The Making of a Modern Zoroastrianism Zoroaster, also known as Zarathustra, is credited as the founder of the religion that eventually became the dominant practice of ancient Persia. Probably living in the seventh or sixth century BCE, he is regarded as the author of the Yasna Haptanghaiti and the hymns collected in the Gathas, which form the basis of a religion generally referred to as Zoroastrianism. The ideas and practices originating in Persia (present-day Iran) also circulated to parts of India, where followers of Zoroaster became known as Parsis. By the modern era, the two communities spawned from Zoroaster s teachings had grown apart, and both had come under the influence of Western colonialism and, equally importantly, Western notions of modern religion. Thus there arose a group of internal reformers of Zoroastrianism who, like their Christian counterparts, believed that rational and enlightened religion, characterized by social responsibility and the interiorization of piety, was critical for the development of modern individuals, citizens, secular public space, and popular sovereignty (Ringer 2011: 2). As in Sri Lanka and many other colonial settings, Zoroastrians initially sponsored religious reform in order to counter British Protestant missionary attacks on their faith (2). However, if they were going to mount an effective response, they had to fight largely on the ground of the invading religion; in a word, they had to speak Protestant and, to an extent, construct or invent a Protestant Zoroastrianism, with a focus on the personal relationship of an individual with God and therefore obviously on monotheism, on private and interior religion, on belief over ritual, on sacred texts, and on morality (4).
Indeed, according to Monica Ringer the writings of nineteenth-century Western scholars of religion like Max Mueller, E. B. Tylor, and James Frazer (see Chapter One of Introducing Anthropology of Religion) had a tremendous impact on reformed Zoroastrianism. If religion was not any particular faith-tradition but a sort of essence that manifested in diverse historical forms, then no religion (whether Zoroastrianism or Christianity) could be taken as natural, inevitable, or unchanging (5). The constructed nature of tradition, as opposed to its eternal truth value, meant that the future and past were malleable. So Zoroastrianism (and every other religion) was sent on a desperate scramble for authenticity or its original or authoritative version, which was often to be found in the texts or in the prophet/founder. Yet, at the same time that all religions were seen as historically contingent, (Protestant) Christianity was still held up as the model and the destiny of the world s many faiths. Thus, religious reform of Zoroastrianism (and not only Zoroastrianism) was posited not as modernizing religion, but as a return to an original, true religion (6). Even more, in the Protestant style, much of the burden was placed on the individual, who had to become a modern, rights-bearing, belief-holding, morality-practicing citizen. These factors in combination were accepted as just the sort of sensibilities and dispositions required in the modern age to generate social progress, women s rights, modern science, and, ultimately, citizens of secular states (7). In other words, religion was not viewed as anathema to modern secular society and subjectivity but as ingredient to it. The Indian Zoroastrians or Parsis, Ringer claims, were profoundly attracted by British-controlled Bombay, and the British liked and respected the Parsis (31). A Zoroastrian/Parsi elite and merchant class emerged from the British educational and industrial system in India, a class that not only took up the challenge of religious reform but that largely wrested religion away from the traditional priesthood. This elite was responding largely to the Protestant challenge posed by men like missionary John
Wilson, who spent forty-seven years working in India. Wilson s emphasis on monotheism, sin and salvation, ritual and prayer, and knowledge of the Divine (53) had a lasting effect on reformist Zoroastrians, as well as on their opponents, the traditionalists or orthodox Parsis. Predictably, Parsis attempted to refute Wilson and to prevent conversions, but in doing so they substantially absorbed from him and the Christians the terms of debate, the categories of understanding, and the method of analysis that these dialogues were forced to adopt (69). While there were certainly differences between them on such issues as the value of ritual, both reformers and traditionalists can be seen as rationalizing Zoroastrianism along (Protestant) Christian lines; for instance, orthodox priest Dastur Erachji Sohrabji Meherjirana drafted a Zoroastrian catechism referring back to sacred texts and intended to improve the knowledge and piety of individual believers. Pivotal for him and other reformers was the demeaning of ritual as thoughtless rote action an attitude shared by many Western religion researchers and the associated commitment to the authority of scripture, the primacy of monotheism, the privileging of nonpetitionary prayer and spirituality, and the conviction of religions as promoting moral self-cultivation (97). Appeals to authenticity necessarily led Parsi reformers back to the land of Zoroaster, the founding prophet; however, the dynamism of the religion had long since shifted from Persia/Iran to India. In the mid-1800s, Parsi reformers renewed contact between the diaspora and the mother country and developed a full-blown operation to reorganize and reform the Iranian Zoroastrian community, as well as to revise their legal status vis-à-vis the Islamic state (142). But the circumstances were much different: in India, particularly during British administration, Parsis had enjoyed a high degree of freedom, but this was not the case in Islamic Iran. Zoroastrians in Iran were discriminated religious minorities, limited to a few towns with an uneducated priesthood and, at least by the Parsis standards,
many corrupt practices. Indian Parsi reformers simultaneously tried to attach themselves to the prestige of Iran, the historical source of Zoroastrianism, while correcting the actual religion in Iran, which had fallen into superstition and error. The value of Zoroastrianism for the modern project of Iranian nationalism was related to what Mircea Eliade called the prestige of the past : Modernity was mapped onto a re-imagined past, and the Zoroastrians held special status as the authentic Iranians sullied by intervening years of decline, conversion, and distance from cultural origins" (Ringer 2011: 163). Much of this reform, Ringer stresses, was top-down, the emperors or shahs of Persia/Iran using religion, in a paradoxically secular way, to increase their own power and the centralization of the Persian/Iranian state, which also implied increased secularization of the legal sphere among other aspects of society (164). Ringer calls this authoritarian modernization (175) and reminds us that much of the struggle occurred between the state and the Islamic elites, which tended to work in the Zoroastrians favor. One of the later reformers, Kay Khosrow Shahrokh, who epitomized the effort to build a modern rational Zoroastrianism, believed that rational religion was generative of modern citizens since it served as an ethical prompt to social responsibility and participation necessary for citizenship (184). Not only would such modern religion reduce pointless and sectarian ritual, but it would promote universalism and tolerance/equality in the public square. Ringer concludes that modern and rational religion, rather than being contrary to secular politics, is generative of modern society and modern states (198). This lesson applies to Christianity, Islam, and Eastern religions as well. For instance, so called contemporary piety movements have seized hold of rational religion s emphasis on interiorized consciousness and piety, even as they reject the notion that ritual is irrelevant. They thus are the product of rational religion, even as they reject some of its implications" (212).
Reference Ringer, Monica M. 2011. Pious Citizens: Reforming Zoroastrianism in India and Iran. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.