The title of the Shah of Iran was ‘Arya Mehr’, or ‘Light of the Aryan’. When Aryan tribes arrived from Persia and Central Asia and settled in the Indo-Gangetic plains, they called it Aryavarta or the Land of the Aryans. Persia’s Shia Islam did not erase Zoroastrian culture but absorbed it. Navroz, the Persian New Year, is celebrated by sprinkling saffron colour in all countries which were once part of the pre-Islamic Persian Empire. This tradition has been preserved by the Shias of Awadh and the Parsis of India. Awadh, after all, is the undisputed ‘markaz’ or centre of Shia culture in India,
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