“We need to clear our tarnished name"

“It is the duty of laymen to study the religion and know what the religion wants. And if the dasturs give wrong information, they must stand up to it,” says Dr Kersey Antia who has blazed the non-conformist trail for over 25 years. Antia, a PhD in psychology who migrated to North America in 1960 and has practiced in Chicago over the years, was relaxed and unfazed by the brouhaha his first public lecture in Bombay had created two days ago. “We study the religion much more in America,” he notes, contrasting the diaspora’s intellectual approach with the docile mentality of Bombay Parsis.

Referring to the pile of questions the orthodox had thrust upon him (along with the heckling and insults) after his lecture at the Y. B. Chavan Auditorium (see “Fighting an enemy that does not exist,” pg 22) Antia says, “I wanted to say these questions are from people who have renounced Zarathushtra and found another prophet. Let us talk of Zarathushtra’s religion.” The man who says he studied the religion even as a teenager, told Parsiana in the course of an interview on February 4, 2008, “It hurt me to read the three dasturs’ reply (to the performance of the first public navjote of a non-Zoroastrian in North America by Antia in 1983, that of American engineer Joseph Peterson).” He refers to an Avestan phrase, barkhalque firistadeh, which, he says, means God has sent the religion for the whole world. “How can we miss that once we’ve studied it?” he asks, adding that Dastur (Dr) Firoze Kotwal was a classmate but the Avesta-Pahlavi scholarships at the Secondary School Certificate and Inter Arts levels were awarded to Antia.