“So they say”

I haven’t read Berjis Desai’s full piece in The Bombay Samachar of January 1, 2006 from which you have extracted a small para in your column, "So they say” (Parsiana, January 21, 2006). Yet, brief as your quote is, I am prompted to respond.

Desai feels "2006 will mark the beginning of the end of the Parsis, but also a marvelously strong revival of our great faith across the continents…” "Amen” to the latter; "nay-nay” to the former! This kind of angry heartburning among members of our community is needless. We should understand that the "race” issue in India, and "the revival of our great faith” abroad are mutually reinforcing, provided the "revivalists” understand that America, Europe (the developed "abroad” in our day and age) is not India, and we should not be making the mistake of mixing up two different contextual situations: socially, monetarily, educationally, culturally, and in almost every other related way.

Instead, in this wonderfully tolerant country, let there be a fearless debate about why the Parsi "race-wallahs” are so wary about the "revivalist” agenda being applied indiscriminately and facilely to India. Surely they should understand that related social standards/mores/norms/circumstances, etc prevailing in the developed world, to date, differ fundamentally from those prevailing in India. Surely they should understand this well for many of them (or their ancestors) who left India for foreign shores did so precisely because they understood the difference.

Therefore, let the emotional heart­burning stop, and let honest, intellectually cogent analysis replace it. We have some of the best intellectuals in the country but often our debates inter se are marked more by venom and a self-centered nursing of one’s own views, rather than by mature, tolerant thought, and the give-and-take which such good-natured thought invariably elicits.

Only then can the Parsi "race” be convinced of the cogency of what the "revivalists” are doing abroad, and the latter learn to live in peace with their Indian brethren. For, then, both would appreciate that each, in different ways, was working for the common cause of propagating their indubitably great faith.

Dr ASPY P. RANA