Taking stock

Despite journalistically covering the community for almost 60 years, there are always issues with which we are unfamiliar. We therefore turn for guidance to people who are knowledgeable in the subject. Sometimes the opinions they offer differ. We then present both sides, leaving interested readers to judge for themselves which appeals to their reasoning. Even if readers remain perplexed or undecided, they would have been exposed to differing viewpoints that reflect the intricacies involved.

In our November 7-20, 2023 issue of Parsiana we carried writer/lawyer Berjis Desai’s column titled, "How Ahura Mazda’s competitors were downgraded.” As we are not qualified to judge the veracity of historical, religious matters, we asked Dastur (Dr) Firoze Kotwal, an authority on Zoroastrianism, to opine on the piece. We carry his observations along with Desai’s rejoinder in this issue (see pg 28).

Kotwal is a noted scholar who has published papers in reputed academic journals and is an authority on Zoroastrian rituals. Parsiana too has been privileged to reprint some of his scholarly papers. Desai has had a distinguished legal career and is a gifted writer. His "Navsari Tales” columns that appeared in Parsiana and were later included in a book of his writings rank among the best literature penned on community life in the once Parsi bastion of south Gujarat.

Desai cites reputed academicians to back his contention that three Ahuras existed and that two were subsequently downgraded by the Sasanian clergy. Kotwal denies that the clergy had a hand in the degradation of the two Ahuras and argues instead that the Sasanian clergy should be commended for preserving the religious traditions and customs through the ages. To substantiate his claim he quotes from stone inscriptions from antiquity along with data from other sources.

Over the past decades we have found priests (as also laypersons) seldom concurring on any issue. A council of high priests was dissolved in the recent past because they could not agree on a common agenda. Some preferred the counsel of like-minded dasturs rather than of those who held differing opinions. So to assume that the clergy in Sasasian times conjointly issued diktats that were then acted upon by the laity is debatable. Unless, of course, they had the power to impose punishment — both physical and monetary — on dissidents. Even the papacy faces opposition despite its monolithic structure. In contrast, the Parsis have no pope. Every high priest or layperson is a law unto himself/herself. We cannot even concur on following a uniform calendar: Zoroastrians have three!

Who one chooses to side with on issues often depends on the source providing the material. As much as the matter may speak for itself, the person/author conveying the information is important. At the October 8, 2023 conclave of priests and some laity, one mobed stated the number of Parsis marrying outside the faith was between 20 to 30%. According to the data on marriages collected by Parsiana in 2022, there were 85 Parsi to Parsi marriages as versus 82 Parsi to non-Parsi marriages. The ratio (85:82) is arrived at by totaling the Parsi to Parsi marriage data obtained from the Bombay High Court and Parsi to non-Parsi marriages from the offices of the Registrar of Marriages. All the names of the married couples are published in Parsiana.

But a priest or layperson citing such comparative marriage statistics from a liberal source like Parsiana may be discredited, demeaned or labeled a heretic. Better to turn a blind eye, dismiss the "malaise” as a passing phase, an aberration. But if half of the marriages are outside the faith, should not the community reassess their priorities? Can they continue to shun the non-Parsi spouse and label their offspring soda-lemon, cocktail or illegitimate? Should they not accept the inevitable and welcome within the fold the outmarried and their offspring as is being done in New Delhi and North America?

Years ago, at the inauguration of a Parsi organized art/cultural exhibition at the National Gallery of Modern Art located in the Sir Cowasjee Jehangir Hall, a prominent Parsi judge addressing the distinguished gathering stated emphatically the Parsi community would flourish for another 1,000 years. His remark was met with thunderous applause. Whether there was any factual basis to the statement was irrelevant. He said what people wanted to hear and that too from a person of his standing. British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill in his celebrated speech regarding Britain’s "finest hour” during World War II at least prefaced his remark about the British Commonwealth and Empire lasting for a thousand years with the prefix "If.”

Sadly, the government of India census figures collected every decade (the 2021 census has yet to be conducted) show a continuous and steep decline in the Parsi population. But many once denied, and still do, that this is so. To explain the decline in numbers several claimed Parsis had migrated abroad but the figures reported in other countries do not reflect a migration of that scale.

At one time people raised the bogey of planes full of Russian converts to Zoroastrianism converging on Bombay, swamping our fire temples, usurping colony flats and depleting our community coffers. The truth is quite to the contrary. Our agiaries today are forlorn, the number of bidders at auctions for colony flats has dwindled to a trickle and the Bombay Parsi Punchayet is bereft of funds to even pay their employees’ monthly emoluments. Their union has slapped an unfair labor practices suit against the trust in the labor court.

As author and academician Patrick Olivelle states in the prolog to his book, Ashoka: Portrait of a Philosopher King, "Memory both selects and suppresses features of the past and adds newly ‘remembered’ features” to serve its purpose. He was distinguishing between the Mauryan Emperor’s accomplishments, real and imagined.Perhaps it is time for us to also ruminate over what is real and illusionary.