When Islam wiped out Zoroastrians from Persia , India gave refuge . Hope they can de colonize . Here is what Lamin Sanneh writes ,
“A story is told about the first Zoroastrians, called Parsees, who arrived in Bombay, India, where they still flourish as a commercial enclave. Their Indian hosts, jealous of preserving their religious traditions from the presence of the new immigrants, sent them a full jug of milk as a sign. Their meaning was that just as the Parsees could not add any more to the jug without spilling some of its rich content so would they be unable to add anything valuable to the content of Hindu religious custom without inflicting a serious loss. …. There was genuine fear about the incoming immigrants and their new religion. But the response of the Parsees to this message was equally significant. A committee of local elders, called the Panchayat after the Hindu model, was quickly convened and these elders formulated an appropriate reply, which they sent back with the jug of milk. When the jug arrived, it was found to contain a gold ring or, in a variant tradition, sugar. The Parsees had slipped it in a way of saying that they would still add something precious — or sweet — to the jug of milk, and by implication to the content of Hindu religious culture, without upsetting either. Whether there were also hints of the future renown of Parsees as successful commercial entrepreneurs is not clear, but obviously they had little doubt about the worth of their contribution to their adopted land” (Lamin Sanneh, The Crown and The Turban, Westview Colorado, 1997).
