Many Lives Many Masters In Gujarati
Peppin Kishore
Psychiatrist Dr Brian Weiss had been working with Catherine, a young patient, for eighteen months. Catherine was suffering from recurring nightmares and chronic anxiety attacks. When his traditional methods of therapy failed, Dr Weiss turned to hypnosis and was astonished and sceptical when Catherine began recalling past-life traumas which seemed to hold the key to her problems. Dr Weiss's scepticism was eroded when Catherine began to channel messages from 'the space between lives', which contained remarkable revelations about his own life. Acting as a channel for information from highly evolved spirit entities called the Masters, Catherine revealed many secrets of life and death. This fascinating case dramatically altered the lives of Catherine and Dr Weiss, and provides important information on the mysteries of the mind, the continuation of life after death and the influence of our past-life experiences on our present behaviour.
At the start of this Fellowship year, I hardly anticipated that I would be speaking about why legal history was important to a group of young Adivasi professionals and community elders in South Gujarat. This was related to my area of research at Harvard Law School where I worked on tribal property rights in Indian legal history.
Amongst the many visitors to the library was a linguistic anthropologist who has worked extensively in Jharkhand and was associated with the Adivasi Academy many years ago. Sitting on the cow-dung plastered floor of the Adivasi Academy canteen, we spoke about many things including my research interests. Apart from suggesting many helpful books, he introduced me to a local college lecturer who worked on issues of adivasi identity and was associated with Bhasha before leaving for further studies in the UK.
I had traveled to the Narmada District before accompanying a staff member from Bhasha and had come away with the impression that it was a beautiful place with mountains and an abundance of forest areas and mango trees. This visit would not disappoint. The drive through Chhota Udaipur to the hillier Narmada district was long but mostly uneventful except for the car radiator overheating, and seeing a few men physically lift up a cow to its legs after it sat down from heat exhaustion.
I began with the question of what the appropriate date to begin examining legal history would be. While many spoke about looking at Mughal and Maratha rule and their relations with Adivasi chiefs and kings, others spoke about the period under the East India Company or the British Crown. Given the continuities in the present-day legal system with that established by East India Company, I took the audience through the period from 1600 when the British East India Company received a charter from the queen till 1950 when the Constitution of India was enacted. While this is something that is often covered in school-level history, it rarely contextualizes it in a way that is usable by Adivasi communities and seems to mostly only focus on the Indian independence movement.
That evening a few of the speakers were scheduled to return to Tejgadh, so I traveled with them. On the way, there were excellent conversations about the importance of role models and mentorship for Adivasi youth. Everyone agreed that the three-day workshop was something that should be replicated for youth in Chhota Udaipur district as well and we discussed how the Adivasi Academy and its library could play an important role in this.
I have met many wonderful and interesting people through the course of my Fellowship year. These have helped shaped my ideas not only for a long term plan for the library but also further personal academic research which examines the past where tribal and Adivasi communities have been excluded. Through sustained engagements such as those enabled by the AIF Clinton Fellowship, I have had a unique chance to examine our past and work towards building a more inclusive and just future.
Jaipal Singh: A Visionary Adivasi Intellectual of Modern India, Republished from www.tribalzone.net available at -singh-munda-visionary-adivasi-intellectual-modern-india/ (last accessed 30th July 2019)
Nishant graduated from West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences in Kolkata in 2011 and received his LL.M. degree from Harvard Law School. He clerked with the Supreme Court of India and later litigated a diverse range of cases in and around New Delhi with a litigation chamber. His most recent engagement was with the Centre on the Death Penalty at the National Law University, Delhi where he was one of the founding members and assisted inmates sentenced to death secure legal representation. At Harvard Law School, Nishant wrote about the impact of colonialism on tribal groups in India and pursued diverse interests ranging from natural resource issues, law and neuroscience, food law and criminal justice policy. He frequently writes about criminal justice issues in academic and popular publications. Through the AIF Clinton Fellowship, Nishant will be working on issues related to de-notified "criminal" tribes in India and hopes to better understand the law's impact on the lives of marginalized peoples.
The Parsis (singular: Parsi /ˈpɑːrsi/)[5] or Parsees are an ethnoreligious group of the Indian subcontinent adhering to Zoroastrianism. They are descended from Persians who migrated to Medieval India during and after the Arab conquest of the Persian Empire (part of the early Muslim conquests) to escape religious persecution.[6][7] Parsis are the older of the Indian subcontinent's two Zoroastrian communities, the other being the Iranis, whose ancestors migrated to British-ruled India from Qajar-era Iran.
According to the 16th-century Parsi epic, Qissa-i Sanjan, Zoroastrian Persians continued to migrate to the Indian subcontinent from Greater Iran in between the 8th century and 10th century and ultimately settled in present-day Gujarat after being granted refuge by a local Hindu king, Jadi Rana.[8][9][10][11]
Before the 7th-century fall of the Sassanid Empire to the Rashidun Caliphate, the Iranian mainland had a Zoroastrian majority, and Zoroastrianism had served as the Iranian state religion since at least the time of the Achaemenid Empire. Despite the retreat of these Iranians to the Indian subcontinent,[12] a number of Iranian figures remained in active rebellion against the Rashidun army and the later Islamic caliphates for almost 200 years after the Arab conquest.[13] However, the decline of Zoroastrianism in Iran continued, and most Iranians had adopted Islam by the 10th century.
The Parsi and Irani communities are the sole ethnoreligious groups practising Zoroastrianism in India. However, owing to the more recent migration of the Irani community to the Indian subcontinent, It is legally differentiated from the Parsi community.[15] Despite this legal distinction, the terms "Parsi" and "Zoroastrian" are commonly utilized interchangeably to denote both communities. Notably, no substantial differences exist between the religious principles, convictions, and customs of Parsis and Irani Zoroastrians.[16][17]
Parsi, also spelled Parsee, member of a group of followers in India of the Persian prophet Zoroaster. The Parsis, whose name means "Persians", are descended from Persian Zoroastrians who emigrated to India to avoid religious persecution by the Muslims. They live chiefly in Mumbai and in a few towns and villages mostly to the south of Mumbai, but also a few minorities nearby in Karachi (Pakistan) and Chennai. There is a sizeable Parsee population in Pune as well in Bangalore. A few Parsee families also reside in Kolkata and Hyderabad. Although they are not, strictly speaking, a caste, since they are not Hindus, they form a well-defined community. The exact date of the Parsi migration is unknown. According to tradition, the Parsis initially settled at Hormuz on the Persian Gulf but finding themselves still persecuted they set sail for India, arriving in the 8th century. The migration may, in fact, have taken place as late as the 10th century, or in both. They settled first at Diu in Kathiawar but soon moved to South Gujarāt, where they remained for about 800 years as a small agricultural community.[18]
The term Pārsi, which in the Persian language is a demonym meaning "inhabitant of Pārs" and hence "ethnic Persian", is not attested in Indian Zoroastrian texts until the 17th century. Until that time, such texts consistently use the Persian-origin terms Zartoshti "Zoroastrian" or Vehdin "[of] the good religion". The 12th-century Sixteen Shlokas, a Sanskrit text in praise of the Parsis,[19] is the earliest attested use of the term as an identifier for Indian Zoroastrians.
The term "Parseeism" or "Parsiism", is attributed to Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron, who in the 1750s, when the word "Zoroastrianism" had yet to be coined, made the first detailed report of the Parsis and of Zoroastrianism, therein mistakenly assuming that the Parsis were the only remaining followers of the religion.
In ancient Persia, Zoroaster taught that good (Ohrmazd) and evil (Angra Mainyu) were opposite forces and the battle between them is more or less evenly matched. A person should always be vigilant to align with forces of light. According to the asha or the righteousness and druj or the wickedness, the person has chosen in his life they will be judged at the Chinvat bridge to grant passage to Paradise, Hammistagan (A limbo area) or Hell by the bridge remaining wide for a righteous soul and turning narrow as a sword for the wicked.. A personified form of the soul that represents the person's deeds takes the adjudged to their destination and they will abide there until the final apocalypse. After the final battle between good and evil, every soul's walk through a river of fire ordeal for burning of their dross and together they receive a post resurrection paradise. The Zoroastrian holy book, called the Avesta, was written in the Avestan language, which is closely related to Vedic Sanskrit.
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