Paris believes Parsis have higher standard for living that non-Parsis

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

Pages 169-170

"It has often been called to my attention that 'those Guratis and Maharastrians don't mind sleeping on the floor in one room, but we Parsis like to have a bed, and we are used to privacy. We have a higher standard than the other communities'"

Parsis didn't want converts because they feared "lower elements of Indian society" would sponge off the community charity

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

Pages 164

Davar remarked that the community worried that the lower elements of Indian society - Bhangis, Mahars, Kahars, Dubras - would convert in order to gain access to the charitable funds reserved for Parsi Zoroastrians. 

Parsis say breeding with non-Parsis is like a different species, will lower the morality of the race

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

Pages 161

And the discourse about the mixing of the unmixable is angry. A lower-middle-class [Parsi] man asks pointedly: "Does a horse go with a camel? Does a dog go with a mouse? No." A remark from the floor at a lecture: "if you sow potatoes, you don't get cabbages. If we cross-breed, the intelligence may be there, but the morality always goes down." 

Parsi women who bear children from non-Parsi men "biologically", "physically" "defile" the community

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

Pages 161

Mixed in with this is the argument, from history, that biological impurity leads to weakness. "History testifies that mixed marriage was one of the main causes for the fall of the once mighty Sassanian empire. Do we want history to repeat itself?"" And religious purity cannot be maintained by the offending outsiders. Asa high priest explained, "A woman marrying outside the community cannot observe the rules of purity as laid down by the Zoroastrian religion. She cannot perform ritual ablutions [padyab kusti] and do prayers [farziyat and bandaj) in a non-Zoroastrian environment. When she bears children of a non-Zoroastrian seed [tokbam] and participates in Zoroastrian ceremonies, this woman does great damage to the Zoroastrian religion."12 Such women, he implies, physically defile the Parsi community.' The argument—elaborated particularly by those drawn to an esoteric interpretation of Zoroastrianism, kshnoom—is that religious prayers have to do with "vibrations," almost physical emanations. Dokhmas can purify bodies only if they have been prepared by certain ritual prayers which can only be performed on Zoroastrians. Thus the non-Parsi defiles the Parsi, and the most powerful of tools in the fight against evil is rendered useless. Zoroastrian prayers, whose aim is to purify, are rendered invalid by the non-Zoroastrian environment in which they are uttered. 

Parsi believes being born Parsi is the last and highest reincarnation before moksha - Book Review: The Good Parsi

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

Pages 156

Still, he says, "I am thankful to God that I took birth in the Parsi community." Parsi birth, he thinks, is the last birth in the karmic wheel, the highest birth, before one is released from the painful demands of reincarnation.

Parsis most racist against darkest-skinned South Indians: Book Review - The Good Parsi

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

Pages 153-155

But in 1984 this son married a South Indian - not only a non-Parsi, but a dark-skinned woman. His parents did not attend the wedding and have nothing more to do with him. "My boss said, you must go to the wedding and give you son your blessing. My foot, I said. Once my son even brought her to the office for my blessing. And I said, my foot." He found out about his son's interest in this outsider when his office mates started "making mischief" with him, saying that his son will marry a non-Parsi...

...Both his sons, to Cyrus, are destroying their ancestry and insulting their parents. One humiliates him by marrying out - not only a non-Parsi, but a dark-skinned woman, which throughout India is a stain upon the family.

Parsi says British rule was golden, Indian rule less than iron: Book Review - The Good Parsi

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

Page 153

I asked him what he had thought of the approaching Independence. "Even now I prefer the British Rule. It was a Golden Rule, now we have less than an iron rule. I pray to the almighty that we might live to see another rule. All these politicians are chors [thieves], they are bad." 

Parsi criticizes Hindu society as selfish, indirect, dishonest and corrupt - Book Review: The Good Parsi

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

Page 144

Alongside this self-criticism of Parsis India itself is criticized on the grounds that it has changed without the British, and that Parsis cannot compete within the new India because they are people of integrity. Hindus, the argument runs, live in a less dichotomous world than the "people of the book," those of monotheistic faiths, and particularly Zoroastrians. "There are gods for everything, and the poles of right and wrong are just less far apart." As one Parsi writes, criticizing Hindu society and urging it to change: "The Hindu has a much greater capacity than most to live with ambivalence, and with the gaps between aspiration and achievement, between promise and performance, and between high moral aspiration and plain human selfishness" (Moddie 5968:77). Parsis, the argument went on, need integrity, honesty, directness, and Indian society does not have this character. Now the Hindus have taken over, the argument continued, bribery and fraud are rampant, and India is in decay. Parsis cannot succeed in a corrupted world. 

Most Paris were unhappy with Indian independence - Book Review: The Good Parsi

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

Page 124

In conversation after conversation, Parsis told me that the majority of Parsis had been unhappy with Independence. Older Parsis in particular remembered that the community was uncomfortable with Gandhi and with his insults to the British. The upper class, they said, may have been nationalist, but not the majority, which generally consisted of deeply committed Anglophiles. A middle-aged Parsi woman told this story: a friend of hers was taken by her father to watch the flag-crossing ceremony on August 15, 1947. As the Union Jack descended and the Indian tricolor rose, the father said to his adolescent daughter, "With that flag going down, law and order in this country have disappeared." 

Parsis identified as "white Iranians" and tried to distance themselves from Indians and Hindus - Book Review: The Good Parsi

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

Page 102

"So dramatic grew the Parsi sense of difference from Hindu and Muslim Indians that as the century turned, Iran became the central symbol of Parsi ethnic—that is, non-British—identity, and the emphasis on the difference clearly included and extended the religious rhetoric of Parsi purity. "The Parsis are the one race settled in India (not excepting the Kashmiris or any other) that could for a moment be called white,. proclaims a Parsi journal in 1906. The considerable European philological interest in the ancient religion, united to the energetic Parsi attempt to detach things Parsi from things Hindu, was probably sufficient to ignite practical Parsi efforts to create the sense of a clearly Iranian Zoroastrianism."

Parsis dropped Hindu habits when the British arrived and considered themselves a more vital race than both Indians and the British - Book Review: The Good Parsi

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

Page 98

"But the most remarkable feature of the text is its breezy assurance of Parsi and British near-equivalence. Parsis, Karaka explains, had learned Hindu habits to live among the Hindus, but that was merely a surface accretion which enabled them to survive. "As [Parsis] advance every year in civilization and enlightenment, they copy more closely English manners and modes of living". Under the British their natural nobility, and more to the point, natural "mastery,” products of a civilization even greater than the British, sprang forth. Soon, Karaka speculated, they would be indistinguishable from the English. "Some of those [Parsis] who adopt European dress might even be mistaken for Europeans, for the population possesses a vitality and an energy inherited from their ancient ancestors the Persians that is equal to those of European populations living in more bracing climates than India" —that is, Parsis are more vital than either Indians or Englishmen in India. "The highest proportion of children in any class in Bombay under one year of age is found in the Parsi population."' His last paragraph is obsequious, and with no hint of a play of contestation: With regard to the present position of the Parsis, A may be said that they are well launched on the path of progress. With the advent of British power in India better and brighter days dawned for them."

Parsi called Hindu charity wasteful, irrational and idolatrous - Book Review: The Good Parsi

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

Pages 97-98

"Karaka describes at some length Parsi truthfulness - (it makes them better business men) - and charitableness; he implies that Hindu charity wastes money on irrational, idolatrous religion, whereas Parsis use their money for progressive ends, to improve educational opportunities and health care. He explains that Zoroastrians are religious, but in a rational, secular, western way. They have left behind their rituals and have turned toward science."

Freemasons declare Parsis Noahides

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What those "old traditions" were nobody knows because there is no evidence that Operative Freemasons called themselves by that name. But it was in some use prior to 1738, for in 1734 Lord Weyrnouth ordered a letter to be sent to the Prov. Grand Master at Calcutta in which this curious statement was included: "Providence has fixed your Lodge near those learn'd Indians that affect to be called Noachidae, the strict observance of his Precepts taught in those Parts by the Disciples of the great Zoroastres, the learned Archimagus of Bactria, a Grand Master of the Magians, whose religion is much preserved in India (which we have no concern about), and also many of the Rituals of the Ancient Fraternity used in his time, perhaps more than they are sensible of themselves. Sow if it was consistent with your other Business, to discover in those parts the Remains of Old Masonry and transmit them to us, we would be all thankful ...." (A. Q. C. XI, p. 35.) 

- From ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FREEMASONRY AND ITS KINDRED SCIENCES by ALBERT C. MACKEY M. D.