Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Parsis Piqued.

Whilst Iran has been making itself a laughing stock with its complaints about the film '300', with Borat-esque boasts about the 'glorious Persian civilization', another group with more reason to be upset by the film has been largely overlooked. India's Parsis have been objecting too. Unlike Iran the Zoroastrian Parsi's culture derives directly from that of ancient Persia as their ancestors fled from that land centuries ago to escape religious persecution, for all Iran's complaining about the depiction of Persians as sub human their own attitude to their pagan past is hardly respectful and if Xerces found himself in modern Iran he would be a second class citizen. The Parsi community is tiny but high achieving, Britain's first two asian MPs back in the 1890s were both Parsi for example.

1 comment:

James Higham said...

This is interesting, Ross. I don't know a hell of a lot about the Persian biz.