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Parsi legal culture produced clear benefits for Zoroastrians in the late colonial era. It also played an underacknowledged role in the constitutional life of modern India, helping nationalists pivot from extra-legal resistance to the business of running a state. Independent India could re-activate constitutionalism and the rule of law as ideals because these values were well established among nationalists, albeit in a tradition that had been relegated to the back burner in the run-up to independence. This tradition, exemplified by early Congress figures like Dadabhai Naoroji, Pherozeshah Mehta, and Dinsha Wacha, was heavily influenced by Parsi legal culture. This article also suggests that rule-oflaw values were not inescapably colonial. As an ideal, the rule of law caused division within the colonial state, powered anti-colonial critique, and reinforced constitutionalism. Because the rule-of-law agenda was distinct from colonialism, there was no inherent contradiction between Parsi legal culture and the rejection of colonial rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We have first time generated complete mitogenome of 19 ancient samples of the first Parsi settlers excavated from the archaeological site of Sanjan. • One of the promising samples belonged to haplogroup M3a1 + 204, which is prevalent among medieval swat valley population and also in two Roopkund individuals. • In phylognalysis and haplotype network Parsi sample with M3a1 + 204 share clade with both Middle Eastern and South Asian samples. The rich cultural and genetic diversity of South Asia emerged from multiple migrations and cultural assimilation of multiple waves of migrants. The Parsi community of North-western India were one of those who migrated from West Eurasia in the aftermath of 7th century CE and assimilated into the local cultural framework. Earlier genetic studies further strengthened this notion with the finding that they harbour both Middle Eastern and South Asian genetic components. Although these studies covered both autosomal and uniparental markers, still maternal ancestry was not covered in depth and with good resolution of mitochondrial markers. Hence in our current study, we have first time generated a complete mitogenome of 19 ancient samples of the first Parsi settlers excavated from the archaeological site of Sanjan and performed detailed phylogenetic analysis to infer their maternal genetic affinity. In our analysis, we found that the Parsi mitogenome with mtDNA haplogroup M3a1 + 204 shares clade with both Middle Eastern and South Asian modern individuals in both the Maximum Likelihood tree and Bayesian phylogenetic tree. This haplogroup was also prevalent among the medieval Swat valley population of present-day Northern Pakistan and was also observed in two Roopkund A individuals. In the phylogenetic network this sample share haplotype with both South Asian and Middle Eastern samples. So conclusively, the first Parsi settlers' maternal ancestry encompasses both South Asian and Middle Eastern genetic composition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the study of the history of print culture in India is still at an early stage, languages moribund in India, like Persian, have been all but ignored in this narrative. Persian newspapers of the nineteenth century, especially from its first half, played an important role in the development of the Indian public sphere. To a certain extent, they continued in the vein of the pre-British akhbār s, while on the other hand, they took on gradually the character of a modern newspaper. Bombay (Mumbai), for historical and geographical reasons, emerged as a center of Persian language activity during this period and its rapidly burgeoning printing infrastructure facilitated the development of Persian, as a language for books and newspapers. Using a range of contemporary government records and newspapers, an attempt is made here to reconstruct the history of these early Persian newspapers. Over a dozen Persian newspapers are identified, most of them for the first time; a preliminary attempt is made to understand the impact of these newspapers and the motivations of their Parsi, Hindu, and Muslim editors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]