Co-locate fires

I propose that the spiritual heads of our community and our akabars must give serious thought to co-locating all our holy atash behram fires from their existing locations to not only other different locations within India but also abroad.

Please understand that the operative word here is "co-locating,” i.e. taking a part of the holy flame of our atash behrams and enthroning them with due consecration and ceremony at various other places in addition to their existing ones.

I am proposing this so that we are able to preserve and protect this most precious legacy of ours, viz our holy fires for perpetuity.

All our holy atash behrams are located in the western part of India — more specifically — the western coast of India. And I got this idea after the tsunami attack that ravaged the south and east coast of India on December 26, 2004, leaving in its wake complete devastation and destruction. Just consider, what would have happened had such a tsunami struck the western coast of India... which includes, places among others like Bombay, Udvada (most vulnerable), Navsari and Surat. All these places are coastal areas and all of which play host to our most precious legacy of all, our holy atash behrams. A case of all our eggs in one basket?

Experts have stated that India is not on the path of a tsunami wave and even if one does occur in future it is about 500-1,000 years away. Nevertheless, it needs just one catastrophe: either man-made, e.g. war or terrorism; or natural, viz tsunami, cyclone, earthquake or even a degradation of the coastal areas the likes of which is presently underway in Udvada to wipe out all or part of our most precious of all institutions which under the present circumstances we can consider well nigh irreplaceable.

Even if the probability of such an eventuality ever materializing were to be 0.0001 percent the effort involved in undertaking such an intricate and colossal exercise will be worth it.

What are we as the most educated and progressive community doing to protect and preserve them for posterity and indeed for future generations? We must be practical and logical.

Let us remember all the multinational corporations across the world that invest billions of dollars in protecting and preserving their valuable company information, data, systems, etc by co-locating their computer servers which host valuable data in different parts of a country or even different parts of the world. Are they fools? Are they wasting their money?

The die-hards among us may argue that nothing will ever happen to our holy fires which have been spreading their benevolence and radiance across the community over the last several centuries or that some miracle will never allow any harm or danger being caused to our holy fires. To them I say, read history for those who forget history are condemned to repeat it. After all, isn’t it a recorded fact of history that 20 of the 21 "nasks” of our Khordeh Avesta were lost forever when Alexander invaded Persia? To them, I say, why did our forefathers have to leave our madar-vatan, Iran and seek refuge in India and what did we bring with us from Iran? Nothing.

KAYOMARZ PATEL