Editorial Viewpoint
Who decides?
It had to happen one day, sooner or later. The contentious issue of the dismal state of the Towers of Silence sprang into the national limelight on August 30, 2006. Feisty crusader Dhun Baria was featured on the front page of the Mumbai Mirror daily tabloid that is distributed with around eight to nine lakh copies of The Times of India in Bombay.
Within hours of the publication of the story, the Associated Press, India Today and Hindustan Times were on the phone to Parsiana, seeking information, details, background and contact numbers of the concerned parties. NDTV called two days later and the BBC shortly thereafter.
A community matter that should have been decided by the community decades ago has now entered a frightening minefield.
Every compromise solution put forward in the last few years to appease those who wanted an alternate form of disposal was denied. The request to permit prayers to be held at Doongerwadi for those opting for cremation or burial was first conceded, then withdrawn. With the limited efficacy of the solar panels placed to direct the sun’s rays onto the corpses, things got from bad to worse, especially during the monsoon months.
Lobby groups, individual requests, articles and editorials in the Parsi Press, all failed to budge the Bombay Parsi Punchayet (BPP) trustees who were sandwiched between the liberals and the hardliners.
The BPP trustees even went as far as signing an affidavit that they would uphold the system of dakhmenashini!
For many years the residents in the Doongerwadi neighborhood have endured the gory sights inside the dakhmas and the stench without. It is a tribute to the long suffering Parsis and non-Parsis residing in the vicinity that they have not moved the courts or the Bombay Municipal Corporation for relief.
Around 40 years ago reformers such as Dara Cama and Dhunjisha Joshi fought against the ancient system, writing articles and circulating photographs. But they confined their campaign to the community. The DDD-AG (Disposal of the Dead with Dignity — Action Group) also lobbied extensively with the BPP but backed off when the solar panels were introduced.
But Baria is made of sterner stuff. A former qawwali singer who came into the community limelight less than a year ago, she typifies the resolute Parsi who stops at nothing to right a presumed wrong.
And she has demonstrated what a single individual can achieve, shaking the very foundations of the community’s cherished, though oft mistaken, beliefs.
Even the staunchest allies of dakhmenashini viewing the ghastly images on the video CD distributed by her would be perturbed by what they see. Bodies piled up one on top of another like garbage in a heap. Limbs hanging over the edges of the dakhma floor, flesh and bones stuck or scattered on the pavis, bloated or shrunken corpses lying helter-skelter. If the Christian inferno is fire and brimstone, the innards of our dakhmas must surely represent a Parsi hell.
And what if someone has already uploaded these grizzly images on a website. Is the whole world to view the disfigured corpses of our community members? Is our carrion to be on public display for anyone and everyone to view? Would we see such a sight in a graveyard or a crematorium? Which urban, civilized people disposes of their dear ones’ corpses in such a bestial manner?
BPP trustee Shiavax R. Vakil was an orthodox and deeply religious person. But when he entered the dakhmas in 1973 with former BPP trustee and subsequent chairman Dr Aspi F. Golwalla, he was aghast at what he saw. Vakil wrote, “It is a myth to suppose that even during the months when the birds are there ‘in plenty’ the flesh of the bodies of the departed is substantially consumed by the birds. There is a paucity of birds, whatever the reasons may be, with the result that substantial parts of the bodies remain untouched. Small portions are eaten no
Within hours of the publication of the story, the Associated Press, India Today and Hindustan Times were on the phone to Parsiana, seeking information, details, background and contact numbers of the concerned parties. NDTV called two days later and the BBC shortly thereafter.
A community matter that should have been decided by the community decades ago has now entered a frightening minefield.
Every compromise solution put forward in the last few years to appease those who wanted an alternate form of disposal was denied. The request to permit prayers to be held at Doongerwadi for those opting for cremation or burial was first conceded, then withdrawn. With the limited efficacy of the solar panels placed to direct the sun’s rays onto the corpses, things got from bad to worse, especially during the monsoon months.
Lobby groups, individual requests, articles and editorials in the Parsi Press, all failed to budge the Bombay Parsi Punchayet (BPP) trustees who were sandwiched between the liberals and the hardliners.
The BPP trustees even went as far as signing an affidavit that they would uphold the system of dakhmenashini!
For many years the residents in the Doongerwadi neighborhood have endured the gory sights inside the dakhmas and the stench without. It is a tribute to the long suffering Parsis and non-Parsis residing in the vicinity that they have not moved the courts or the Bombay Municipal Corporation for relief.
Around 40 years ago reformers such as Dara Cama and Dhunjisha Joshi fought against the ancient system, writing articles and circulating photographs. But they confined their campaign to the community. The DDD-AG (Disposal of the Dead with Dignity — Action Group) also lobbied extensively with the BPP but backed off when the solar panels were introduced.
But Baria is made of sterner stuff. A former qawwali singer who came into the community limelight less than a year ago, she typifies the resolute Parsi who stops at nothing to right a presumed wrong.
And she has demonstrated what a single individual can achieve, shaking the very foundations of the community’s cherished, though oft mistaken, beliefs.
Even the staunchest allies of dakhmenashini viewing the ghastly images on the video CD distributed by her would be perturbed by what they see. Bodies piled up one on top of another like garbage in a heap. Limbs hanging over the edges of the dakhma floor, flesh and bones stuck or scattered on the pavis, bloated or shrunken corpses lying helter-skelter. If the Christian inferno is fire and brimstone, the innards of our dakhmas must surely represent a Parsi hell.
And what if someone has already uploaded these grizzly images on a website. Is the whole world to view the disfigured corpses of our community members? Is our carrion to be on public display for anyone and everyone to view? Would we see such a sight in a graveyard or a crematorium? Which urban, civilized people disposes of their dear ones’ corpses in such a bestial manner?
BPP trustee Shiavax R. Vakil was an orthodox and deeply religious person. But when he entered the dakhmas in 1973 with former BPP trustee and subsequent chairman Dr Aspi F. Golwalla, he was aghast at what he saw. Vakil wrote, “It is a myth to suppose that even during the months when the birds are there ‘in plenty’ the flesh of the bodies of the departed is substantially consumed by the birds. There is a paucity of birds, whatever the reasons may be, with the result that substantial parts of the bodies remain untouched. Small portions are eaten no
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