Trusts on the monsoon winds: Parsi transnational religious philanthropy

Abstract

Trade brought the Parsis to Hong Kong and a small group remained and settled after the British took over the island in 1841. Profits from the China trade made millionaires of several of Bombay’s ‘illustrious’ philanthropists and helped to build some of this city’s founding infrastructure. The ties between the two colonial ports were never severed, and recent years have seen a resurgence of funds transferred from Parsi charitable trusts in Hong Kong back to Mumbai and other settlements in India. Unlike the profits from individuals, these funds are funneled through charitable trusts. This article will articulate a transregional Indian Ocean world that is formed not only through the movement of people and goods, but by community giving and city building, through the temporal giving of the trust. It will show how this historical and contemporary giving has become an idiom of transnational placemaking between these two port cities.