ABSTRACT
The Parsi Zoroastrians have a strong ethnoreligious identity. In part, they draw their individual and collective sense of identity from an epic Persian poem, the Qesseh-ye Sanjan, which is used as an ‘origin story’ to promote the community as a ‘model minority,’ and as a tool to regulate undesirable behaviour within. This ethnoreligious identity is rooted in agnatic or patrilineal descent and patriarchal social norms. Therefore, even though the community experienced urbanisation leading to social liberalisation and economic growth from the seventeenth century onwards, it maintained traditional gender roles within the family structure. In the twentieth century, Parsi women experienced sociopolitical and economic emancipation, leading many into the workforce and challenging traditional gender roles. Over the past thirty years, intermarriage amongst Parsi men and women in India has increased, but traditional gender roles are strictly applied by the wider Parsi Zoroastrian community. Intermarried men and their children are accepted, but intermarried Parsi Zoroastrian women – even those married in a civil ceremony under the Special Marriages Act of 1954 – and their children face exclusion. Two recent studies have shown that today there is a reversal of common practice, as an increasing number of intermarried Parsi Zoroastrian women and a decreasing number of intermarried Parsi Zoroastrian men are passing on their ethnic and religious identity to their children. These studies also highlight the crucial and active role played by non-Parsi non-Zoroastrian wives of Parsi Zoroastrian men in cementing their children’s identities as Parsi Zoroastrian.
