The Parsis are a small community, mainly concentrated in the west of India, with most of them in Mumbai. They are refugees from Persia and are said to have come to India in the eighth century. Since then, they have assimilated in the country, and have contributed a lot to India as traders, industrialists, professionals and philanthropists.
Coomi Kapoor, a veteran journalist, who is a Parsi herself, in her latest book, The Tatas, Freddie Mercury and Other Bawas: An Intimate History of the Parsis, writes about some of the icons from the community. In a podcast interview with Sidharth Bhatia, Kapoor talks about her own heritage and how she went about researching the book to find new details of her subjects.
Kapoor says that the impression that the Parsis thrived because of their proximity to the British does not fully explain their success. It was their open-mindedness and entrepreneurship that also played a big role.
