A hidden agenda?

I have read the latest issue of the Parsiana and I am becoming convinced that there are a whole lot of Parsis in India and around the world who seem to align themselves with modern concepts.

I am led to fear that the Bombay Parsi Punchayet (BPP) elections were either rigged or that these neo-Parsis failed to vote! I say this because the persons who attended the rallies, followed by scrumptious dinners (even food boxes) looked upon the situation with jaded eyes. They were carried away by the oratory skills and rhetoric that was spewed by the then-potential BPP candidates.

As in the case of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, the crowd was swayed by Brutus only to change their stand when Mark Antony spoke. The election of a wife of the late trustee indicates a decision of the heart devoid of intelligent thinking. This is an Indian malaise too. After Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, his daughter Indira Gandhi and then her son Rajiv were elected. These were decisions of the heart and not the mind! Thus, the Parsi song remains the same; it is the singer who has won the day, with his song and not the purpose of governance of the community!

It is essential that we wake up to the fact that these trustees spent a fortune on their individual campaigns. The question is why. Is there such a fire in their bellies to serve the community that they would spend so much for honorary positions that have no status outside the community? I think not. There has to be a hidden agenda and it will slowly unfold much to the chagrin of the elders who were carried away.

Like minded Parsis with modernity and reality on their minds should form a group now. The idea would be to gather in large numbers, discuss the problems at hand and new ones created in the future and develop a strategy to fight openly this disease that is creeping into the fabric of our well-knit community. There are some names that stand out. These gentlemen should agree to come forward and lead others, along with the younger generation to defeat the machinations of a bigoted group of fools comprising cooks and clerks who profess to be religious scholars but have exposed themselves as men who no longer can be termed as gentle.

One of the letters in the issue of the magazine spoke of the main purpose of the BPP trustees being to malign others and oppose factions. They comment on abusive language of others yet are unable to muzzle their own invective that is repeated, at high cost and dished out through the Free Press Journal. After "winning” the cases in court, they had the temerity to generate a photograph of the BPP president in a boxing ring! It was a nauseating sight to thus degrade the august status of the board. Is that what the future generation wants to become? I say shame on you all; you are ruining the fine name of the community merely to fan your own egos. You have no agenda save to get your ten minutes (seven years?) of fame. JAMSHED IRANI

Calcutta

iranjams@yahoo.in