Take bold decisions

The census figures for the Parsis in India are dismal. Scientifically, the answer lies in The Avestagenome Project. We will be conserving not only the Parsi community’s DNA samples but stem cells that in the future would allow for regeneration maybe or provide cures for the race as technology moves further.
However we have been stalled on this ambitious project for being ahead of the times and the significant funding requirements. The first investment was done by Avesthagen in the collection of 4,500 human resource. We have to move forward and complete the collection and archiving. The Prime Minister’s schemes, however well meaning, are mired in bureaucracy. We need to get this project in front of the community, make an archival center in some of the myriad of unoccupied buildings belonging to the community and let funds be raised from within the community as a second round of investment.
The community, as we know it, is finished. Socially, in order to save it, we first need to integrate the children of women married out and the numbers will swell. We must realize that the Indian Parsis preventing this integration are ageing dinosaurs who, though having one foot in the grave, or should I say the tower of silence, are standing in judgment on the future of the community and our children. Why are we allowing this? We will move on leaving a few young people with no clear direction. There has to be a global referendum, a coup of sorts.
It’s time to have courage and unconventionality. And we must stop eulogizing the same old things. It creates a perception of grandeur within the community where there is none. The early entrepreneurs and business houses did a great job and we salute them. They were all path breakers, risked their lives and did not let ordinary individuals rule the larger, greater goal. Today when I attend functions, I see grey heads, unwell folks with strange diseases, most people retired and counting pennies while living in large mansions left to them by their great-grandfathers. Most earn by being day traders at the Indian stock market, zealously guarding their inherited portfolios. No energy. It’s sad.
Some of us have to take bold decisions. It’s time to examine what Zarathushtra actually postulated as also to look at all the past laws and who instituted them. Who allowed men to marry out but not women? Also, all the trust deeds need to be interpreted in the light of current laws. The community’s youth migrates today to be free from regressive thinking and goes where the real Zoroastrian religion is being practiced, while in India the community mutates until there is nothing left.
And what they fear in their narrow thought process and paranoia about the parjats will happen. All the baugs and buildings will be occupied by the public as nature abhors a vacuum. It’s time we woke up to this reality.
Let us unite to fight for the rights of the girl child and her rightful place in the community. Take a vote from the global Parsi community, not a few old guys sitting in a dusty room in Fort, Bombay. We should be ashamed of ourselves in this day and age. Three women are about to lead the three largest global economic engines — Angela Merkel, Theresa May and Hillary Clinton. It’s a joke how our community treats its women in this day and age. Dr VILLOO MORAWALA PATELL
Bangalore
villoo@avesthagen.com