Exhibit showcases Parsis’ impact on clothing

When a religious war in the Middle East displaced the Parsis more than a thousand years ago, the persecuted Persian immigrants fled the violence and destruction in their homeland (known as Iran today) and eventually headed for India. The maharaja was hesitant to welcome them, though, concerned about the potential impacts on Indian society.

Unable to speak a common language, the story goes — as recalled by Michael Schuster, curator of the East-West Center Gallery — the Indians sent an emissary with a container of milk filled to the rim, to convey that India had reached its capacity. The Parsis, though, quickly brought back to the Indian ruler a cup, from which sugar was drawn and added to the milk, as a way of showing how the contents could be sweetened without overflowing.

This apocryphal tale, with its clear contemporary parallels, provides subtext to the latest textile exhibit on display through Jan. 24 at the East-West Center Gallery, “Parsi: Silk and Muslin, from Iran, India and China.” Those three geographical areas come together through the stories of the Parsis and their mass exodus from Iran to India, where many of them made vast fortunes serving as go-betweens in the opium trade and gave much of that wealth back to their communities, especially Bombay, a city now known as Mumbai, the most populated place in modern India.

“Because of their involvement in trade (in the 18th and 19th centuries), most Parsi families are quite wealthy,” said East-West Center Gallery arts coordinator Eric Chang. “They became very rich, and in giving back, which they did a lot, they really built the city of Bombay’s centers for higher learning, arts and hospitals. In the process, they became highly educated and very worldly.”

That cosmopolitan nature of the Parsi culture is expressed through their complex types of clothing, which combine influences from Iran, India, Victorian-era England and China. Examples in this exhibit include the “paghri” and “pheta,” which are traditional Parsi headgear used for ceremonies; the “gara,” a silk sari embroidered with a fusion of Chinese and Indian motifs; and the ubiquitous muslin “sudreh,” a religious undergarment worn by both genders that traditionally includes a “pocket of good deeds” to “collect” the positive actions of the wearer.

Through examining such dress, Schuster said, visitors to the gallery can gain insights on the blending of cultures and the expressions of that dynamic via fashion.

SCHUSTER RECENTLY was in Mumbai, returning some Bollywood costumes to an East-West Center Gallery collaborator, when he noticed just how prominent Parsi philanthropists had been in the city.

“It seemed like every museum, every university, every major industry had Parsi people involved with them,” he said. “They have been so important and influential to Indian culture and contemporary Indian life.”

Yet when they arrived at the borders of India seeking asylum, there was significant hesitation and distrust. The Parsis were required to describe their religion in depth and give up their weapons before entering. They also had to promise to use the local language and local dress, as a way of integrating into the existing society rather than creating a faction within it. Over the centuries they gradually added back in distinctive Parsi touches.

The Parsis’ religion, Zoroastrianism, for many centuries was the world’s dominant spiritual framework, including serving as the state religion of Persia, widespread throughout its enormous empire. Its monotheistic ideas, including messianism, influenced later religious systems such as Christianity and Islam, and focused upon the mantra of “good thoughts, good words and good deeds.”

Parsis are similar to Jewish immigrants in the Western world, distinguished both through ethnicity and religious beliefs. As such, and as the core of the remaining Zoroastrianists in the world, their numbers have dwindled to about 125,000, including 70,000 in India. Mumbai, for comparison, has about 20 million people.

Despite their relatively minuscule numbers as the smallest recognized ethnic group in India, the Parsis have had an oversize impact on their adopted communities in Mumbai and the surrounding areas.

Schuster says the exhibit chronicles the successful integration of a persecuted group of immigrants and how such integration can build and strengthen a society.

“These are remnants of a very influential religion,” he said, “but not a dead religion and not a gone people.”