On the 9th November, 2016, an event was organised jointly by Britain’s Zoroastrian All Party Parliamentary Group and the Zoroastrian Trust Funds of Europe, commemorating Cobra Beer founder, Lord Karan Bilimoria’s ten years as a Crossbench Peer. The meeting, held in the Commons, also discussed the contribution of British Indians to the UK parliament since 1892.

Britain houses around 4,100 Zoroastrians. Lord Bilimoria, 54, Chancellor of Birmingham University, amongst other prestigious platforms he graces, remarked how the first three Indian origin MPs in Britain were all Parsis! “The first was Dadabhai Naoroji, a Liberal, in 1892; the second was Mancherjee Bhownagree, a Conservative (in 1895); and the third was ‘Comrade Sak’, Shapurji Saklatvala, a Communist and Labour Party member (in 1922).”

A number of other speakers paid tribute to Parsis in general and Bilimoria in particular, including Shailesh Vara, who became the first Indian origin Tory MP in 2005. Virendra Sharma, elected a Labour MP in 2007, described Bilimoria as “a decent, honest, hardworking human being”, who invariably helped charitable causes. Shreela Flather, 82, who became the first Asian woman to join the Lords in 1998 and is a Tory turned crossbencher, affectionately called Bilimoria a “particularly nice boy, very likeable, very open, very genuine – I like him a lot”. The latest and youngest recruit to the Lords, 46-year-old Jitesh Gadhia, a Tory, said he had overlapped with Bilimoria at Cambridge. He recalled the happy days when his friend of 28 years “was a member of the Cambridge University Conservative Association”.

It was stated that setting aside party differences, Indian origin parliamentarians were united in seeking the betterment of British Indians and the wider community at large. Lord Dolar Popat, a Tory peer, said: “The Parsi community in India has been a role model and we have tried to emulate it in Britain – we have, in many ways, followed the Jewish community in making a success of life in the UK.”

The acting Indian high commissioner, Dinesh Patnaik, said he had attended a Parsi wedding when he was 13 and dined off a banana leaf with knife and fork: “Parsis hold on to tradition but are modern at the same time.”

Dholakia, the Liberal Democrats deputy leader in the Lords and his party’s former president, said, “Now is the time to instill knowledge of politics, not necessarily party politics, in our young people so that in time to come, they will be part of the political process in this country.”

Malcolm Deboo, President of Zoroastrian Trust Funds of Europe, is organising an event on November 19th, 2016 to mark the contribution of Indian servicemen, especially Zoroastrians, in the First World War.