile and the Nation, Chapter 5.

111 D'Souza, Eugene, ‘Nazi Propaganda in India’, Social Scientist 28, no. 5/6 (June 2000), pp. 8283CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

112 ‘Nazi Propaganda in India’, Jewish Exponent, 25 August 1939, p. 6.

113 ‘Arrest and Detention under the Defence of India Rules of Saif Azad alias Sheikh Abdul Rahman Seif’, 1939: NAI, Home Department—Political, 59/10-A/39-Poll.

114 Ibid.

115 ‘Life-Long Friend of India & the East’, Bombay Chronicle, 4 September 1946, p. 7.

116 Abrahamian, Ervand, Iran between Two Revolutions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), p. 162CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Marashi, Exile and the Nation, Chapter 1.

117 ‘Arbab Kaikhusro Shahrokh’, Iran League Quarterly, July 1940, p. 173.

118 ‘The Editor's Notes’, Iran League Quarterly, October 1941, pp. 4, 15.

119 ‘“Ideal Citizens of India”’, Times of India, 26 October 1947, p. 6.

120 Peshotanji Marker Memorial Volume (Bombay: Iranian Zoroastrian Anjuman, 1966), p. 13Google Scholar.