WI: Increased Zoroastrianic migration into the Indian subcontinent

Harshavardhana

Zoroastrian migration to the subcontinent occured somewhere around 7-9th century due to increased persecution by the Caliphate (destruction of the Fire temples, etc). They settled around areas like the Sindh, Gujarat and Maharashtra. The rulers of these areas while fascinated by the religion itself (and sometimes suspicious) where told not to proselytise the indigenous Indian people and as a result the population who practised this religion died out over the centuries to the point there are only 57000 "Parsis" living in India and 1000 in Pakistan.

So, what if there where much more people who migrated to the subcontinent?

OTL, we don't know how many had escaped persecution and reached India but let's say 1 million escaped from Iran. I currently can't find any academic sources regarding population movement from Iran to India during this time period so please bear with me :).

So for the discussion, what if 2-3 million people* had migrated into the Indian subcontinent over the two centuries? Rather than only settling in the above three areas they migrate as far as Kerela, Karnataka, Tamilikam, Lanka and Goa (generally the entire western coast of India). Let's say they manage to get the permission to proselytise the common people from the kings, how much do you think the traditional Zoroastrianic religion would have survived in the face of Hinduism? Would we see any fusion between them? What would be it's long term effects on the subcontinent?

Would the Arabian trade with India decrease (the reason for this is; the majority of the people that fled Iran were farmers, metal workers and merchant families so they may not like that the various kingdoms of the sub-continent trade with Arabs and may or may not influence those kings to lessen or to not trade with them at all).


*This is subject to change considering I do not know many people left.
 
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kholieken

Banned
India cant support that many refugees. Modern Parsis is poor until British Raj. Poor Zoroastrians need to find niche job that somehow unfulfilled in India or bring conquering armies. And Indian Ocean trade necessitated need for Muslims since biggest market is in Mecca, India need to participate in that trade.
 

Harshavardhana

kholieken said:
India cant support that many refugees. Modern Parsis is poor until British Raj. Poor Zoroastrians need to find niche job that somehow unfulfilled in India or bring conquering armies. And Indian Ocean trade necessitated need for Muslims since biggest market is in Mecca, India need to participate in that trade.
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The number can be changed, of course. I spitballed the number considering we don't know many people migrated in OTL.
 

Nivek

Kcirtap said:
for the discussion, what if 4-5 million people had migrated into the Indian subcontinent over the two centuries
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Wtf that's more than half of Persia at the time , this kill Persian and now the region would fully arabized and those guys would now become a problem for India.
 

Harshavardhana

Nivek said:
Wtf that's more than half of Persia at the time , this kill Persian and now the region would fully arabized and those guys would now become a problem for India.
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I have reduced the amount of fleeing.

Edit:- A simple Google search told me that the population of the Sassanid Empire was 40 million. How was the population I quoted half?
 
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prani

Banned
How would 2 million people escape? Let alone over a span of 200 years, like yeah you got boats but, who would sponsor such migration? Pay for the cost of transportation etc, seems ASB to me
 

Gloss

5 million people is a lot in 200 years, which leads to me ask what's the largest amount of migrants we saw historically going from one region to another in the span of 1 century before 1800 CE?

My first guess would be to look at the influx of slaves within the Roman republic during the 2nd century BCE, the migration of Han Chinese southwards during the Han dynasty, Tang dynasty and some other cases, possibly Turkic migration into Anatolia during the Mongol expansion.
 

Abulabbas

Why not just a greater proliferation rather than migration? I can easily imagine a Parsi population that of upwards of three/four million by the 20th century. Europe had a Jewish population of around nine million before the Second World War, the vast majority of whom weren't converts but descendants of historical Jewish populations. Why can the same not have happened with the Parsis of India?

Egads, imagine centuries down the line the Brits try to re-establish a Zoroastrian homeland in Persia after a Parsi genocide...
 

Gloss

Abulabbas said:
Why not just a greater proliferation rather than migration? I can easily imagine a Parsi population that of upwards of three/four million by the 20th century. Europe had a Jewish population of around nine million before the Second World War, the vast majority of whom weren't converts but descendants of historical Jewish populations. Why can the same not have happened with the Parsis of India?

Egads, imagine centuries down the line the Brits try to re-establish a Zoroastrian homeland in Persia after a Parsi genocide...
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Actually that's a very good point, Jewish populations ballooned from(I believe) less than 100k north of the Alps(a possibly generous estimates) around 1400 to more than 5 million in Central and Eastern Europe by 1914, while Europe's population grew around 5-10 times at most.
 
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