Democratic rights

Today’s raging debate among the Zoroastrian community, with a fixation on what should happen to one not during one’s lifetime but after death, is ironic and futile. If one has the freedom to live one’s life as one chooses, why does that right cease to exist when one becomes a corpse?

My mother’s wish was to be consigned to a dakhma and her wish was honored. My father, at the age of 97, wished to have no ‘broker’ (as he dubbed professional priests) to plead for his salvation. His wish was that the paidust and "char deevas ni kriya (four days’ ceremonies)” be said by lay friends who were capable and prayerful people. He was buried, as he had wished, at the Parsi aramgah, near his daughter-in-law, my wife.

They had all exercised their democratic right. Did their actions, which are not acceptable to the orthodox, erase their lifetime as Zoroastrians? Did they cease to be Zoroastrians after they left their mortal form? The orthodox and the so-called high priests have a right to their opinion. But that right carries no licence to bully others to part with theirs.

RASHID MINOCHER

Bangalore