This book explores the legal culture of the Parsis, or Zoroastrians, an ethnoreligious community unusually invested in the colonial legal system of British India and Burma. Rather than trying to ...maintain collective autonomy and integrity by avoiding interaction with the state, the Parsis sank deep into the colonial legal system itself. From the late eighteenth century until India's independence in 1947, they became heavy users of colonial law, acting as lawyers, judges, litigants, lobbyists, and legislators. They de-Anglicized the law that governed them and enshrined in law their own distinctive models of the family and community by two routes: frequent intra-group litigation often managed by Parsi legal professionals in the areas of marriage, inheritance, religious trusts, and libel, and the creation of legislation that would become Parsi personal law. Other South Asian communities also turned to law, but none seems to have done so earlier or in more pronounced ways than the Parsis.
This paper presents two prominent themes of the novel Such a Long Journey. Parsis in India are a demographically and socially declining community. They once enjoyed a higher social status, however, ...with passing time they are reduced to second class citizens. This fact remains a major dissatisfaction for them. They, at the same time, take immense pride in their cultural identity. The various rituals related to their day to day chores and even during death are very different from the others’. This gives them a separate ethnic identity, which they cherish. A depiction of the lives, customs and displeasure of the Parsis living in India is highlighted in this write up. Politics too remains another noteworthy theme which is discussed here. The political setback centrally and locally, as perceived by the common mass, has a direct impact on their wellbeing. The scheming government at the center shudders the lives of the protagonist and his close ones. At the same time its incapability to handle situations of war or performing the duties towards the citizens, leave them in contempt. The inertness of the municipality too in doing its important duties leave the residents disgusted. Both these masterfully intertwined themes are studied in this research paper.
The following is a review of the monograph Exile and the Nation, by Afshin Marashi, which examines ideological developments reflective of the early-twentieth century encounter between Iranian ...intellectuals and India’s Parsi (Zoroastrian) community, such as informed the formulation of a neoclassical Iranian national identity rooted in Iran’s pre-Islamic history.
Why do some autocracies remain stable while others collapse? This article presents a theoretical framework that seeks to explain the longevity of autocracies by referring to three pillars of ...stability: legitimation, repression, and co-optation. These three causal factors are derived by distilling and synthesizing the main arguments of classic and more recent research efforts. Particular emphasis is paid to re-incorporate legitimation in the explanation of stable autocracies. The article conceptionalizes the three pillars and discusses methods of concrete measurement. It then moves on to explain the stabilization process. How do these pillars develop their stabilizing effect? It is argued that reinforcement processes take place both within and between the pillars. They take the form of exogenous reinforcement, self-reinforcement, and reciprocal reinforcement. To illustrate the inner logic of these processes, I draw on empirical examples. I also state what we would need to observe empirically and how we can approach the three pillars methodically. A theoretical framework of this nature has two advantages: it is able to take the complexity of autocratic regimes into account while remaining parsimonious enough to be applicable to all autocratic regimes, irrespective of their subtype; and it integrates a static view to explain stability, with the emphasis on the underlying stabilization mechanisms and facilitates within-case and cross-case comparisons.
The Parsis are one of the smallest religious communities in the world. To understand the population structure and demographic history of this group in detail, we analyzed Indian and Pakistani Parsi ...populations using high-resolution genetic variation data on autosomal and uniparental loci (Y-chromosomal and mitochondrial DNA). Additionally, we also assayed mitochondrial DNA polymorphisms among ancient Parsi DNA samples excavated from Sanjan, in present day Gujarat, the place of their original settlement in India.
Among present-day populations, the Parsis are genetically closest to Iranian and the Caucasus populations rather than their South Asian neighbors. They also share the highest number of haplotypes with present-day Iranians and we estimate that the admixture of the Parsis with Indian populations occurred ~1,200 years ago. Enriched homozygosity in the Parsi reflects their recent isolation and inbreeding. We also observed 48% South-Asian-specific mitochondrial lineages among the ancient samples, which might have resulted from the assimilation of local females during the initial settlement. Finally, we show that Parsis are genetically closer to Neolithic Iranians than to modern Iranians, who have witnessed a more recent wave of admixture from the Near East.
Our results are consistent with the historically-recorded migration of the Parsi populations to South Asia in the 7th century and in agreement with their assimilation into the Indian sub-continent's population and cultural milieu "like sugar in milk". Moreover, in a wider context our results support a major demographic transition in West Asia due to the Islamic conquest.
Soon after it began on July 28, a Quincy Institute virtual panel on the Middle East meandered into a debate on the merits and harms of intervention. The catalyst for discussion was "No Clean Hands: ...The Interventions of Middle Eastern Powers, 2010-2020," a recent paper jointly authored by Matthew Petti, a reporter for the institute's Responsible Statecraft journal, and its executive vice-president Trita Parsi. Petti argued that the US should strive to seriously reduce its interventions, including those carried out through proxies like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, or Israel. Diplomatic options like conditioning aid offer more practical alternatives than sanctions or military force, the reporter said.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, ODKLJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
•We have first time generated complete mitogenome of 19 ancient samples of the first Parsi settlers excavated from the archaeological site of Sanjan.•One of the promising samples belonged to ...haplogroup M3a1 + 204, which is prevalent among medieval swat valley population and also in two Roopkund individuals.•In phylognalysis and haplotype network Parsi sample with M3a1 + 204 share clade with both Middle Eastern and South Asian samples.
The rich cultural and genetic diversity of South Asia emerged from multiple migrations and cultural assimilation of multiple waves of migrants. The Parsi community of North-western India were one of those who migrated from West Eurasia in the aftermath of 7th century CE and assimilated into the local cultural framework. Earlier genetic studies further strengthened this notion with the finding that they harbour both Middle Eastern and South Asian genetic components. Although these studies covered both autosomal and uniparental markers, still maternal ancestry was not covered in depth and with good resolution of mitochondrial markers. Hence in our current study, we have first time generated a complete mitogenome of 19 ancient samples of the first Parsi settlers excavated from the archaeological site of Sanjan and performed detailed phylogenetic analysis to infer their maternal genetic affinity. In our analysis, we found that the Parsi mitogenome with mtDNA haplogroup M3a1 + 204 shares clade with both Middle Eastern and South Asian modern individuals in both the Maximum Likelihood tree and Bayesian phylogenetic tree. This haplogroup was also prevalent among the medieval Swat valley population of present-day Northern Pakistan and was also observed in two Roopkund A individuals. In the phylogenetic network this sample share haplotype with both South Asian and Middle Eastern samples. So conclusively, the first Parsi settlers’ maternal ancestry encompasses both South Asian and Middle Eastern genetic composition.
This article is an examination of the representations of filth and foliage, dirtscapes and the urbanisation process in Rohinton Mistry's Such a Long Journey and A Fine Balance fictional works that ...portray, via spatial and temporal structuration, the devastation of nature and rapid industrialisation in Mumbai. Through Sullivan's 'dirt theory', I explore how Mistry gestures at the epistemological paradigms, intricate relationships and overlapping spheres of technological development and nature. The idea of the colonial, community and personal pieties in the Indian subcontinent post-independence, forge trajectories of urban migration for education and job purposes, articulating agency and power relations. The social and religious orientations will be analysed in the theoretical and conceptual frameworks of ecology, religious perceptions and urbanisation offering the space for critically appraising the subject of ecofiction in 'Aamchi Mumbai' - a phrase that gestures at both place-making and individual existence.
Håkon Naasen Tandberg explores how, when, and why humans relate to the non-human world. Based on two ethnographic fieldworks among the Parsis in Mumbai, the research focuses on the role of temple ...fires in the lives of present-day Parsi Zoroastrians in India as an empirical case. Through four ethnographic portraits, the reader will get a deeper look into the lives of four Parsi individuals, and how their individual biographies, personalities, and interhuman relationships, along with religious identities and roles, shape—and to a certain extent are shaped by—their personal relationships with non-human entities. The book combines affordance theory, exchange theory, and social support to analyze such relationships, and offers suggestive evidence that relationships with non-human entities—in this case the Zoroastrian temple fires—can be experienced as no less real, important, or meaningful than those with other human beings.
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