Melting pot of genes

Welcome to the 21st century waning haven of the Parsis: India. A place where ab-goosht (Iranian stew) was replaced by dhansak, Kourosh was altered to Cyrus, Shirinzadeh became Sodabottleopenerwala, Norooz was Indianized to Navroz, and sedreh poushi renamed navjote. Pahlavi turned to Gujarati and so we spun new threads of tradition on Indian soil, assimilating and adapting. Today, we take great pride in our past even though over the years we have changed our traditions, our identity, our religious practices, and ironically, our genes too.
Parsis are obsessed with saving the population, our newfound identity, and give into this collectivistic mentality. Zoroaster on the other hand, came about promoting individualistic thinking and progressive mentality. Simply generating more offspring in order to save the community seems like we are bowing down to primitive, Darwinian ideals.
This has evidently been bottlenecked further with the objection to interfaith marriages, especially when it comes to the unfortunate Parsi woman. In 480 BC the Greek queen and naval commander Artemisia, was an ally of King Xerxes I. She led her fleet against the Greeks in the battle of Salamis. People most often quote the passage from the Shahnameh on keeping pure the seed of Persia, forgetting that it had numerous references to "half-blood” kings like Kaikosrov who in fact became quite powerful. Historically we know that even King Xerxes established Mazdayasna in conquered territories, which meant that conversion was in fact favored. Shouldn’t King Vishtaspa have just stuck to his religion instead of converting to Zoroastrianism then? (According to the Davar-Beaman judgement of 1908 in Petit vs Jeejeebhoy, the Zoroastrian religion not only permits but enjoins conversion — editors)
Shouldn’t all of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and western Persia, where we all come from, have stayed true to their older belief systems because Zoroaster was actually of eastern-Iranian ethnicity and Zoroastrianism had its origins somewhere in Khorasan? Perhaps the strongest reference we can give against this genetic craze is from the Bundahishn (text on primal creation) itself, where man and woman were created from Gayomart’s (first mythological human being in the world) seed which sprouted in Spenta Armaiti (female divinity associated with devotion and mother nature). Nowhere is it mentioned that Ahura Mazda planted one seed for the Persians, one for the Greeks, one for the Hindus, and another for the European Christians. We came from one seed, and we represent the ideal human being.
As per the recent relativistic view, a person is born in his/her parent’s religion (and by parents, I mean the father) for a purpose. Unlike Judaism, it is the father’s religion that decides if the child will be Parsi or not (or so they say).
Religion is a personal choice; converts and half-bloods shouldn’t be looked at as impure or illegitimate, or unworthy of entering an atash behram. These relatively recent restrictions never existed in the motherland of Iran. Fire temples had four gates and were open to all, and they’re still open to all without any discrimination. Why then do we resist positive change today? The progressive nature of Zoroastrianism is self-evident in the widely used emblem of the farohar, which was in fact adopted from the Egyptian sun disc symbol! We have, in fact, regressed over the years, as we have gradually forgotten what our religion stands for.
If we promised King Jadi Rana that we would peacefully assimilate into the Indian society, why do we object to other non Parsis blending in with us like sugar in milk? AARYAN LORIAN
Melbourne, Australia
aaryantheowl@gmail.com