The Parsi community, followers of Zoroastrianism who fled Persia over a millennium ago, settled primarily in Gujarat and Bombay. They were traders and industrialists, but also among India’s earliest reformers.
Their belief in education, gender equality, and philanthropy created a social environment unlike any other in colonial India. While many Indian women were confined to domestic roles, Parsi girls were being sent to missionary schools and even abroad for higher studies. They believed women must be intellectually equal partners, not dependents.
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By the late 19th century, Bombay’s Parsi households were buzzing with new ideas about science, suffrage, and the independence movement. Out of this small community emerged some of India’s earliest doctors, lawyers, and revolutionaries.
BHIKAIJI CAMA: THE REVOLUTIONARY WITH A FLAG
In 1907, at a Socialist Congress in Stuttgart, a woman in a sari stood before an international audience and unfurled India’s first flag.
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