Change from within

Consciously or subconsciously we compare our community’s parameters with those of the other major communities and reach fairly balanced conclusions. However, as a concerned Zoroastrian I feel we need to be more introspective and incisive. My 10-year stint as chief executive officer of the Bombay Parsi Punchayet (BPP) has given me deep insight into our community’s affairs and problems and its fast-deteriorating standing in our own eyes as well as in the eyes of other communities, thanks in no small measure to the dirty linen washed by the World Alliance of Parsi Irani Zarthoshtis (WAPIZ) in The Free Press Journal.

Our microscopic community, both in India and abroad, suffers from many endemic problems which only we can solve. Our priests, including five of the six hereditary high priests, are totally fossilized in time, refusing to keep in sync with today’s needs and technology, though for 200 years the community has been technology and trade driven. They interpret our scriptures as they choose. I had asked them on what basis they maintain that the death ceremonies would not be performed for the first four days, but only from the fifth day onward for those Indian Parsis whose corpses were disposed of through cremation or burial at a place where a dakhma existed. There was no response.

I had written to the Athornan Mandal about the archaic practice of ada antar at our weddings (borrowed some centuries back from Gujarati Hindus). It is meaningless to hold a sheet between the couple at the time of the marriage when the boys and girls of our community have seen each other thousands of times. There was no response from the Mandal.

It is nothing but male chauvinism to accept the children of Parsi males and non-Parsi spouses as Zoroastrians, but not vice versa. This custom is based on the perverted Davar-Beaman judgment (The Parsi Punchayet Case of Petit vs Jeejeebhoy). The priests do not mind when the offspring of Parsi farmers and Gujarati women move about freely in our agiaries, but the same priests will not allow Goolrookh Gupta, who has not abandoned her faith, to do so. Areez Khambatta of Ahmedabad financed the Valsad Parsi Anjuman in fighting the case. It is because of the dual standards of our priests that our youngsters do not look up to them for either guidance or solace.

Regarding the economic aspects of priesthood, a lot has been done but much more remains to be done to ensure their well being. If industrialists, professionals and self-employed Zoroastrians set aside 0.5 to 1.0 percent of their income and give it directly to the atash behram, agiary or dadgah trustees, and verify the amount given to the priests as annual increments, this would really help. Without our mobeds our religion and religious institutions will cease to exist and will pass into history books. We have to work for their survival. Time is running out and direct access is the only solution.

The BPP has degenerated into a house divided against itself. The trustees, who sit barely a foot-and-a-half away from each other in the board room, send each other nasty e-mails. The community should forfeit the BPP’s right to call itself the global apex body of the Zoroastrians. Fighting, bickering, bad blood, nasty interpersonal relations and making a bonfire of the community’s previous crores of rupees in litigation is all they seem to be doing. Ever since the entry of the two WAPIZ trustees (Khojeste Mistree and Yazdi Desai) there is acute polarization of the board and the BPP is hurtling down a steep slope.

Years back former BPP trustee Burjor Antia and I had cautioned the board that the BPP must drastically reduce litigation, 90 percent of which is housing oriented. The Bombay High Court has categorically ruled that the BPP has no mandate to infringe on religious matters, forcing it to face costly arbitration proceedings.

Our community is unwittingly enriching the courts and lawyers through avoidable litigation. At the BPP I have come across some Parsi lawyers fomenting trouble between parties. I am told that in almost every town Parsi properties are embroiled in litigation, often within the family. When we can live peaceably with others, why should we be at daggers drawn among ourselves?

The present BPP board has little to show by way of achievements. Flats in the two high rise buildings in Panthaky Baug have corroded over the past four years for want of occupants. Work on a high rise building at Godrej Baug has been halted for the last two years after nine stories had been constructed. The top man in any organization should be held accountable for any maladministration and chairman of the BPP Dinshaw Mehta has a lot to explain. The community should unceremoniously throw out the entire board of the BPP at the next election.

It is a shame that such a self-reliant, self-respecting community should believe in the bogey "no houses, no spouses.” Some years back the BPP had commissioned a series of surveys conducted by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences which revealed that the real reasons for population decline are non-marriages, late marriages and rigid birth control, even by couples who could afford to have more than one child.

The B. D. Petit Parsee General Hospital survives largely on largesse received from local and overseas Zoroastrians. It should amend its trust deed by approaching the court and open a cosmopolitan section (as the Masina Hospital has done) which can support the Parsi wing and enable faster modernization.

In the field of education the BPP and regional anjumans must press the central and state departments of education to reserve a specific percentage of seats for management, medical and engineering studies for Zoroastrian students.

The WAPIZ theory regarding neo-Zoroastrians (convertions to Zoroastrianism) is based on Mistree’s unfounded fears. No non-Zoroastrian is really interested in converting to Zoroastrianism though great European scholars have admired our hoary religion. Researcher Dinyar Patel has confirmed that the global figure for such (alleged) converts is negligible!

Let us work out a change from within us. Each Zoroastrian has to exert in order to change the morass in which we find ourselves.

B. T. DASTUR