Editorial Viewpoint
Of the Nilgiris, Nusserwanjees and nerve
In the premier hill stations of western and southern India the Parsi/Irani presence continues to exist. But like elsewhere in the country, here too the numbers are reducing and it is the aged that remain.
In Mahableshwar-Panchgani, Matheran and the Nilgiris (Nila-blue; Giri-mountains) you can count the number of families on the fingers of your hand. Longtime residents can rattle off the names of their brethren in the hills. The aramgahs are filled with graves, a reminder of the once populous peaks (at one time more Parsis resided in the Nilgiris than in Madras). In Ooty, the aramgah gifted in the 1840s by Pestonjee Nesserwanjee has an extra vacant parcel of land. The first plot is almost filled to capacity. And with only around 44 or so Zoroastrians left in the Nilgiris townships of Ooty, Coonoor and Wellington, that land may lie partly fallow. And another large adjacent piece of land is in dispute and the anjuman is in dire need of funds to continue fighting the legal battle against the occupier.
Homi Eduljee, president of the Parsi Irani Zoroastrian Anjuman of the Nilgiris, feels that the community will continue its existence in the mountains as people return to their ancestral homes upon retirement.
Eduljee's son, Gev, is an environmental chemist at Oxford, England, and the father says there is a possibility the son could return to Ooty after retiring. A chemical engineer who headed several large industrial ventures for the Wadia group, Eduljee moved to Ooty after retirement. He and his pert wife Minnie trace their Nilgiris ancestry back to the earliest Parsi inhabitants of the mountains. Around the late 1820s (Ootacamund - the Queen of the Hills - was discovered by the British in 1822) three brothers Jehangir, Framji and Pestonjee Nesserwanjee arrived in Ooty and started small businesses including a provision store. They ended up owning tea estates.
The Nilgiris Zoroastrians are liberal in their religious outlook. When the Ahmedabad Parsi Panchayat and World Alliance of Parsi Irani Zarthoshtis (WAPIZ) chairman Areez Khambatta sought their support in WAPIZ's battle against the more liberal anjumans in the Federation of Parsi Zoroastrian Anjumans of India, Eduljee declined saying they did not share WAPIZ's viewpoint. The other trustees of the Nilgiris anjuman are Jamshed Burjorji Bilimoria, Feroze Chenoy, managing trustee, Major (Retd) Rusi Mehta and Eddie Sethna.
The Nilgiris anjuman like its counterparts in Delhi, Jamshedpur, Madras and Iran, permits non-Parsis to sit in the bungli/sagdi when the family prayers are recited and to pay their last respects to the deceased.
The decision to do so was taken by the trustees around 1960 when a Parsi gentleman married to an Anglo-Indian died in the Nilgiris. The then trustees felt that it would be inappropriate for the wife who was the closest and dearest to the deceased to sit outside the sagdi (built by Phiroj Clubwalla in memory of his deceased son Jal) while relative strangers sat beside the departed. They decided to permit the wife entry into the prayer hall and the custom stands to this day. At religious ceremonies lay individuals recite the prayers if no mobed is present.
Dastur (Dr) Firoze M. Kotwal in the infamous fortnightly WAPIZ Page edited by anonymous individuals in the Afternoon Despatch & Courier states that when non-Zoroastrians are permitted to do the sezdo (pay their last respects) it "creates spiritual chaos in the course of the ceremony and has a baneful effect on the soul." The corpse, says Kotwal is "in a ritually contaminated state" and it is only the wearing of the sudreh and kusti "which protects the Zoroastrian wearer from any evil and harmful effects."
Since other communities do not wear these religious vestments, we can assume that at their funeral ceremonies they either suffer "spiritual chaos" and "ritual contamination" or that their corpses are not as contaminated as the
In Mahableshwar-Panchgani, Matheran and the Nilgiris (Nila-blue; Giri-mountains) you can count the number of families on the fingers of your hand. Longtime residents can rattle off the names of their brethren in the hills. The aramgahs are filled with graves, a reminder of the once populous peaks (at one time more Parsis resided in the Nilgiris than in Madras). In Ooty, the aramgah gifted in the 1840s by Pestonjee Nesserwanjee has an extra vacant parcel of land. The first plot is almost filled to capacity. And with only around 44 or so Zoroastrians left in the Nilgiris townships of Ooty, Coonoor and Wellington, that land may lie partly fallow. And another large adjacent piece of land is in dispute and the anjuman is in dire need of funds to continue fighting the legal battle against the occupier.
Homi Eduljee, president of the Parsi Irani Zoroastrian Anjuman of the Nilgiris, feels that the community will continue its existence in the mountains as people return to their ancestral homes upon retirement.
Eduljee's son, Gev, is an environmental chemist at Oxford, England, and the father says there is a possibility the son could return to Ooty after retiring. A chemical engineer who headed several large industrial ventures for the Wadia group, Eduljee moved to Ooty after retirement. He and his pert wife Minnie trace their Nilgiris ancestry back to the earliest Parsi inhabitants of the mountains. Around the late 1820s (Ootacamund - the Queen of the Hills - was discovered by the British in 1822) three brothers Jehangir, Framji and Pestonjee Nesserwanjee arrived in Ooty and started small businesses including a provision store. They ended up owning tea estates.
The Nilgiris Zoroastrians are liberal in their religious outlook. When the Ahmedabad Parsi Panchayat and World Alliance of Parsi Irani Zarthoshtis (WAPIZ) chairman Areez Khambatta sought their support in WAPIZ's battle against the more liberal anjumans in the Federation of Parsi Zoroastrian Anjumans of India, Eduljee declined saying they did not share WAPIZ's viewpoint. The other trustees of the Nilgiris anjuman are Jamshed Burjorji Bilimoria, Feroze Chenoy, managing trustee, Major (Retd) Rusi Mehta and Eddie Sethna.
The Nilgiris anjuman like its counterparts in Delhi, Jamshedpur, Madras and Iran, permits non-Parsis to sit in the bungli/sagdi when the family prayers are recited and to pay their last respects to the deceased.
The decision to do so was taken by the trustees around 1960 when a Parsi gentleman married to an Anglo-Indian died in the Nilgiris. The then trustees felt that it would be inappropriate for the wife who was the closest and dearest to the deceased to sit outside the sagdi (built by Phiroj Clubwalla in memory of his deceased son Jal) while relative strangers sat beside the departed. They decided to permit the wife entry into the prayer hall and the custom stands to this day. At religious ceremonies lay individuals recite the prayers if no mobed is present.
Dastur (Dr) Firoze M. Kotwal in the infamous fortnightly WAPIZ Page edited by anonymous individuals in the Afternoon Despatch & Courier states that when non-Zoroastrians are permitted to do the sezdo (pay their last respects) it "creates spiritual chaos in the course of the ceremony and has a baneful effect on the soul." The corpse, says Kotwal is "in a ritually contaminated state" and it is only the wearing of the sudreh and kusti "which protects the Zoroastrian wearer from any evil and harmful effects."
Since other communities do not wear these religious vestments, we can assume that at their funeral ceremonies they either suffer "spiritual chaos" and "ritual contamination" or that their corpses are not as contaminated as the
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