Saturday, August 25, 2012

Thank Iran (Persia) for Bollywood!

There is a good chance that most of the buffoons who chant "bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" don't care to know anything at all about the country's gloriously rich history.  The theocratic buffoons ruining running the country seem to be hell bent on making sure the world would understand Iran only as a country of nutcases.

A long time ago, I read somewhere (where? the older I get, the more I forget such details!) that even as Arabic gained currency in West Asia as the language of science, Persian reigned supreme as the language of culture.  Something like the comparison between French and German, I suppose.

It was a good thing that the Central Asians invading India brought along with them the Persian culture, which then filtered all the way down to memorable Bollywood stars who played memorable Muslim characters with memorable melodies.

Some of my favorites:

















1 comment:

Ramesh said...

What a collection of golden Bollywood immortals.

But not sure of the Persian connection - more Islam from Central Asia I think.

For Persian influence on India, we need to look no further the the Parsis.