Zizou awards

At the National Film Awards function held in New Delhi on March 19, 2010, the film Little Zizou received the Silver Lotus for the Best Film on Family Values. The award was presented by the President of India Pratibha Patil and Ambika Soni, union minister for information and broadcasting to Sooni Taraporevala, writer, director and producer of the film, and to co-producer Dinaz Stafford, as per an e-mail received from Taraporevala. The movie lampooned self-styled orthodox godmen in the community.

The filmmaker was also vocal about the state of the community in an interview with Tehelka Magazine of March 20, 2010, a subject which she has tackled in Little Zizou. Referring to the one crore rupees allocated for the community by the government of India as "a joke,” she said the amount would not buy half a flat in a Parsi colony in a faraway suburb of Bombay. "The Parsis just need saving from themselves,” she said. "The way forward is to be inclusive, tolerant and really imbibe what our religion teaches us — that a good Zoroastrian is one who speaks good words, thinks good thoughts and does good deeds.”

Parsis in the diaspora have already moved from a race-based identity to a faith-based one and refer to themselves as Zoroastrians rather than Parsis. "What can any sensible person think about racial purity? It is the road that leads to concentration camps.” Some of our leaders have jumped onto the fundamentalist bandwagon, she says, and the strategy, as in all fundamentalist movements whether Hindu, Christian, Jewish or Muslim, is to declare that the religion is "under threat.” They identify an outside enemy and rely on brainwashing young minds to suit their agenda. Actually, the threat comes from within, as she has shown in Little Zizou.

It’s shameful, Taraporevala opines, the way women who have married outside the community are treated. Even those who have not converted to another religion are barred from entering fire temples. For decades their children could not be initiated into the religion, but that is changing now and there are some enlightened priests who are performing these navjotes, she mentioned. "That these priests too have been punished by our ‘enlightened’ leaders is another story.” But Parsi women have been "consistently strong willed and independent” and they will "lead us into the light,” she feels.

Referring to the dwindling numbers, Taraporevala says: "If Parsis went missing, India would lose dhansak, patra ni machhi, a thousand ways of cooking eggs — I am being flippant. What we would lose would be business honesty, western classical music audiences, philanthropy — no more Zubin Mehtas or Freddy Mercurys, no more constitutional lawyers, no more doctors to treat future Amitabh Bachchans. Being a good Parsi, I could go on forever.”