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Podcast: EMPIRE LINES
Episode: Vatcha Adaran Zoroastrian Fire Temple, Bombay (1881)
Description: Dr. Talinn Grigor sets light to the interimperial identities in 19th century Parsi architecture, through the Vatcha Adaran Zoroastrian Fire Temple, Bombay.
Building Bombay was at the forefront of the religious, philanthropic, and political agenda of the Parsis, India’s Persian Zoroastrian ethnoreligious minority. Thousands of buildings like the Vatcha Adaran were commissioned in the ‘Persian Revival’, as the Parsis portrayed themselves as heirs of the ancient Persian Achaemenid and Sassanian Empires. But wealthy patrons also drew from European Gothic Revivalism to solidify their privileged position in the contemporary British Raj. Both foundational and forward-facing, the Vatcha Adaran...