Editorial Viewpoint
Drift and direction
Following the annual general meeting (AGM) of the World Zarathushti Chamber of Commerce (WZCC), a one-day round table conference was held at the Athornan Boarding Madressa at Dadar. Attended by representatives from India, the USA, Canada, Iran and Pakistan, the talks evolved around various issues facing the global community.
While not much could be achieved in a one-day session convened with no specific agenda in mind, one realized the intrinsic value of gaining a global perspective on community issues.
The last such conference on Hamazori (coming together) was held following the Eighth World Zoroastrian Congress in London in mid-2005 at the initiative of former Federation of Zoroastrian Associations of North America (FEZANA) president Rohinton Rivetna, as was the Bombay meet.
When the next such global meeting will be held is a question mark. Delegates had converged in Bombay to attend the WZCC AGM and stayed on. Perhaps the next international commerce gathering will continue to serve as a catalyst for similar get-togethers of global community leaders.
But these meetings are poor substitutes for a formal world body. People often question what purpose an international body would serve when already anjumans, associations and individuals all over the world communicate with each other on a need basis.
The same argument was raised against the formation and even the continuance of the Federation of Parsi Zoroastrian Anjumans of India. And yet through the biannual all-India body meetings the community becomes acquainted with the local leadership, problems, successes, differences and similarities all over the country.
Without the Federation one would not get an overall view of community trends: the migratory shifts, the encroachment on properties, the absence of youth, languishing of consecrated fires, the innovations resorted to and the hardships faced. Whether a meet is held in Delhi or Ukai or Jamshedpur or Daman, one meets professionally and socially members of the local community. There is no substitute for a face-to-face encounter or a handshake or a hug.
The main purpose of the Federation has been to band the community together. Differences may surface, tempers may flare, but these are minor occurrences. Over the last 30 years major dissensions surfaced only twice. One followed the Third World Zoroastrian Congress in 1978 in Bombay when Delhi Parsi Anjuman president Shiavax Nargolwala criticized the archaic election scheme of the Bombay Parsi Punchayet (in retaliation for which a peeved BPP under the trusteeship of B. K. Boman-Behram walked out of the Federation. Five years later the BPP rejoined when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi admonished the then BPP president Dr Aspi Golwala on account of the community not speaking in one voice on the Adoption Bill pending before Parliament).
The second occasion was in Ahmedabad in December 2004 when supporters of the orthodox leader Khojeste Mistree disrupted the Federation meeting for the first time in its history. The 40-minute tirade sparked off by a verbal attack made by Ahmedabad Parsi Pachayat president Areez Khambatta against Madras Parsi Anjuman president Nariman Mogrelia, is the bleakest moment in the institution’s history. The gatherings thereafter have been stormy, but some tenuous restraint has been exercised by all sections.
But dissension within a democratic institutional framework can be healthy. If people can protest and be heard within the community’s confines and safety net, the need to go outside and adopt more strident tactics lessens (“by slow prudence to make mild/a rugged people and through soft degrees subdue them to the useful and the good” — Tennyson). It is only when all avenues of dialog and reason are blocked that the occasional public outcry occurs. The refusal to permit Doongerwadi lands for performing the last rites of those opting for alternate modes of disposal to dakhmenash
While not much could be achieved in a one-day session convened with no specific agenda in mind, one realized the intrinsic value of gaining a global perspective on community issues.
The last such conference on Hamazori (coming together) was held following the Eighth World Zoroastrian Congress in London in mid-2005 at the initiative of former Federation of Zoroastrian Associations of North America (FEZANA) president Rohinton Rivetna, as was the Bombay meet.
When the next such global meeting will be held is a question mark. Delegates had converged in Bombay to attend the WZCC AGM and stayed on. Perhaps the next international commerce gathering will continue to serve as a catalyst for similar get-togethers of global community leaders.
But these meetings are poor substitutes for a formal world body. People often question what purpose an international body would serve when already anjumans, associations and individuals all over the world communicate with each other on a need basis.
The same argument was raised against the formation and even the continuance of the Federation of Parsi Zoroastrian Anjumans of India. And yet through the biannual all-India body meetings the community becomes acquainted with the local leadership, problems, successes, differences and similarities all over the country.
Without the Federation one would not get an overall view of community trends: the migratory shifts, the encroachment on properties, the absence of youth, languishing of consecrated fires, the innovations resorted to and the hardships faced. Whether a meet is held in Delhi or Ukai or Jamshedpur or Daman, one meets professionally and socially members of the local community. There is no substitute for a face-to-face encounter or a handshake or a hug.
The main purpose of the Federation has been to band the community together. Differences may surface, tempers may flare, but these are minor occurrences. Over the last 30 years major dissensions surfaced only twice. One followed the Third World Zoroastrian Congress in 1978 in Bombay when Delhi Parsi Anjuman president Shiavax Nargolwala criticized the archaic election scheme of the Bombay Parsi Punchayet (in retaliation for which a peeved BPP under the trusteeship of B. K. Boman-Behram walked out of the Federation. Five years later the BPP rejoined when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi admonished the then BPP president Dr Aspi Golwala on account of the community not speaking in one voice on the Adoption Bill pending before Parliament).
The second occasion was in Ahmedabad in December 2004 when supporters of the orthodox leader Khojeste Mistree disrupted the Federation meeting for the first time in its history. The 40-minute tirade sparked off by a verbal attack made by Ahmedabad Parsi Pachayat president Areez Khambatta against Madras Parsi Anjuman president Nariman Mogrelia, is the bleakest moment in the institution’s history. The gatherings thereafter have been stormy, but some tenuous restraint has been exercised by all sections.
But dissension within a democratic institutional framework can be healthy. If people can protest and be heard within the community’s confines and safety net, the need to go outside and adopt more strident tactics lessens (“by slow prudence to make mild/a rugged people and through soft degrees subdue them to the useful and the good” — Tennyson). It is only when all avenues of dialog and reason are blocked that the occasional public outcry occurs. The refusal to permit Doongerwadi lands for performing the last rites of those opting for alternate modes of disposal to dakhmenash
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From the archive