Race for Survival

It was the formation of the World Alliance of Parsi Irani Zarthoshtis WAPIZ, a conservative organisation that would stave off reformists8217; attempts to grant religious rights and recognition to non-Parsi spouses and their children.

They berated the Bombay Parsee Punchayet, a centuries-old organisation that8217;s now sending feelers to the International Zoroastrian Organisation to be set up in London. The IZO will be a cosmopolitan body with membership open to non-Parsis.

The two blocs have been at each other8217;s throats8212;the liberals labelling the conservatives 8216;rabid fanatics8217;, the traditionalists calling a section of the progressive Parsi press 8216;fruitcakes8217; and the name-calling continuing with scholars accepting intermarriages being termed 8216;altu-faltu8217;.

And yet, incredibly, all sections are united in advising Parsi youngsters to marry early, have two children phataphat and, just as quickly, teach them the tenets of Zoroastrianism.

Everybody is in agreement that the Parsis deserve to lengthen the lifespan of a community that has given India a Zubin Mehta for every Freddie Mercury, a Cyrus Broacha for every Rohinton Mistry. The squabbling is only over the strategy.

8216;8216;If you create a fear psychosis by telling people over and over again that their numbers are dwindling and opening up the fold is urgently needed,8217;8217; says WAPIZ founder and Parsi religious scholar Khojeste Mistree, 8216;8216;they8217;ll tend to believe you.8217;8217; A pure ethnic race is important to all early religion, he points out, adding that just slapping on numbers is an ill-conceived solution. 8216;8216;WAPIZ says the Parsi Irani ethnicity is a must to be a Zoroastrian.8217;8217;

The progressives8212;and these are really too diverse a lot to place in one basket8212;offer the pragmatism riposte.

8216;8216;We don8217;t encourage or discourage cross-marriages as policy,8217;8217; says president of the Bombay Parsee Punchayet Minoo Shroff, a 75-year-old Parsi who8217;s every bit the devout Zoroastrian that Mistree is. 8216;8216;We believe in persuasion. Because if you really want to marry a non-Parsi, you8217;ll do so even if the clergy declares it wrong.8217;8217;

The Punchayet8212;increasingly embattled landlords and owners of some of Mumbai8217;s most expensive property and dozens of Parsi colonies or Baugs8212;has stayed mum on WAPIZ. 8216;8216;We wish them well,8217;8217; Shroff says. As for joining hands with an international cosmopolitan body of Parsis, Shroff says IZO is not meant to be a religious body at all. 8216;8216;Each region will pursue religious customs, traditions, rites and rituals without any interference from other regions,8217;8217; he says.

As for the fear that the so-called neo-Zoroastrians don8217;t invade, willy-nilly, into the 6,000 flats, or agyaries or welfare funds for the Parsis, Shroff says not a single such demand has come forward.

Shh, They8217;re Changing
SOMEWHAT traditional, even orthodox8230; that8217;s how Behrooz K Y Avari 22 describes her growing-up years.

8216;8216;I used to go for Zoroastrian religious classes. I lapped it all up,8217;8217; says the media studies student. 8216;8216;Until luckily something clicked in my defunct brain and I started to think for myself.8217;8217;

A promising entrant into the great army of young Indian turks, Avari8217;s lifestyle8212;with its belief in 8216;8216;one god and spirituality8217;8217;8212;is a microcosm of the new Parsi life in metropolitan India.

Neither traditionalist nor reformist, the young Parsis can8217;t quite fathom what the battlelines are drawn around.

8216;8216;Whoever wants to join WAPIZ joins it. Whoever wants to join IZO joins it. Others like me join nothing. Anyway, what is there to gain?8217;8217; asks Avari.

When Meher Bhavnani 52 rebelled against her sadra-kashti in Std IX, her father was sore, but got over it. They were a liberal family that had moved to Delhi from Mumbai. When she married her childhood sweetheart, a Sindhi, there were no objections.

When her father died a few years ago, her husband and children had to wait outside the fire temple while the family prayed. 8216;8216;That hurt,8217;8217; says the mother of two grown-up children. 8220;If I were a man marrying outside the community, my children could have been initiated into the religion.8217;8217;

Debate about accepting children of inter-married Parsis is not a late trend. In fact, soon after the Federation of Parsi Zarthoshti Anjumans of India FPZAI was formed in the early 1970s, the Delhi anjumans had begun talking about opening up horizons.

It irked people enough for a progressive Parsi daily in Mumbai to carry letters from irate Parsis asking the Punchayet to quit the federation, which it did. It rejoined later.

And as early as 1906, a court directed that the offspring of a Parsi father and a non-Parsi mother be given rights of admission8212;the famous case of JRD Tata8217;s mother, a Frenchwoman. The Wadia scions, descendants of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, are Parsi too.

But that8217;s not true for women marrying outside. That single gender-unfriendly tradition for a community that treats its women better than most others stands out prominently. 8216;8216;Still, I was born a Zoroastrian and will die one,8217;8217; Bhavnani declares proudly.

But change cannot be ignored, she says. As communities move out of Udwada, Navsari, Ahmedabad and set up shop in Mumbai and Delhi, as better education and professional opportunities beckon, opportunities on the personal front multiply too.

Delhi8217;s Rinchan Nargolwala, a Tibetan Buddhist, is married to a Parsi, a love match. Her two sons are being brought up as Parsis. Jayan 14 had his navjot at the age of seven and is proud of his sadra and kashti. He even reads his nightly prayers with his grandmother.

Till Std IX, he attended the farohar classes that Avari attended too, an important link for him with Parsi heritage.

And though Rinchan belongs to a religious Buddhist family in Darjeeling, she is at ease here. 8216;8216;She knows more Parsi songs than I do,8217;8217; says Adil, Rinchan8217;s husband and secretary to the Delhi Anjuman.

But adaptive as she is, Rinchan won8217;t convert. 8216;8216;I identify myself as a Tibetan Buddhist,8217;8217; she says.

The Diverse Challenges
IN December 2003, at the third international Zoroastrian Youth Congress at Pune, gynaecologist Anahita Pundole put the problem of low birth rates among Parsis in scientific perspective.

The result, a first-of-its-kind initiative by the Bombay Parsee Punchayet, to provide young Parsi couples with free professional help8212;gynaecological and psychological8212;to plan early families.

The Punchayet lists delayed marriages, working couples, infertility and obesity as among the top reasons for the wide disparity between birth and death rates in the community. So the punchayet is now playing Cupid, promoting month-long holidays and interactive sessions for the youth.

Still, despite its welfare measures, many Parsis8212;both traditional and liberal8212;believe that the Punchayet has overshot its brief as custodians of their trusts and funds.

Across the country, the installation of solar concentrators8212;with vulture breeding near-impossible in cities like Mumbai, these were inevitable8212;in the wells of several doongerwadis have invoked angry conservatives8217; ire.

Just two months ago, Parsis approached the Bombay High Court seeking universal adult franchise in electing board members to the Punchayet. The court ruled in the Punchayet8217;s favour. But the latest amendment to the covenant expands this 8216;8216;guided democracy8217;8217; to include two popularly elected members in the electoral college for every donor member.

Mood On The Ground
SEVEN high priests and 50 of the 56 functioning Anjumans in the country have refused to join the international body, WAPIZ members claim.

In Gujarat too, where the community has a sizeable presence8212;of the 69 Parsi punchayets in India, Gujarat houses 358212;the divide is distinct. And barring Vadodara, almost all the other punchayets in Gujarat have decided to back WAPIZ.

8216;8216;We have to stick to the constitution of our religion. We respect all religions, but if we allow non-Parsis to be part our community, our identity will be killed,8217;8217; says Farokh Kavina, who runs a school from his huge ancestral bungalow in Ahmedabad8217;s Khanpur area, home to one of the city8217;s biggest concentration of Parsis.

He says those pitching to be associated with the IZO on grounds of dwindling numbers, don8217;t seem to realise that the moment non-Parsis enter the community, the original Parsi will cease to exist. 8216;8216;That,8217;8217; he says, 8216;8216;is not acceptable to us.8217;8217;

In Ahmedabad too, an overwhelming majority feels the community should stick to its roots.

Delhi, where the community is known to have the most relaxed opinions on mixed marriages, is clearly for reform.

For, the 800-strong population in the capital is perhaps the only Parsi group in India that is openly tolerant of children of all Parsi mixed marriages having navjot ceremonies, performed by what the conservatives dub 8216;renegade8217; dasturs, or priests.

8216;8216;We are thinking Parsis,8217;8217; Lt Gen retd A M Sethna, president of the Delhi Parsee Anjuman. 8216;8216;We don8217;t want to be categorised as traditionalists or reformists. All said and done, a Parsi is first of all an Indian and then anything else.8217;8217;

With inputs from Harit Mehta in Ahmedabad and Padmaparna Ghosh in New Delhi