Reforms and referendum

For the last 50 years at least a debate is raging within our community between the orthodox and the reformist lobbies, leading nowhere.

The bad blood between the two sides reached its peak at the time of the last Bombay Parsi Punchayet (BPP) elections in 2008 when one particular trustee was illegitimately maligned for reasons best known to the writers.

The orthodox elements think they have the sole right to mandate about religious practices and rituals. That lobby includes some learned and semi-learned dasturs and others who are totally illiterate regarding our scriptures but feign to have a profound knowledge of religious lore and practices.

As it stands today, the World Alliance of Parsi Irani Zarthoshtis claims that it is a mouthpiece of the community because two of its trustees were elected to the BPP board. Nothing can be farther from the truth. The reformist lobby is numerically larger, more balanced, but certainly less or little organized. Therefore, the orthodox tom-tom is believed to be the voice of the majority.

I think that the time has come when an international referendum needs to be held on some basic, burning issues which face our great but shrinking community. In such a referendum, we have to take into account the major concentrations of Parsis in the US, Canada and Britain — apart from those in Iran and Pakistan. We should also take into account the views of microscopic sections of our community in Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand.

In order that a fair referendum is held, there should be representations from India, the US, Canada and Britain, and one regional representative each from East Asia and Australia/New Zealand. It can be conducted under the auspices of BPP, World Zoroastrian Organisation (WZO), Federation of Zoroastrian Associations of North America (FEZANA) and Zoroastrian Trust Funds of Europe (ZTFE).

The issues to be focused on seriously are the status of outmarried Parsi women and children, and bringing it on par with that of outmarried Parsi men. There is also a need to resolve the absurd situation of post-funerary rites not being performed for the first four days after a Parsi is dead because the family has chosen to consign him/her to a different mode of disposal, especially since from the fifth day onward the ceremonies are performed. How absurd!

The BPP must be compelled to lift its unwarranted ban on priests who perform ceremonies of those consigned to a place other than the towers of silence, and for those who marry out.

Nowhere in our scriptures does it suggest that men can marry out and women cannot. It is a bogey created by the Davar-Beaman judgment, which is in urgent need to be upturned. It was a bogus judgment, favoring the male chauvinists.

B. T. DASTUR