Resolution refrain

The Parsi Zoroastrian community should compliment and show their profound gratitude to the revered Vada Dasturs for passing this most needed resolution (see page 24) which can deter the miserable rot and decay caused to our noble community by the effects of intermar­riage, juddin navjotes, illicit religious rituals and practices.

Dastur (Dr) Kaikhusroo JamaspAsa deserves the full credit for this change in consciousness and the enlightenment which he has brought to the practising mobed sahebs and other dasturs of our community and to the entire Zoroastrian community as a whole.

The greatest tragedy is that this resolution should have been passed decades ago by those who were responsible like our dasturs, mobeds, the Athornan Mandal and, above all, the so-called apex body of our illustrious community, the Parsi Punchayet of Bombay.

Unfortunately, those responsible have in the past totally failed in their duty to preserve and to protect the sanctity of our consecrated places of worship in accordance with the pre­cepts, tenets and the time-honored customs of our Parsi Zoroast­rian religion.

This historic resolution also, beyond any doubts, endorses the resolution passed by the mobeds of Poona (see "Priests’ diktat,” Readers’ Forum, Parsiana, March 2003).

This is the fundamental mandate of the Parsi Zoroastrian religion and our ancient Aryan race; otherwise one of our most sacred prayers, Ahuramazda Khodae would have no meaning whatso­e­ver.

Ervad DARIUS N. SETHNA

I refer to the "historic resolution” passed by a few priests of Poona at a meeting held on December 5, 2002 at the J. J. Agiary Complex, Poona which was duly endorsed by a few of our dasturs. In short this resolution declared that:

•the four-day ceremonies be denied to those who do not opt for dakhmenashini (as it exists today), where a dakhma exists;

•not even a tandorosti be recited for couples who opt for inter­faith marriages;

•children of interfaith marriages, when even the father is a Parsi Zoroastrian, be denied the navjote ceremony.

Such thoughtless resolutions will do more harm than good. By the landmark judgement of Justices Daver and Beaman of the Bombay High Court, vide suit no 689 of 1906, the children of mixed marriages, when the father is a Parsi Zoroastrian, are considered as Zoroastrians for the purpose of navjote or any other rituals.

It appears that our prelates see nothing wrong in altering directives in the Vendidad to suit their own conveniences. Some examples:

•as required, the gah sarna ceremony is not insisted upon in the same gah in which the person dies;

•the four-day prayers are not recited at the same spot where the gah sarna ceremony was performed. In my stay of more than 28 years in Bangalore, I have not come across even a single occasion when this essential ritual was carried out, although a furnished bungli is provided in the precinct of the Doongerwa­di, which is hardly 10 km from our Bangalore agiary and the priest’s quarters. Earlier, even a personal request from a pri­est, who was a reputed religious scholar in Bangalore, was de­nied, even when such a request was made by him prior to his death, promising even transportation;

•the period of the muktad ceremonies has been truncated from 18 to 10 days;

•the requirements of isolation during a woman’s monthly menstrual cycle and for 40 days during post-partum periods are carried out more in the breach than execution even by the ladies from the priestly families!

•a navjote ceremony was performed of an 80-year-old gentleman, who was born a Christian and was also baptised (his father was a converted Christian and the mother was a Christian at the time of the child’s birth), on the pretext that such exceptions are permissible if there is a lapse in only one generation and the concerned person shows regret and genuine desire to reenter the Zoroastrian religion.

Will our prelates move with the times and desist from en­forcing their unworkable and unjustifiable ways over helpless and ignorant members of our community by sheer coercion, fear and at times even threats? The manner in which some of our rituals and rites are currently enforced and practiced make one believe that the core teachings of our religion will be safer in the hands of expatriate Zoroastrians who are keen to learn, follow and practice our religion in its most pristine form.

Dr M. D. DISAWALLA

Bangalore

As someone who greatly admires the teachings of our Lord Zoroaster and the type of positive life these teachings encourages us to lead, I feel that we should do our utmost to preserve this great religion of ours. I am afraid that this new High Priests’ resolution will only lead to its extinction. We should, on the contrary, be like the Catholics. When they (male or female) marry outside their faith, the Church makes it mandatory under the threat of excommunication that the children of this marriage be baptised and brought up as Catholics. This has done wonders to multiply the Catholics and it would do exactly the same for the dwindling Parsis.

In large cities like Delhi, Calcutta and Madras we have only a few families living there among millions of non-Zoroastrians and with the majority of Parsis in today’s world not being in­clined to arranged marriages it is but inevitable that our Zor­oastrian boys and girls will marry non-Zoroastrians. We all know that the Zoroastrian religion not only permits but prescribes the conversion of a person born in another religion to Zoro­as­trian­ism. This conversion will make them Zoroastrians but not Parsis and they will not be entitled to the economic benefits of subsid­ized housing, schools, hospitals, etc. But, by converting to Zoroastrianism, one should definitely be entitled to enter all the Zoroastrian atash behrams, agiaries and dar-e-mehers as a matter of right, and be eligible to attend the Zoroastrian funer­al rites.

This great religion of ours, Zoroastrianism, should not die and our priests should encourage and indeed command people of mixed marriages to have their children be brought up as practis­ing Zoroastrians with knowledge of their faith.

JEROO MANGO

Some of the Vada Dasturs have overnight seen fit to pass a draco­nian resolution on intercaste marriages that has no basis in law or backing of scriptures. The local Press in deference to our much respected progressive community, is wasting precious newsprint on debates on a subject that has no legal standing. If legal luminaries like Soli Sorabjee, Fali Nariman, Nadir Modi opted to fight this resolution, pro bono in the interest of afflicted members of the Parsi sect, the priestly fatwa would not stand scrutiny before the bench. Keepers of our faith are not vested with authority to excommunicate a Parsi for marrying a person from outside the community.

Throwing out the baby with the bathtub, our learned Parsi religious heads have taken the easy way out by deciding to level the playing field between the sexes. By denouncing both genders marrying outside the Parsi/Irani fraternity they have created a further divide in the enlightened community, one which has not taken overstepping of religious authority and trespassing on fundamental rights enshrined in the Indian Constitution, either lightly or kindly.

As a matter of fact, sprouting fear by threat of excommuni­cation, will only breed promiscuity among the vulnerable youth afraid of giving their intercaste relationships the sanctity of holy matrimony. In other words, preservation of the Parsi race will be at the cost of moral/social values.

No forbidding resolution from even revered religious heads will douse ordained true love between intercommunity couples for marriages are made in heaven.

It is open to any priest to refuse to perform the navjote of a particular person without assigning any reason for such refu­sal, and none can compel him to perform it. Declining to perform such navjotes falls under Canon law. But for us Parsis there is nothing like Canon law. In Parsis, there are no ecclesiastical councils or courts to enforce any such law, and the view taken by these priests has no legal basis.

With due respect to the six High Priests who have directed that Parsi priests decline to perform the navjote of even the children of Parsi fathers by alien mothers, they should be re­minded of the propositions laid down (in the celebrated case of Sir Dinshaw Petit v/s Sir Jamsetji Jeejeebhoy). The dual concept implicit in the term Parsi-Zoroastrian applies to a person who is Parsi by race or community by genetic descent in the male line, and is Zoroastrian by religion. The race to which a person belongs is determined by birth and is not a matter of choice. A man may change his religion, but can never change his race which is rooted in genetic descent.

I would neither advise nor encourage navjotes of my grandchildren in India, if their father were a non-Parsi, under the impression that it would make them Parsis or entitle them to rights of a Parsi, even though I would certainly teach them the prayers of the Zoroastrian religion. Zoroastrianism is likely to outlive the Parsi race. But I would certainly challenge any individual who dared to stop my Parsi-by-birth daughters from entering any local agiary for as practising Parsis, they would have neither converted to nor embraced any other religion outside of their glorious Zarathush­trian faith. Once a Parsi, always a Parsi. In 1951, even in the matter of the Parsi wife of the late Justice M. Somjee who upon the death of her husband, reconverted to the Zoroastrian reli­gion after having converted to Islam earlier, the view was taken that re-conversion did not stand on the same footing as conver­sion, because racially she had always continued to be a Parsi and was thereby entitled to all rights of a Parsi-Zoroastrian again.

In a scenario where by long and uniform usage, conversion is not allowed by Parsis in India, I venture to proffer an amicable solution to this burning issue. There are many small agiaries scattered across Bombay which have difficulty in maintaining themselves. One of these dilapidated fire-temples could be mutually al­lowed by its cash-crunched trustees to be financed, managed and administered by the inter-married families where one of the spouses is non-Parsi, particularly where the mother is a born Parsi or even the non-Parsi wife wants to embrace her Parsi husband’s religion. Their numbers have the will and the resources and many priests are ready to cater to their spiritual needs as Zoroaster’s flock. The traditional signpost at the entrance can read "All Zoroastrian agiary: strictly for Zoroastrians — Rights of admission re­served,” so that non-Zoroastrians don’t barge in by force. It would prove an added boon for Zoroastrians from the diaspora and/or Zoroastrians of mixed nationalities visiting India to experience the rituals as practised by the Indian Parsis.

After all even the Pundolites built their place of worship right next door to the holy of holies Iranshah in Udvada. Our Parsi traditionalists can then stop bickering about mixed mar­riages and rest content that no unwelcome outsider will defile their religious rituals and traditions in their sanctum sanctor­um.

MICKIE SORABJEE

Zoroastrian priests are the keepers of our faith and they have helped us to maintain our values and traditions in India for over a thousand years. Like everyone else, they are concerned about the future of the Zoroastrian religion, the fact that year-by-year Parsis in Bombay are reducing by an alarming extent and young, very well educated Parsi girls are finding it extremely difficult to get suitable, well educated Parsi boys. About 25 percent of Parsi girls are compelled to marry well educated non-Parsi boys.

Six out of seven High Priests have recently passed a resolu­tion (or fatwa, as the community was not consulted) which over­rules the 1908 judgement of Justice Daver and Justice Beaman which gives the children of a Parsi father and non-Zoroastrian mother, the right to follow any reli­gion, including the Zoroastrian religion.

All of us, including the six High Priests, want the Zoroast­rian religion to be practised till eternity, like all other major religions and not to be reduced to a page or two in religious encyclopaedias.

What is required is not any paper resolution, but a study by Zoroastrian scholars, including the High Priests, on why, the once powerful Zoroastrian Empire, was not only defeated in the battles by mere Arab tribesmen but almost every Zoroastrian living in Iran was converted to Islam, within a few centuries of the defeat of the Zoroastrian empire. The Arabs also conquered Spain and ruled over there for several centuries, but the people of Spain are Christians.

The conquest of the Sassanian civilization could not completely eliminate the Zoroastrians, but it did reduce their number, over several hundreds of years to an inconsequential minority. The Zoroastrians who stayed behind, sought protection of their reli­gion and took refuge from Muslim life styles by moving to remote places in Fars and Kerman, leaving political and socioeconomic control in Muslim hands. At present most of them are living in absolute poverty as second-class citizens and kafirs.

This situation leads us to pertinent questions: Did the Zoroastrian community fade as it failed to adapt to the changing society? Did the Zoroastrian magi bring about inequality in the society, leading to social discontent to such an extent that Zoroastrians, not only to escape jazia tax but also the distinc­tions among its own ranks, sought to accept equality propagated by the Islamic persuasion?

NOSHIR M. LAM

This poem "Magnificent six!” is my response to the article written by the High Priests:

Ye magnificent six/In your robes so pure/Ye are not actually/Ordained from heaven!/Spreading the/Holy Word/I am not so sure/Having been/Well versed/In our scriptures/Especially Avesta/Taught by/Asho Zarathushtra.

It seems to me/In lieu of unity/Ye are ripping/The community/Front, center/Right and left/Why may I ask/You take pleasure/In playing/With our religion/Russian Roulette?

Ye are leaders/Not enforcers/But preachers/Merely preaching/The Holy Word/Simple shepherds/Guiding their/Lowly herd/On the path/Of Asha/Travelled by/Asho Zarathushtra.

He preached/Humility, simplicity/Love, respect/Tolerance, equality/To achieve/Frasho-kereti/Instead of/Hate racism/Discrimination/And bigotry.

FARIDA BAMJI

Canada