Editorial Viewpoint
An annual affair?
Bring out the dinner boxes. Plaster the walls with posters. Set the presses rolling with manifestoes. It is once again the season for making promises, table thumping orations, mudslinging and saber rattling. The Bombay Parsi Punchayet (BPP) will hold another election, the third in three years.
BPP chairman Dinshaw Mehta and his WAPIZ (World Alliance of Parsi Irani Zarthoshtis) co-trustees have finally succeeded in driving out their dissenting colleague, Noshir Dadrawala. By cold-shouldering, taunting and withholding relevant trust information from their onetime electoral opponent, the six remaining trustees have foisted yet another battle of the ballot on the community. Elections that at one time were supposed to be a once-in-seven-years affair are now becoming an annual feature.
With the untimely death of sitting trustee Rustom Tirandaz in January 2009 and Dadrawala’s resignation two years later, voters will have to troop out in the grueling summer months and the start of the messy monsoons to listen to the promises made (but seldom kept) of the new aspirants and to vote for the candidate of their choice.
Aside from the expenses that will be incurred on conducting the polls, the present trustees will be totally engrossed in the electioneering and administrative details, thus forsaking all other Punchayet work.
As it is Mehta had told the delegates at the last Federation of the Parsi Zoroastrian Anjumans of India (FPZAI) executive council meeting that due to the trustees’ preoccupation with the so-called “renegade” priests ban case, they had not made any progress on plans for the Tenth World Zoroastrian Congress to be held in Bombay in December 2013. The Congress was initially assigned to Singapore but on the BPP’s insistence, the appointing committee buckled under the strong-arm tactics and acquiesced to the demand. As it is the FPZAI has been reduced to a shadow of its former self with the established anjumans, barring a handful, staying away.
Now in addition to the priests’ case the trustees will have to contend with an election. Losing on either issue or compromising, will be viewed as a major setback. And they are not good losers.
Should the community bemoan the holding of yet another election? No. The trustees have been quite smug and complacent, not bothering to even hold their annual anjuman meeting after the first disastrous one. There has been no accounting of activities. No status report on projects underway. No clear cut plan on housing. Their interaction with the community has been restricted to social functions and the placid pages of The BPP Review. Even here Mehta’s “Chairman message” has been truncated. When the BPP lost before a divisional bench of the Bombay High Court (BHC) in the priests ban case, the editorial space carried only the news with a black border around to signify the trustees were in mourning — with good reason. The cost of the litigation will cross Rs 1,00,00,000 (US $ 2,22,222).
The Supreme Court has asked the parties to mediate. If the trustees had done so to begin with when Ervad Khushroo Madon asked them to settle the matter “over a cup of tea” and let him pray a few times in a year at Doongerwadi, the issue would have been resolved. But the trustees’ ego and stubbornness prevented them from adopting a more practical stance.
So also in the case of Dadrawala. On almost every issue he went along with his colleagues, even supporting the ban on the two priests whilst cautioning on its legality. But because he had the temerity to challenge Mehta on his pet subject of housing, he was treated as an outcaste — like a non-Parsi.
It will always remain a stigma against the other trustees that they did not speak out against the injustice being done to Dadrawala and failed to bring about a rapprochement in the larger interests of the community. Even assuming Dadrawala was at fault, it still does not justify the complicity of his co-trustees.
There are certain standards of probity any person holding public office must observe. A recalcitrant employee, however low he or she may be in the hierarchy, has to be treated with a modicum of respect even when legal proceedings to dismiss him or her are underway. It was in the BPP’s interest to avoid a resignation. Surely the last thing they wanted was another election when they would have to face a hostile electorate that will certainly demand to know what happened to all the rosy promises made in 2008 and 2009.
The five high priests have fared little better than the trustees. Their standing is also at an all time low especially with the BHC striking down the ban on the two “renegade” priests. But instead of coming to terms with the new realities they grandiosely issued a joint statement released in the Jam-e-Jamshed Weekly of April 3, 2011 stating, “We pray that those community members who have chosen to follow the path of personal choice, in direct contravention of our religious authority, be given the strength to uphold the truth and return to the path of righteousness…Those members of the Parsi community who, in defiance of our authority, choose to use their (Ervads Framroze Mirza and Madon) services cannot be supported by us, as the High Priests.”
Voters can expect the priests ban case to play a pivotal part in the election campaigning. “Religion in danger” is a well-worn battle cry that in the past two elections reaped rich returns. But you can only fool some of the people some of the time…
Who will stand for election against the formidable Mehta-WAPIZ electoral alliance? And even if the opposition camp manages a victory, what guarantee the new candidate will fare any better than Dadrawala? After all it will still be six to one. Even if some of the other trustees do not bear any animosity to the newcomer, they will not dare go against the dictates of Mehta and Khojeste Mistree who between them run the BPP. History is set to repeat itself.
BPP chairman Dinshaw Mehta and his WAPIZ (World Alliance of Parsi Irani Zarthoshtis) co-trustees have finally succeeded in driving out their dissenting colleague, Noshir Dadrawala. By cold-shouldering, taunting and withholding relevant trust information from their onetime electoral opponent, the six remaining trustees have foisted yet another battle of the ballot on the community. Elections that at one time were supposed to be a once-in-seven-years affair are now becoming an annual feature.
With the untimely death of sitting trustee Rustom Tirandaz in January 2009 and Dadrawala’s resignation two years later, voters will have to troop out in the grueling summer months and the start of the messy monsoons to listen to the promises made (but seldom kept) of the new aspirants and to vote for the candidate of their choice.
Aside from the expenses that will be incurred on conducting the polls, the present trustees will be totally engrossed in the electioneering and administrative details, thus forsaking all other Punchayet work.
As it is Mehta had told the delegates at the last Federation of the Parsi Zoroastrian Anjumans of India (FPZAI) executive council meeting that due to the trustees’ preoccupation with the so-called “renegade” priests ban case, they had not made any progress on plans for the Tenth World Zoroastrian Congress to be held in Bombay in December 2013. The Congress was initially assigned to Singapore but on the BPP’s insistence, the appointing committee buckled under the strong-arm tactics and acquiesced to the demand. As it is the FPZAI has been reduced to a shadow of its former self with the established anjumans, barring a handful, staying away.
Now in addition to the priests’ case the trustees will have to contend with an election. Losing on either issue or compromising, will be viewed as a major setback. And they are not good losers.
Should the community bemoan the holding of yet another election? No. The trustees have been quite smug and complacent, not bothering to even hold their annual anjuman meeting after the first disastrous one. There has been no accounting of activities. No status report on projects underway. No clear cut plan on housing. Their interaction with the community has been restricted to social functions and the placid pages of The BPP Review. Even here Mehta’s “Chairman message” has been truncated. When the BPP lost before a divisional bench of the Bombay High Court (BHC) in the priests ban case, the editorial space carried only the news with a black border around to signify the trustees were in mourning — with good reason. The cost of the litigation will cross Rs 1,00,00,000 (US $ 2,22,222).
The Supreme Court has asked the parties to mediate. If the trustees had done so to begin with when Ervad Khushroo Madon asked them to settle the matter “over a cup of tea” and let him pray a few times in a year at Doongerwadi, the issue would have been resolved. But the trustees’ ego and stubbornness prevented them from adopting a more practical stance.
So also in the case of Dadrawala. On almost every issue he went along with his colleagues, even supporting the ban on the two priests whilst cautioning on its legality. But because he had the temerity to challenge Mehta on his pet subject of housing, he was treated as an outcaste — like a non-Parsi.
It will always remain a stigma against the other trustees that they did not speak out against the injustice being done to Dadrawala and failed to bring about a rapprochement in the larger interests of the community. Even assuming Dadrawala was at fault, it still does not justify the complicity of his co-trustees.
There are certain standards of probity any person holding public office must observe. A recalcitrant employee, however low he or she may be in the hierarchy, has to be treated with a modicum of respect even when legal proceedings to dismiss him or her are underway. It was in the BPP’s interest to avoid a resignation. Surely the last thing they wanted was another election when they would have to face a hostile electorate that will certainly demand to know what happened to all the rosy promises made in 2008 and 2009.
The five high priests have fared little better than the trustees. Their standing is also at an all time low especially with the BHC striking down the ban on the two “renegade” priests. But instead of coming to terms with the new realities they grandiosely issued a joint statement released in the Jam-e-Jamshed Weekly of April 3, 2011 stating, “We pray that those community members who have chosen to follow the path of personal choice, in direct contravention of our religious authority, be given the strength to uphold the truth and return to the path of righteousness…Those members of the Parsi community who, in defiance of our authority, choose to use their (Ervads Framroze Mirza and Madon) services cannot be supported by us, as the High Priests.”
Voters can expect the priests ban case to play a pivotal part in the election campaigning. “Religion in danger” is a well-worn battle cry that in the past two elections reaped rich returns. But you can only fool some of the people some of the time…
Who will stand for election against the formidable Mehta-WAPIZ electoral alliance? And even if the opposition camp manages a victory, what guarantee the new candidate will fare any better than Dadrawala? After all it will still be six to one. Even if some of the other trustees do not bear any animosity to the newcomer, they will not dare go against the dictates of Mehta and Khojeste Mistree who between them run the BPP. History is set to repeat itself.
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