Editorial Viewpoint
The phantom of the Punchayet
Not since 1974 has the orthodox won such a stunning and all encompassing victory. In that year Boman K. Boman-Behram and Dr Nelie Noble swept aside the Anjuman Pax group led by Bomanshaw H. Minocherhomjee to win the Bombay Parsi Punchayet (BPP) Anjuman Committee (AC) elections.
A court battle to delay the elections on the grounds that 1,000 voter registration forms were allegedly submitted after office hours and accepted by the BPP staff at the behest of Boman-Behram and Noble and that 365 “dead” people’s names appeared on the electoral rolls, failed. Having lost the case, the Pax called for a boycott of the polls.
But seven years later it was a different story. The Committee for Electoral Rights (CER) won a resounding victory in the AC elections of 1981. Both Boman-Behram and Noble lost their seats in the AC but remained trustees. When their terms expired they did not seek reelection. Indian Administrative Service officer Jamsheed Kanga won unopposed the seat vacated by Boman-Behram. But a year later in the contest for the seat vacated by Noble, the CER candidate Fali Poncha lost to orthodox candidate and noted tax lawyer Homi Ranina. Ranina had at that time allegedly swelled the donors’ list with his well-wishers.
In the subsequent years the ding-dong battle between the liberals and the orthodox continued with liberals such as businessman Jamshed Guzder, management consultant Minoo Shroff, textile consultant Dinshaw Tamboly, construction expert Maneck Engineer holding sway while the orthodox were represented by the likes of businessman and landlord Dinshaw Mehta, former Bombay University vice chancellor Dr Mehroo Bengalee, erstwhile leader of the opposition in the Bombay Municipal Corporation Rustom Tirandaz, and others.
By October 2008, of the six trustees on the board (social worker Silloo Kavarana having expired while in office) Shroff, Tamboly and Engineer favored the liberal movement, lawyers Burjor Antia and Dadi Engineer were neutral while Mehta sided with the orthodox.
A swing from a liberal era to a conservative one therefore followed the pattern of earlier years. The community does not appear to give a long-term mandate to either side. Whether it was the archaic AC scheme or universal adult franchise, both systems had elected Mehta and Tirandaz. The Adult Franchise for Progress (AFP) leader Nadir Modi (4,648) and Dr Ketayun Dinshaw (4,601) were only around 600 votes behind orthodox candidates Khojeste Mistree (5,292) and Yazdi Desai (5,101).
With voter expectations being raised by all the candidates, the new BPP trustees under the chairmanship of Mehta will have to make good on a host of promises, including housing and greater transparency in the workings and decision making process of the BPP. But in order to deliver on their pledges they will need considerable community support.
With the Jam-e-Jamshed Weekly hostile to Mehta, the World Alliance of Parsi Irani Zarthoshtis (WAPIZ) and Jimmy Mistry (they refused his advertisements during the elections and made no mention of his campaign) and The Bombay Samachar antagonistic to Mehta and WAPIZ (the paper’s chairman and managing director Muncherji Cama, an AFP candidate, was lampooned by WAPIZ and derided by Mehta), their only hope is the WAPIZ Page or the BPP Review whose publication presently is infrequent.
Parsiana does not focus intensively on the day-to-day political issues of the BPP on account of its frequency (twice a month) and scattered readership (around 25 percent is overseas), but espouses the liberal cause.
While the orthodox swept the polls there is no denying the cream of the professional cadre were either AFP candidates or their supporters.
As AFP founder Berjis Desai noted in his “Parsi Tari Arsi” column in The Bombay Samachar of October 26, 2008, “not a single lawyer, doctor or chartered accountant (is) on the board of trustees for the first time in the last 75 years.”
The WAPIZ Page in The Free Press Journal of October 24, 2008 belittled AFP’s reputed supporters stating their recommendation did not carry weight with the voters. These well-wishers included industrialist Jamshyd Godrej, former Supreme Court Justice Sam Variava, former Ernest and Young head Naushir Mirza, businessman Cyrus Guzder, philanthropist and former head of Thermax Anu Aga, legal tax expert Sohrab Dastur, Sir Dinshaw Petit, former BPP trustee and municipal commissioner of Bombay Kanga, Tata director and former head of Glaxo in India Homi Khusrokhan, journalist Bachi Karkaria and Adi B. K. Dubash, philanthropist and businessman whose family owns the Jam-e-Jamshed Weekly.
By devaluing the best talent in the community the new board of trustees will only make their onerous tasks more difficult. The Alert Zoroastrians Association (AZA) had already started proceedings for Mehta’s removal in the charity commissioner’s office (an activity engaged by many discontented Parsis against past trustees). Objections are bound also to be raised against any property development plans the new trustees may propose.
Having won the election propounding orthodoxy, Mehta’s leadership qualities will be soon put to the test. His mercurial temper, his disinclination to focus on matters other than housing, his tendency to flip flop on contentious issues (he agreed to give a bungli/land at Doongerwadi/Ambawadi for conducting funeral ceremonies for those opting for cremation or burial but subsequently was swayed by co-trustee Tirandaz to oppose the proposal) will make his task more onerous.
There still loom future legal battles for the use of the bunglis and the right of entry into fire temples by non-Parsi Zoroastrians. Whether the new board will have the reserves of energy and intellect to tackle all these contentious issues and still remain productive is to be seen.
Everyone may wish the new trustees success but the ghost of the ills that plagued the old board still remain. As Scott Fitzgerald noted in the conclusion of The Great Gatsby “so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
A court battle to delay the elections on the grounds that 1,000 voter registration forms were allegedly submitted after office hours and accepted by the BPP staff at the behest of Boman-Behram and Noble and that 365 “dead” people’s names appeared on the electoral rolls, failed. Having lost the case, the Pax called for a boycott of the polls.
But seven years later it was a different story. The Committee for Electoral Rights (CER) won a resounding victory in the AC elections of 1981. Both Boman-Behram and Noble lost their seats in the AC but remained trustees. When their terms expired they did not seek reelection. Indian Administrative Service officer Jamsheed Kanga won unopposed the seat vacated by Boman-Behram. But a year later in the contest for the seat vacated by Noble, the CER candidate Fali Poncha lost to orthodox candidate and noted tax lawyer Homi Ranina. Ranina had at that time allegedly swelled the donors’ list with his well-wishers.
In the subsequent years the ding-dong battle between the liberals and the orthodox continued with liberals such as businessman Jamshed Guzder, management consultant Minoo Shroff, textile consultant Dinshaw Tamboly, construction expert Maneck Engineer holding sway while the orthodox were represented by the likes of businessman and landlord Dinshaw Mehta, former Bombay University vice chancellor Dr Mehroo Bengalee, erstwhile leader of the opposition in the Bombay Municipal Corporation Rustom Tirandaz, and others.
By October 2008, of the six trustees on the board (social worker Silloo Kavarana having expired while in office) Shroff, Tamboly and Engineer favored the liberal movement, lawyers Burjor Antia and Dadi Engineer were neutral while Mehta sided with the orthodox.
A swing from a liberal era to a conservative one therefore followed the pattern of earlier years. The community does not appear to give a long-term mandate to either side. Whether it was the archaic AC scheme or universal adult franchise, both systems had elected Mehta and Tirandaz. The Adult Franchise for Progress (AFP) leader Nadir Modi (4,648) and Dr Ketayun Dinshaw (4,601) were only around 600 votes behind orthodox candidates Khojeste Mistree (5,292) and Yazdi Desai (5,101).
With voter expectations being raised by all the candidates, the new BPP trustees under the chairmanship of Mehta will have to make good on a host of promises, including housing and greater transparency in the workings and decision making process of the BPP. But in order to deliver on their pledges they will need considerable community support.
With the Jam-e-Jamshed Weekly hostile to Mehta, the World Alliance of Parsi Irani Zarthoshtis (WAPIZ) and Jimmy Mistry (they refused his advertisements during the elections and made no mention of his campaign) and The Bombay Samachar antagonistic to Mehta and WAPIZ (the paper’s chairman and managing director Muncherji Cama, an AFP candidate, was lampooned by WAPIZ and derided by Mehta), their only hope is the WAPIZ Page or the BPP Review whose publication presently is infrequent.
Parsiana does not focus intensively on the day-to-day political issues of the BPP on account of its frequency (twice a month) and scattered readership (around 25 percent is overseas), but espouses the liberal cause.
While the orthodox swept the polls there is no denying the cream of the professional cadre were either AFP candidates or their supporters.
As AFP founder Berjis Desai noted in his “Parsi Tari Arsi” column in The Bombay Samachar of October 26, 2008, “not a single lawyer, doctor or chartered accountant (is) on the board of trustees for the first time in the last 75 years.”
The WAPIZ Page in The Free Press Journal of October 24, 2008 belittled AFP’s reputed supporters stating their recommendation did not carry weight with the voters. These well-wishers included industrialist Jamshyd Godrej, former Supreme Court Justice Sam Variava, former Ernest and Young head Naushir Mirza, businessman Cyrus Guzder, philanthropist and former head of Thermax Anu Aga, legal tax expert Sohrab Dastur, Sir Dinshaw Petit, former BPP trustee and municipal commissioner of Bombay Kanga, Tata director and former head of Glaxo in India Homi Khusrokhan, journalist Bachi Karkaria and Adi B. K. Dubash, philanthropist and businessman whose family owns the Jam-e-Jamshed Weekly.
By devaluing the best talent in the community the new board of trustees will only make their onerous tasks more difficult. The Alert Zoroastrians Association (AZA) had already started proceedings for Mehta’s removal in the charity commissioner’s office (an activity engaged by many discontented Parsis against past trustees). Objections are bound also to be raised against any property development plans the new trustees may propose.
Having won the election propounding orthodoxy, Mehta’s leadership qualities will be soon put to the test. His mercurial temper, his disinclination to focus on matters other than housing, his tendency to flip flop on contentious issues (he agreed to give a bungli/land at Doongerwadi/Ambawadi for conducting funeral ceremonies for those opting for cremation or burial but subsequently was swayed by co-trustee Tirandaz to oppose the proposal) will make his task more onerous.
There still loom future legal battles for the use of the bunglis and the right of entry into fire temples by non-Parsi Zoroastrians. Whether the new board will have the reserves of energy and intellect to tackle all these contentious issues and still remain productive is to be seen.
Everyone may wish the new trustees success but the ghost of the ills that plagued the old board still remain. As Scott Fitzgerald noted in the conclusion of The Great Gatsby “so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
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