No longer impartial

The Ahmedabad Parsi Panchayat has for the last two years, with the support of a majority of all India anjumans and punchayets, been fighting a vociferous vested interest group within the community which is doing its best to bring irreligious changes in the community and is hell bent with your support on breaking down our millennia old traditions, beliefs and practices to suit their own selfish and personal needs. This is being done despite the opinions of our high priests and religious scholars.

I have observed that, in the last two years, Parsiana has lost its ability to be an impartial observer of community affairs and in fact the missionary zeal with which you write and advocate your irreligious ideas, clearly indicates that Parsiana is no longer a journal that reports on Parsi matters but a mere in-house mouthpiece for the ultra reformists. Your journal is being used for the radicalization of the community.

As editor you have specially encouraged converts and their supporters. We have now reached a stage where mixed marriages and navjotes and open conversions of non-Parsi father’s children, i.e. of Hindu, Muslim or Christian children, are flagrantly and openly publicized, with Parsiana taking the lead to give all such events top coverage. A recent Parsiana cover showed two grown up Sikh women having their navjote performed.

We are already in the danger zone where more and more Parsi and Irani children are marrying out because of the encouragement they receive from people like you. I pity a community whose editor puts his own personal beliefs above the good of his own community. Would a Muslim, Hindu or Christian editor ever do this?

AREEZ KHAMBATTA

President, Ahmedabad Parsi Panchayat

Ahmedabad