Parsis believed British power let their Persian blood exude its potency which it could not do under Hindu "barbarity" - Book Review: The Good Parsi

See Table Of Contents Here

All it takes is one drop of poison

See Rest Of Book Review (Here)

From: Luhrmann, T.M. "The Good Parsi: The fate of a colonial elite in a postcolonial society". Harvard University Press, 1996

Pages 96-97

Historical memory is shaped by need and desire. In 1884 one Dosabhai Framjee Karaka published a two-colume History of the Parsis  that captured and celebrated the cheery confidence of a colonial elite at the height of its achievement. The volumes are dedicated to the Prince of Wales, from the "most loyal" of the Asian subjects beneath the "beneficent sway of the British crown." Parsis are rational, progressive, worthily prosperous and intensely loyal. And they arc all these things because they are not Hindu or Muslim--not really Indian—but Persian. "The Parsis pride themselves on being the progeny of a mighty race of people 

... Their grandeur, magnificence and glory were unsurpassed by any other nation of ancient times ... [Their Persian past] is claimed by the modern Parsi as animating his spirit and firing his blood" [Karaka 1884:1:,5). Persian ancestry, in Karaka's eyes, spurred Parsis to rise above and beyond a land Karaka almost called barbaric. This fiery blood enabled Parsis to prosper like no Hindus could have done. 

Descended originally from an enterprising, courageous, industrious and self-sacrificing people, who at one time were masters of a great empire, they did not absolutely lose those characteristic qualities of their race, although adverse circumstances forced upon them a life of inactivity for more than l000 years. The old fire of their ancestors continued to burn, however faintly, in their breasts, and it only required the least encouragement to revive....  

It will thus be seen that the Parsis were the first to bring prosperity to Bombay, which prosperity, as times went on, supported and fostered by British power and the enterprise of British merchants, has raised Bombay at this day to the proud position of second city of the British Empire.

Other Parsis seem also to have believed that the British presence had enabled the basic qualities of Persian nobility to emerge from under the accretion of Hindu custom. For instance, the entry on Parsis in the Maharashtra Gazette remarks: "Thus we see that after the advent of the British in India, the dormant qualities that lay concealed in the Parsi bosom for several generations obtained free scope."