What ails Parsis today?

There are four basic problems facing our community. The first is our dwindling numbers, arising from excessive family planning even when couples are affluent and do not suffer from medical problems like sterility. Added to this is the hounding of Parsi women who marry non-Parsis. The community is abandoning their children and issuing fatwas to the priests not to perform the navjotes of children born out of such wedlock. There is nothing in the scriptures to suggest that Zarathushtra prohibited conversions, and the concept of Bunak Pasbani is twisted to suit the orthodox lobby. Our religion is for all mankind.

Secondly, our children face unfair competition in institutions of higher learning because of caste-based reservations, despite the fact that 19 such institutions in Maharashtra and Gujarat were founded and funded by Parsis. The National Minorities Commission must take up this issue and ensure that two seats are reserved for Parsi students in each faculty.

Thirdly, until 50 years back, and even going back to 1850, we were pioneering traders in places like Aden, Mombassa, Jinja, Kampala, Zanzibar, Burma, Singapore, Hong Kong, China and Japan. We seem to have lost this mobility, particularly within India. Our boys are reluctant to go to Jamshedpur, Gurgaon, Guna, Sindri, Jamnagar and other places that are beehives of industrial activity. Parsi boys (if not our girls) must learn to be highly mobile.

Finally, a vast majority of businesses in the undivided Bombay province were controlled by Parsis until 50 years back. Today I can only conjecture that the number will not be more than 15 percent, going by the paid-up capital of companies. We need to become venturesome again. The wealth of the community was created by the traders and the industrialists, and not by those who served the Crown.

B. T. DASTUR