After decades as an important chronicler for India’s Parsi community, iconic Parsi magazine Parsiana will stop publishing forever in October 2025, bringing to an end an extraordinary six-decade journey that began in 1964. This influential Parsi magazine has been based in a crumbling neo-Gothic building in Fort, Mumbai’s upmarket financial hub, where it has been operating from despite difficult circumstances.
Parsiana was first founded by Doctor Pestonji Warden, a Parsi doctor who operated in the sandalwood business, with the major interest of capturing and storing the life stories of the Parsi people of Mumbai. This amazing Parsi magazine in the next decades gained tremendous spread and influence and became a lifeline of Parsis scattered all over the world who were trying to keep in touch with the past and their society when the population of Parsis was getting smaller and smaller.
Three key elements led to closing this iconic magazine: plummeting subscriber rates, dire lack of funds, and the inability to find qualified successors who would want to carry on with the business of the magazine. The news that the Parsi magazine is going to end, announced in the editorial of August 2025, has caused a sense of sadness among not only the dedicated subscribers but also among those who have gotten to know the rich history of the magazine.
This powerful magazine has been run by Jehangir Patel, who is currently aged 80 years, and who bought it in 1973 at a very low price of a single rupee from the original owner. When Patel assumed the editorship of the Parsiana, he turned it into more than a mere monthly paper with basic essays and written medical articles into a full-fledged fortnightly journal with investigative reporting, caustic editorial comment, and illustrations to delicate community topics with astonishing candor and humour.
This revolutionary magazine, under the leadership of Patel, never feared to touch suicidal topics that other magazines could not be brave enough to address. His initial big story on becoming an editor was on high divorce rates in the community, a subject that was very shocking to most traditional readers who had never imagined reading such open matters in their favorite Parsi magazine. The willingness of the publication to touch upon hard issues turned out to be one of the main peculiarities of the publication over the decades.
The most controversial move in the history of the magazine perhaps came in 1987 when Parsiana published the first advertisements of interfaith matrimony, a bold step that directly confronted the strict endogamous traditions of the community. Although many readers came out strongly against this practice by insisting that the magazine stop the practice, Patel and his crew stood firm because of their desire to give different viewpoints and progressive news.
During its impressive history of publication, this landmark magazine has continuously highlighted issues that are of critical concern to the Zoroastrian community, such as the declining global number of Zoroastrians and the progressive erosion of traditional values such as the Towers of Silence burial sites. Community achievements, major social and religious happenings, and the formation of Parsi institutions were also covered in the magazine, and the magazine reported recently on the Alpaiwalla Museum in Mumbai, the sole Parsi museum worldwide.
As this historic Parsi magazine readies to be closed down permanently, the readers all over the world have been sending tributes as they acknowledge the invaluable role it played in maintaining the culture and identity of the Parsis. In the September edition, one of the Mumbai readers has eloquently pointed out that such documentation of a small community with such dedication and passion appeared like an enormous task, but Parsiana was more than up to the task. A Pakistani reader referred to the magazine as being more than a mere publication, as it was a companion and a bridge between Zoroastrians on different continents.
The existing 15-member editorial team, most in their 60s and 70s and hired by Patel, is now faced with the challenge of both preparing the last issues of the magazine and ending their journalism careers. Patel says it is a world of exhaustion and great despair because the group has witnessed decades of keeping this essential Parsi magazine alive.
The old office building with its mouldering editions and its visible decay with peeling walls and collapsing ceilings is located in an old Parsi hospital that has been unoccupied for forty years. With the end of the deadline, the next issues of the magazine will contain commemorative articles on the long way of Parsiana and the unending influence on the world Parsi fraternity.
On the last day of the team, Patel states that the team may just have a silent lunch in their office without any big celebrations because he feels that the occasion requires introspection and not celebration. The shutting down of Parsiana magazine is not only the end of a publication, but also the end of a period in Parsi journalism and documentation of Parsi life, the loss of which will be deeply felt by the readers around the globe.
