Karachi:
From a closed community for her Zoroastrian faith at Karachi, 22-year-old Elisha Amra has waved goodbye to many friends wandering abroad as the old Parsi community subsides.
Soon, the film student hopes to join them – to become another loss to Pakistan’s aging Zoroastrian Parsi People, a society that traces their roots back to Persian refugees from Iran more than a millennium ago.
“My plan is to travel abroad,” Amra said, adding that she wants to study for a master’s degree in a country without the limitations of a conservative Muslim majority society. “I want to be able to freely express myself,” she added.
Zoroastrianism, founded by Zarathustra, was prevalent religion in the ancient Persian empire until the rise of Islam in the seventh century. In Pakistan, when the Parsi community had as many as 15,000-20,000 people, but now the number 900 people in Karachi and a few dozen are more elsewhere.
Amra recognizes that her life is more comfortable than many in Pakistan – Parsis is generally a wealthy and highly educated society. But she says she wants to escape the daily challenges that occupy the city at approx. 20 million people – from power cuts, water shortages to violent street crime.
Zubin Patel, 27, a parsi working in e-commerce in Karachi, has seen more than two dozen Parsi friends leave Karachi abroad for the past three years. “More than 20-25 of my friends lived in Karachi, they all began to migrate,” he said.
It is not unique to Parsis – many young and talented Pakistanis want to find jobs abroad to escape a country wrapped with political uncertainty and security challenges, a fighting economy and vicious infrastructure.
The number of highly educated Pakistanis who traveled to jobs abroad more than doubled according to the latest figures from Pakistan Economic Survey – from 20,865 in 2022 to 45,687 in 2023.
Parsis is struggling to adapt to a rapidly changing world. “There’s a better chance of finding a Zoroastrian partner in Canada, Australia, UK and America than in Pakistan,” said Dinshaw Behram Avari, 57, the leader of one of the most prominent Parsi families.
Avari, who leads a chain of hotels, points out that the Parsi population in Toronto is approx. 10 times larger than Karachi. He said a wave of Parsis left Pakistan under the hardline military rule of Ziaul Haq in the 1980s.
Since then, violence has targeted religious minorities, and although Parsis says they have not been targeted, they remain cautious. Avari suggested that the high level of education and Western views of society meant many eyes a future abroad, while for those who become, family size is shrunk.
“Couples are more interested today in looking after their careers; they are not interested in family,” he said. “When they marry, they have a child – and a child is not enough to have a positive influence on the population.”
Parsi members were among the pioneers of the shipping and hospitality industry in Karachi, and the city’s historic district during the colonial period is dotted with Parsi buildings including hospitals and schools. But when society falls, many buildings are crumbled.
For many among the younger generation, the only trait that kept them in Pakistan is their aging relatives. Patel said he would leave if he could. “It would be a difficult decision,” he said. “But if I have an opportunity that would give my parents … a healthy lifestyle, then I would obviously go after it”.
