“Fighting an enemy…”

The article "Fighting an enemy that does not exist” (Parsiana, February 21, 2008) gives a detailed account of the program arranged by the Association for Revival of Zoroastrianism (ARZ) and Association of Inter-Married Zoroastrians (AIMZ) to listen to Chicago’s Dr Kersey Antia in Bombay on February 2, 2008. The coverage is exceptional, accompanied by exclusive color photographs.

The honest reader will be alarmed to read about a dubious messenger of our faith whose alleged action in trying to thwart the meeting reflects a totally unZoroastrian trait. "The huge turnout must have been particularly galling to members of the World Alliance of Parsi Irani Zarthoshtis (WAPIZ) whose founders Khojeste Mistree and Yazdi Desai had allegedly tried to prevent the function being held by appealing to the auditorium authorities to cancel the booking on the plea that there may be conversion activities which would lead to public disturbances.”

Dr Kersey Antia: liberal leanings

Calling a spade a spade seems to come naturally to Antia’s family as is evident from the information that "Though Mazda and Jimmy may occasionally recite ‘Shekasté, shekasté Khojeste’ (instead of Shaitan) as says Kersey tongue firmly in cheek, Kotwal continues to be an honored house guest in their Chicago home whenever he visits the area.”

This humor serves to illustrate to every intelligent Zoroastrian the pitfalls of an erroneous zeal, totally irrelevant to the trying times we live in. Undemocratic behavior, heckling, creating alarm cleverly to suit one’s self-propagation seem to be the handiwork of an autocratic individual dictating his understanding of philosophy of our religion in an overbearing manner that intolerantly excludes the views of all other scholars.

Since one-third of the Zoroastrian community is genuinely hard pressed in the struggle for housing, jobs, and meeting the basic needs of life, should they be given sermons on the intricacies and niceties of our religion which is no doubt glorious, but one primarily concerned with propagating the value of good thoughts, good words and good deeds? The maligning campaign carried out in the cosmopolitan Press to impress a deluded coterie of once diehard supporters has seen many deserting the patriarch as time goes on. The intelligent commu­nity’s failure to accept the imposition of such self-absorbed, monopolistic thinking proves how dangerous and self-defeating the nature of dogmatic stubbornness is.

Overzealous propagandists need to heed the wise saying: "The world is ruled by two great schools/Religious rogues and bigoted fools.”

RASHID G. KHOSRAVI