This dissertation traces a series of cultural negotiations through which the Parsis, a community of ethnic Zoroastrians, fashioned themselves into ‘modern’ citizens in the setting of colonial Bombay. It examines the ways Parsis negotiated change in a number of personal spheres such as their dress, deportment, dining and domesticity as well as the ways the community managed internal groupings such as Persian Zoroastrian refugees and the Parsi poor in the landscape of Bombay. It proposes tha...