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Iranian Zoroastrians in Canada: Balancing Religious and Cultural Identities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Richard Foltz
Richard Foltz*
Affiliation:
Concordia University, Montréal
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Abstract

Canada, now the number-one destination for Iranian migrants, is home to one of the world's most dynamic Zoroastrian communities, in which Iranians are increasingly represented and are playing ever more visible roles in maintaining and transforming the tradition. While exile has in some ways reunited Iranian and Parsi (South Asian) Zoroastrians after more than 1,000 years of separation, cultural and in some cases religious differences mean that they continue largely to live in separate spheres even while sharing their places of worship. Iranian Zoroastrians in Canada participate in some social settings as Iranians, in others as Zoroastrians, and in still others as Canadians, but to a large extent they remain a community unto themselves separate from these other three. Even so, their generally progressive interpretations of Zoroastrianism are having an influence on Parsi communities worldwide as well as on Zoroastrians in Iran, and being often recognized as “original Iranians” they are playing important roles in promoting awareness of Iranian culture within the broader community.

Type
Research Article
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 42 , Issue 4 , September 2009 , pp. 561 - 577
Copyright
Copyright © The International Society for Iranian Studies 2009

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Footnotes

The author would like to thank Manya Saadi-nejad, first for suggesting Iranian Zoroastrians in Canada as a research topic, then for her active participation in the research itself, and finally for providing extensive feedback and ideas throughout the course of the project.

References

1 Though most Zoroastrians and numerous religious studies scholars have made this claim since at least the nineteenth century, whether or not it holds depends partly on how one defines monotheism and partly on when Zoroaster actually lived, particularly in comparison to Moses who is believed to have lived in the thirteenth century BCE.

2 The first Parsi known to have come to Canada was Pheroze Sethna in 1866; as early as 1922 Parsi students were enrolled at the University of Toronto. Parsis were granted landed immigrant status from the early 1960s (Hinnells, John R., The Zoroastrian Diaspora: Religion and Migration (Oxford, 2005): 451–452CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

3 Montréal, which was Canada's major metropolis until the 1970s, had a very active Zoroastrian community, led by such figures as Jehan Bagli (who now lives in Toronto) and Dolly Dastoor (who continues to live in Montréal), though the communities in Toronto and Vancouver are now much larger and more active.

4 Hinnells, Zoroastrian Diaspora.

5 Ibid: 4.

6 Ibid.

7 For an overview of the problems and controversies surrounding the religion's origins see Foltz, Richard C., Spirituality in the Land of the Noble: How Iran Shaped the World's Religions (Oxford, 2004): 19–22.Google Scholar

8 To date, the most complete survey of Zoroastrian history is Boyce, Mary, A History of Zoroastrianism, 3 vols (Leiden, 1975–1991).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Recently there have been claims that, largely due to “re-conversion” of Iranian Muslims to Zoroastrianism (on which, see below), world population figures of Zoroastrians especially in Iran and surrounding countries now exceed two million. See for example the World Christian Encyclopedia: A Comparative Survey of Churches and Religions in the Modern World, ed. Barrett, David B. et al., 2nd ed. (Oxford and New York, 2001Google Scholar; reference supplied by Parvin Contractor), which asserts the Zoroastrian population of greater Iran (i.e., Iran, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan) to have reached 2,218,104 in the year 2000, up from a mere 22,500 in 1970. There is, unfortunately, no way to verify the validity of such an astonishing rate of increase over the space of just 30 years, and the source of this data is unclear.

10 Dolly Dastoor, “Evolution of the Zarathushti Community in North America” (2005), http://www.vohuman.org/Article/Evolution%20of%20the%20Zarathushti%20community%20in%20North%20America.htm. Accessed 5 July 2009.

11 Jamshed Mavalwala, “Parsis,” Multicultural Canada, www.multiculturalcanada.ca/ecp/content/parsis.html. Accessed 5 July 2009. For more general statistics on Iranians in Canada, see the entries on “Iranian Community in Canada,” Encyclopedia Iranica (Toronto, 1999)Google Scholar and Saeed Rahnema, “Iranians,” Canadian Encyclopedia: 1189–1190.

12 The practice was discontinued in Iran beginning in the 1960s, but continues in South Asia.

13 Dar-e mehr; lit., “Court of Mithra.” According to an anonymous reviewer, the variant “Darbe Mehr” was preferred by the donor, Rostam Guiv, who translated it as “Gate of Love.”

14 Mehr, Farhang, The Zoroastrian Tradition: An Introduction to the Ancient Wisdom of Zarathushtra (Costa Mesa, CA, 2003).Google Scholar

15 Hamid Naficy, citing Eric Hobsbawn, Ernest Renan, and Stuart Hall, is critical of this tendency among exiled Iranians, which he sees as relying on an “invented tradition” and “based on partial repression of the reality of Iran and of the past” (Naficy, Hamid, “Poetics and Practice of Iranian Nostalgia in Exile,” Diaspora, i (1992): 297–298).Google Scholar

16 See the site http://www.ancientiran.com.

17 His personal website, where many of his often highly polemical essays are posted, is http://kavad.netfirms.com. His books are Shadows in the Desert: Ancient Persia at War (New York, 2007)Google Scholar and Sassanian Elite Cavalry AD 224–642 (New York, 2005).

18 The reasons for this among Iranians and Parsis are slightly different. Parsis claim that abstention from proselytizing was one of the conditions imposed on them when they migrated to India, but this claim in seen by some as merely a justification of the existing caste-like exclusivism without any historical basis. Iranians, meanwhile, were prevented by Islamic laws from re-converting Muslims, and those same laws extended significant benefits to Zoroastrians who converted to Islam.

19 Laurie Goodstein, “Zoroastrians Keep the Faith, and Keep Dwindling,” New York Times, 6 September 2006: A1.

20 Hinnells, , Zoroastrian Diaspora: 482.Google Scholar

21 Hinnells, , Zoroastrian Diaspora: 483.Google Scholar

22 Ibid: 485–486. Our Canadian Zoroastrian informants have for the most part vigorously affirmed this possibility.

23 Ibid: 489.

24 The faslī calendar followed by most Iranian Zoroastrians was actually developed by Parsis during the early twentieth century, but never accepted by the Indian Parsi community. Zoroastrians in the Iranian city of Yazd, meanwhile, still use the qadīmī calendar.

25 Manya Saadi-nejad, “Celebrating the Iranian New Year with Zoroastrians in Montréal,” paper presented at the annual conference of the Canadian Society for the Study of Religion, Vancouver, BC, 2 June 2008.

26 This more personal, contemplative, one might even say “Lutheran” form of Iranian Zoroastrianism would seem to be a recent phenomenon stemming from the Westernization of Zoroastrian elites from the early twentieth century onwards, especially in Tehran. As recently as the 1960s, the Zoroastrianism practiced in villages around Yazd still consisted mainly of purification rituals and the celebration of seasonal festivals. See Boyce, Mary, A Persian Stronghold of Zoroastrianism (Oxford, 1977).Google Scholar

27 At the same time, Iranians especially of the older generation, tend to encourage intramarriage for their children, perhaps more for cultural than religious reasons, but as with Parsis, the small range of choices within the community often result in intermarriages with non-Zoroastrians and even with Muslim Iranians.

28 See footnote 9.

29 Though the term “temple” is used, it is not strictly accurate as these buildings have not been fully consecrated. Recently a branch site, mainly frequented by Parsis, has been established in the suburb of Mississauga.

30 See note 24.

31 Bagli's Romanized editions of the Jashan ceremony and Obsequies, prepared in collaboration with Adi Unwalla, are widely used by Zoroastrian priests practicing in North America.

32 This decision, which Toronto Iranians considered racist and unfair, was likely part of a more general policy which has recently made the obtaining of Canadian visas by Iranians extremely difficult. Especially in the wake of Canadian-Iranian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi's brutal murder by Iranian authorities in 2003 and its subsequent cover-up, relations between the two countries have been strained.

33 Antonius Karasulas, “Chegūneh yek pajūheshgar-e bāstānshenāsī shīfteh-ye Zardosht shod,” Mehrīrān, i (February 2008): 35–37, 40; “Why Zarathushtrianism?” Mehrīrān, i (April 2008): 48–50.Google Scholar

34 A sketch of the community is provided in Mehri, Rastin, “Zoroastrians in British Columbia,” Asian Religions in British Columbia (Vancouver, 2008).Google Scholar Mehri gives a lower estimate for the Vancouver Zoroastrian population, based on formal membership in the ZSBC, but there are likely Zoroastrians who are not members.

35 http://www.vcn.bc.ca/oshihan/IndexEnglish.htm.

36 Mehri, “Zoroastrians in British Columbia”: 134. Mehraban Zartoshty, an Iranian philanthropist and trained Zoroastrian priest, was long an influential figure within the Vancouver Zoroastrian community, though he has since moved to California.

37 Hinnells, , Zoroastrian Diaspora: 491.Google Scholar

38 Mehri, , “Zoroastrians in British Columbia”: 147.Google Scholar

39 Hinnells, , Zoroastrian Diaspora :491.Google Scholar Former ZSBC President Bella Tata, a Parsi, was particularly active in this regard.

40 Founder of the Zarathushtrian Assembly in southern California, he calls himself a “teacher,” but performs priestly duties such as the Sedreh-pūshī initiation ritual formalizing the entry of converts. This practice, along with his interpretations of Zoroastrian sacred texts, has made him the subject of virulent attacks by conservative Zoroastrians worldwide.

41 Naficy, , “Poetics and Practice”: 297.Google Scholar

42 http://tnigonline.com/web/index.php.

43 Concordia is currently the only Canadian university with a formal Iranian Studies program (http://artsandscience1.concordia.ca/religion/iranianstudies/home.htm), although the University of Toronto at Mississauga has launched an “Iranian Studies Initiative” (http://iranianstudies.ca) and recently hired Sorbonne-graduate Enrico Raffaelli to occupy a newly-created position in the History of Zoroastrianism. Persian language courses are also offered at McGill University in Montréal and Simon Fraser University in Vancouver.

44 For a discussion of identity issues faced by Parsis, see Luhrmann, T.M., The Good Parsi: The Fate of a Colonial Elite in a Postcolonial Society (Cambridge, MA, 1996).Google Scholar