“An inconvenient truth?”

Ever since we’ve all taken to wearing frocks, in the avid hope of being defrocked by the arch-dhongis and their minions for the 2012-2013 Bombay Parsi Punchayet (BPP)-World Alliance of Parsi Irani Zarthoshtis (WAPIZ)-Zoroastrian Youth for the Next Generation (ZYNG) calendar, we’ve noticed increasing numbers of anti-clerical protests on your pages. We’ve apparently forced these arch-dhongis into a vada dastur council coalition sustained by three "scholar” chaplains. Isn’t inventiveness just wonderful!

Rustom K. J. Khambata’s questionnaire ("An inconvenient truth?” Readers’ Forum, Parsiana, April 7, 2011) to the clerics is the latest in a long queue of earnest enquiries which, in the latter’s "time-honored tradition,” failed to elicit any response. No surprise there, but Khambata has answered his own questions on their behalf: they neither know, nor care, nor even exercise their usual "how dare you question our authority!”

Trapped between muddle-headed mobeds and messed-up messiahs, any lay person seeking the core truths of the Zoroastrian religion will have to contend instead with the most puerile sets of inanities. In western India, at least, there is no via media — "you pays your money and you takes our choice” just about fits this woeful situation.

Khambata and others of his enquiring disposition must understand that by incessantly pressuring these religious heads, they are interfering with their production-line of fatwas. How is our precious kom (community) to regress without the activating of Ayatollic fatwas? How else can they scare and repress their untutored, superstition-burdened parishioners? Raising the twin specters of parjats (non-Zoroastrians) and paan-pichkariwallas (those who emit red streams of spittle after eating betel leaves filled with condiments) as darvand (outcastes) neighbors in their BPP flats are physical reasons enough; the prospect of spending an eternity in a dhongi-designed hell should their remains be cremated or inhumed is enough to scare the frocks off their spiritual leggings. Prayers to be withheld by popular vote?

Therefore, where Khambata is at his "lighter vein” best, he is factually most serious. Surely, he must have meant to pun "Ask no questions and you’ll hear no lies, not even a whisper of nothing!” Al Gore gal-ore, a Gor-o Parsi; aren’t we yet reconciled to his Al-Gore-rhythms — they were shaped around convenient lies dodging behind inconvenient truths!

If we at all have lucky stars, let us thank them for the new-fangled vada dastur council and their cohorts. The more distant from us the better, for then we can leave them to scheme and conspire to their hearts’ content. It was, after all, one of its darkened ideologues (a genuine éminence grise) who, having dismissed our founder and guide, declared, "It is the fondness for the Gathas that is leading the community astray!” Have we forgotten so soon that we now wish to consult these very types on that truly central aspect — the vital core of our Mazdayasna?

It was but a few months ago that an authenticated video made the rounds of a deceptively even-keeled ayatollah who, relying on audience ignorance, unleashed an uncontrolled, vitriolic attack on Zarathushtra and his teachings. Whereas his Iranian audience was visibly perturbed, we heard not a "cheep” from our dhongi arch-pretenders who, on reflection, could well have emerged from that same stable!

FARROKH VAJIFDAR

London

f.vajifdar@btinernet.com

Asking questions is, indeed, a quest for knowledge. Even Prophet Zarathushtra received his knowledge of eternal truths by seeking an explanation to what might have been seen as predicaments. The honest seeker cannot be dismissed conveniently by being clubbed with those who ask questions only to belittle the bestower.

In my profession as architect and interior designer, I’ve had youngsters coming in to work and/or gain experience. I have always turned out those who appeared to have all the answers when they could hardly define the pertinent questions applicable to a proposal. In a person who shrugs his shoulders and says, "I don’t really know” there often resides a reservoir of great depth waiting to be filled, as against one who claims to know it all but does not have the ability to discern the issues at stake.

Our vada dasturs seem to have all the answers so long as you ask them questions compatible with their point of view. (Henry Ford is famous for having said of his cars, "You can have any color so long as it is black.”) But facts can stand on their own legs, and do not need the crutches of one’s opinion or point of view to justify or qualify them. These are the facts we seek. I would respect a leader who can place before me what he knows, and has the alacrity to say, "I don’t know” or "I’m not so sure about this” when questioned about whatever is beyond his ken. It is inherent in our respect for the creator that none of us will ever know it all.

PHIROZE B. JAVERI

phiroze.javeri@gmail.com