Amidst legend and history: a socio-religious conflict between modernity and tradition in Mumbai’s Parsi community

Abstract (English)

Zoroastrianism and cultural narratives in Mumbai’s parsi community. A 2025 story of cultural silence and ethnic anxiety. The borders are extremely hard and yet so fragile in this city of "dreams", so dreamlike that it arouses the feeling of the unreal at every corner. If there is a wedding in Mumbai, it is often all the more reason to get stuck in traffic, between horses and big parties. Meanwhile, sounds of bells and muezzin calls decorate the few empty spaces left to the kettledrums in chaotic Mumbai, while at the same time as this polyadric symphony, in silence, almost shyly, are the parsi in their intimate celebrations and quiet daily life.
In 2025, being parsee in Bombay appears as a slalom between cultural silence and roaring old generations. Parsi culture has been homogenising to the surrounding multifaceted socio-cultural milieu, progressively forgetting or drastically modifying customs and traditions, sometimes even seeing the weakening, if not the very destruction, of linguistic-semantic structures, ritual procedures and cultural elements. While learning and preserving a colossal language such as avestic is nowadays almost improbable, it is also interesting to note how some of the most common words that are part of the "parsi lexicon" completely lose their meaning in the mouths of the youngest, who often see not only prayers emptied of meaning, but also face the fading of cultural and social designations, increasingly blurring the image of traditional, typically parsi attributes.
Innovation, modification and transformation of cultural facts and cultures is normal, indeed physiological, but to what extent can one speak of change and not of disruption of a cultural identity?