In the mid-1970s most of the overseas news we received was through cyclostyled newsletters published periodically and air mailed to us. Only a few Zoroastrian associations abroad with a reasonable number of members, such as those in New York, Chicago, Ontario and Vancouver, published the missives and saw fit to share them with Parsiana despite the steep mailing costs.
In India, at that time, there were almost no newsletters. The Delhi Parsi Anjuman had a quarterly or annual publication titled Dipanjali. News of Zoroastrians and their associations in India was harder to come by than news from abroad. Meetings of The Federation of the Parsi Zoroastrian Anjumans of India (FPZAI) were sporadic and not open to the Parsi Press until 1976. In that year the Surat Parsi Panchayat chairman Maneck Gheyara invited the Press to that south Gujarat city which, along with Navsari, was once the heartland of the community. The FPZAI became Parsiana’s communications lifeline to the all-India community.
The 1978 Third World Zoroastrian Congress held at the Sir Cowasjee Jehangir Hall in Bombay in January was Parsiana’s first opportunity to meet the leaders of several of the worldwide Zoroastrian associations. We were familiar with some of the prominent members from the USA and the UK, but few elsewhere.
In the 1970s and 80s, letters were the only form of communication an average individual person or small organization could afford. Faxes (which had to be sent from agencies that had fax machines and international telephone connections) were expensive, while phone calls to foreign countries were prohibitively costly. Realizing the archival value of the correspondence and the newsletters, we endeavored to preserve them. But in our less than 200 sq ft office at the time with three people sharing one secondhand square table and an administrative/secretarial/accounts person on another old, wooden writing table mounted with a semi-portable Remington typewriter, a single two-drawer filing cabinet and a lone, two-door wooden cupboard, there was barely room to accommodate the necessities for publishing a monthly (and occasionally a quarterly) publication, leave aside storing miscellaneous paper records.
Reluctantly we had to discard the precious newsletter copies and correspondence files. Those documents had recorded and traced in part development of communication links amongst Zoroastrians. They were the 20th century’s Rivayats, without the authority, relevance and importance of the 15th to 18th century correspondence between priests from India and Iran. One can only marvel at how these ancient texts have been preserved for over 600 years.
Would digitization have changed the scenario for us had it been around 50 years ago? How many emails, WhatsApp texts, SMSs, social media posts do we preserve today? Once we shot photographs selectively, counting the number of photos we took and carefully preserving them. Film rolls were expensive, as was processing of film and printing of images. Today we may take hundreds of photos at events without worrying about costs. How many of those do we index and are in a position to access when required? How much storage space do we assign them? What backup facility do we have in case the storage unit is corrupted?
We need to be selective in what we preserve and file. But in doing so we may not be presenting as comprehensive a picture of events and developments as we would aspire to. That is why archives of various organizations with differing viewpoints are essential. By studying and comparing reports of other individuals and organizations, a more comprehensive history can be pieced together; a more detailed narration of the times, the locales, the people, their emotions, sentiments and actions can emerge.
Publications such as Parsiana present a particular perspective. That viewpoint is shaped by our liberal leanings, the information received/supplied to us, events we choose to cover, the people we decide to interview. We are one of the dominant chroniclers of the contemporary community. For anyone researching Parsis and Zoroastrians, especially in Bombay during the latter half of the 20th century and the first quarter of the 21st century, Parsiana is the starting point. And the publication’s contents from 1964 to 2023 (barring 1968 which we do not have) are accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world, at a nominal annual cost (Rs 800) through our website, parsiana.com.
We are able to keep the rate nominal thanks to the support we have received over the years from various generous donors. Our website lists some of them (Tehnaz and Darius Bahadurji, Byram Jeejeebhoy, Shapoor Mistry and the Bhagarseth and Maneckji Kawasji Seth Fund). But as much as the fiscal support, the encouragement of one donor couple especially goaded us to make the archives accessible to all with a search facility. Our first venture supported by them was a set of four DVDs containing the issues from 1964 to 2005. But the search facility there had some glitches. The archives on the website are searchable, though for the earlier issues the quality of the printed copies and the scanning is not of the same caliber as the post 2000 issues. The results therefore may be less than satisfactory. Our web providers assisted us to overcome several handicaps at nominal cost. A lot of time, effort and money of many individuals and institutions have been involved in keeping Parsiana’s online services up-to-date and functioning.
While some libraries and community institutions such as the Delhi based Parzor and FIRES [FEZANA (Federation of Zoroastrian Associations of North America) Information Research Education System] have been spearheading a drive to preserve Parsi heritage, culture, artefacts and encouraging others to do the same, not many organizations allot budgets to preserve and disseminate their records. And yet without their inputs the community’s story will continue to be incomplete. If history is written by the victors, many more winners need to step forth.