[lbo-talk] Suspect Stirs Mumbai Court by Confessing

Sujeet Bhatt sujeet.bhatt at gmail.com
Tue Jul 21 23:37:38 PDT 2009


Wikipedia is absolutely right in this case.

To answer Chris's question ("why the juxtaposition of Hindu (I assume "caste" is meant, not "cast"?) and Muslim (God Is Great) themes?"):

It is important to understand the importance of the Irani Restaurant in Mumbai's cultural landscape. These restaurants were the predecessors of the coffee shops of today - places where people could meet/talk/smoke/discuss politics/read the newspaper/gossip irrespective of their caste/religious identity. The Iranis, being Zoroastrians (as far as I know this is the only religion in the world to which you CANNOT be converted), made a selling point of their neutrality towards Muslims, Hindus and the various Hindu castes - hence the multireligious references in the "instructions". Sadly, the Irani Restaurant is virtually extinct today. I have an interesting picture of an Irani Restaurant interior which I can send off-list if anyone is interested.

The Parsi-Zoroastrian poet Gieve Patel (who writes in English) has explored this theme from another angle in a celebrated poem:

THE AMBIGUOUS FATE OF GIEVE PATEL, HE BEING NEITHER MUSLIM NOR HINDU IN INDIA

To be no part of this hate is deprivation. Never could I claim a circumcised butcher Mangled a child out of my arms, never rave At the milk-bibing, grass-guzzing hypocrite Who pulled off my mother's voluminous Robes and sliced away at her dugs. Planets focus their fires Into a worm of destruction Edging along the continent. Bodies Turn ashen and shrivel. I Only burn my tail.

On Tue, Jul 21, 2009 at 7:56 PM, Aaron Stark<aaronsta at gmail.com> wrote:
>>What does "Irani" refer to (not "Iranian," I assume)?
>
> AFAIK, Iranis in India are an ethnic group of immigrants from Persia.
> Wikipedia says this about Iranis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irani,
> and from the very little I know about this through family connections,
> this sounds about right:
>
> "Most Iranis are descendants of immigrants who arrived on the
> subcontinent during the 19th and early 20th centuries, that is, when
> Iran was ruled by the Qajars and when religious persecution of
> non-Muslims was rampant. The descendants of the immigrants of those
> times remain culturally and linguistically closer to the Zoroastrians
> of Iran, in particular to the Zoroastrians of Yazd and Kerman."
>
> As I just found out when I looked up the Wikipedia article above,
> apparently Iranis are distinct from Parsis (Parsees), another ethnic
> group within India with cultural and religious (Zoroastrian) ties to
> Iran.  Ancestors of today's Parsis apparently came to India over 1000
> years ago.
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-- My humanity is in feeling we are all voices of the same poverty. - Jorge Louis Borges



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