At the dawn of the nineteenth century the British were keen on introducing a civilizational progress into what was perceived to be superstitious and regressing British India. Several strategies to achieve this objective were considered, of which one was to start by influencing the Indian communities that showed greatest promise and had a friendly disposition towards the British, and through their instrumentality reach the other Indian communities. The Parsees figured prominently among the handful communities the British were interested in for this purpose. Amongst nineteenth-century Christian missionaries in western India, John Wilson of Bombay shared this interest and vision. It encouraged him to adopt Enlightenment-inspired methods of determining truth and falsehood in the Parsee socio-religious system with the hope of inducing moral and religious change amongst the Parsees. When this strategy met with strong resistance he diverted his efforts to educating the Parsees. Wilson’s mission did not produce the results he hoped for. Instead his rigorous engagement with their beliefs and customs served a warning to the Parsees of the need to introduce reform within their community in order to survive in a milieu of intense social change.India’s tropical climate, its fertile and diverse landscape, the reputation of its elite religious and philosophical culture and the welcoming demeanor of its people have drawn conquering princes, tradesmen, travelers, missionaries and even economic and political refugees to her for several millennia. Today’s eclectic India with its multi-racial and culturally diverse population is the result of migration that happened since ancient times, especially from the regions to her north and west. Amongst the ethnic groups that migrated to become part of India were the Persians. Contact between Persia and India has existed for more than three thousand years. Those Persians who made India their home in ancient times lost their exclusive identity over time and amalgamated with the mainstream people groups of India. A later migration under desperate circumstances at the beginning of the Islamic era and as a result of Islamic persecution brought Persians once again to the shores of India. These relatively recent refugees retained their identity and came to be known as Parsees. This paper is about them and about the efforts of one of British India’s leading Christian missionaries of the nineteenth century – John Wilson – to Christianize them. Not many Parsees converted to the Christian faith as a result of Wilson’s efforts, but the entire episode has much to offer by way of lessons for Christian mission amongst migrants and dislocated people.

Migration, Human Dislocation and the Good News

WESTERN technology is rapidly changing the face of the globe, transforming everything it touches. Its major impact, however, may not be so much upon the external environment as upon man's value-systems. The expansive power of western civilization is drawing all cultures and religions into its revolutionary orbit and creating a new vision of man and his role on this planet.1 The "spiritual East," though it continues to resist this cultural juggernaut, is irresistibly caught under its wheels. "It is nonsense," says van Leeuwen, "for the nonwestern peoples to accuse the west of 'materialism' whilst themselves making every effort to reach the same standard of living within as short a time as possible."2 Jet travel, atomic energy and the electronics revolution along with the more subtle forces of nationalism, socialism, democracy and radical self-criticism seem unquestionably to be gaining momentum.

James Emerson Whitehurst

Papers

The Zoroastrian Response to Westernization: A Case Study of the Parsis of Bombay