The fate of our fire temples

Some of our fire temples are in a sorry state only because of our cussedness in not shifting them to other places.

There is nothing in our scriptures to suggest that the holy fires cannot be merged — on the ostensible plea made by a pseudo-scholar that the "fire is an individual entity and ‘speaks’ to its devotee.” It can still ‘speak,’ post-merger, and it doesn’t get ‘muted.’

Our religious fanaticism, practised by some pseudo-scholars and unlearned (in the scriptures) laity hurts us economically.

The premises, left vacant post-shifting/mergers of the holy fires, can be put to an economic use and the revenues so earned put to many good uses: repairing the community’s crumbling housing estates, education, medicare, doles, homes for the aged, and run-down dharamshalas.

Until two generations back, we showed great pragmatism. In the past we closed down 37; the most recent instance being the Tavri fire which was reinstalled at Godrej Baug, Bombay, in December 1999. With the loss of our economic prowess, we seem to be losing our intellectual prowess!

It’s high time that the trustees of the semi-forsaken fire temples and the Parsi public reject such fanatics and show boldness to merge the fires.

B. T. DASTUR

Camp, USA