Although Indian Zoroastrians have spoken Indo-Aryan languages for more than a thousand years, they retain close religious and emotional ties to Iranian languages. Interviews with orthodox priests and conservative members of the Parsi and Irani communities, conducted in January 2026, shed light on the current perceptions of Iranian languages among Indian Zoroastrians.

Four Iranian languages have held important roles in the history of Zoroastrianism: Avestan (Eastern Old Iranian), Middle Persian (SW Middle Iranian), New Persian (SW New Iranian), and Zoroastrian Dari (NW New Iranian). In Indian communities today, Avestan and Middle Persian are both sacred liturgical languages, often learned rote without engagement with its meaning. The relationship to New Persian is more complex. Orthodox Indian Zoroastrians have strong emotional attachments to modern Iran, and New Persian in the Arabic script is valued as a fellow Iranian language conveying Zoroastrian heritage rather than a foreign Islamic language. Zoroastrian Dari, the actual NW Iranian vernacular of Iranian Zoroastrians, is the heritage language of the minority Irani community (Zoroastrians who moved to India in the Qajar period) but is largely unknown to the majority Parsi community, who have been present in India since early medieval times.

Seonoo Kim is a fourth-year undergraduate student reading Persian and French at Trinity College, University of Cambridge.