Insulting the community

For over 20 years I have been reading Parsiana with great satisfaction as it used to cover news about our commu­nity’s events, religion, etc. However, since the past year or so I have been observing that you have set aside giving news about happenings in our community and instead started laying stress on anti-religious activities, writing against the High Priests of our community, coming out with editorials against the tenets of our religion, publishing letters written by anti-communal forces and highlighting frivolous cases filed by these forces against the community elders although all these cases have been dismissed by the respective courts on merits.

Surprisingly, we do not come across any letters written against such anti-communal forces. Perhaps you do not receive any, as orthodox people (as you term them) feel, as the saying goes in Gujarati, it is bhais aagal Bhagwat (futile). I am particularly pained to read the letters of Behram Aga and B. T. Dastur, especially the latter, as he happens to be former chief executive officer of the Bombay Parsi Punchayet (BPP). It is very unbecoming of him to write such anti-communal letters.

It is also distressing to note that of late you are carrying on the cover photographs of persons who do not belong to the community, having given up their right to be called Parsi Zoroastrian. Your issues of March 7, 2010, April 21, 2010 and May 7, 2010 are a few examples of this. Are there no deserving Parsis to grace your cover rather than the Guptas, D’Souzas and Chistyakovs? What big thing have these non-Parsis done except insulting the community? Are you not aware that only a person born in an athornan family can be initiated into mobedi, that too after stringent rituals only in an atash behram and before reaching adolescence? Then why do you publicize the sacrilegious act of Meher Master-Moos in initiating a 48-year-old Russian man not only into the religion but making him a priest?

Had it not been for volunteers of the BPP and World Alliance of Parsi Irani Zarthoshtis, etc who prevented this act, a Russian would have become a priest of our community! Instead of highlighting Master-Moos’ act, you have dwelt on the actions of volunteers who prevented the commission of this sacrilege. Rather than having Mikhail Chistyakov on your cover it would have been more fitting to have used that of BPP chairman Dinshaw Mehta who led the volunteers in preventing this sacrilege being committed. You have also criticized our High Priests who have condemned this act. In any other community, the consequences for doing so would have been disastrous.

I have decided not to renew my subscription any further as I would not like to spend money on reading items which are nothing but trash and against the tenets of our beloved religion. The gift subscription for The People’s Co-operative Credit Society Limited shall also not be renewed. KERFEGAR B. ANTIA

Chairman and managing director, The People’s Co-operative Credit Society Ltd, vice president, Federation of Parsi Zoroastrian Anjumans of India, managing committee member, Parsi Zoroastrian Anjuman of Secunderabad-Hyderabad