A meeting of the West Zone B anjumans of the Federation of the Parsi Zoroastrian Anjumans of India (FPZAI) is to be held on July 28, 2013 in Ahmedabad, states an invite sent to all the Gujarat anjumans by the Federation vice president Areez Khambatta on his personal letterhead.
Noting that "the Ahmedabad Parsi Panchayat (APP) has been nominated to hold and conduct the meeting of the presidents/representatives of the Anjumans of West Zone B for the year 2013,” Khambatta requested the members to attend the meet to be held at the Parsi Sanatorium in the Navrangpura area.
"Any anjumans desirous of forwarding points for discussion are requested to send the same with a maximum one page detail/write-up to the APP latest by June 30, 2013,” wrote the vice president.
While zonal meets are normally restricted to the anjumans in the zone, the Jam-e-Jamshed Weekly of July 7 carried an advertisement by the World Alliance of Parsi Irani Zarthoshtis (WAPIZ) and Bombay Parsi Punchayet (BPP) trustees Khojeste Mistree and Yazdi Desai stating that they will not be able to hold their semi-monthly meeting with members of the public on the fourth Saturday of July at the Framjee Cowasjee Institute as "they will be in Ahmedabad for the meeting of anjumans.” Khambatta, a former president of the APP, is the founder chairman of WAPIZ. Desai had been denied permission to attend the West Zone B zonal meet in Surat on April 21, 2012 when former Surat Parsi Panchayat president Darayas Master was the zonal vice president. Khambatta took over early this year.
The meet assumes significance in light of the proposed changes to the rules and regulations restricting the use of proxies to represent anjumans at the FPZAI meet. There is a strong possibility that several WAPIZ office bearers and supporters will attend as representatives of anjumans beholden to or friendly with WAPIZ. Their intention will be to endorse the status quo that permits any person to represent an anjuman even if that person has no connection with the anjuman or even the geographic area. The proxies given to WAPIZ in the past have secured for the orthodox body a majority in the general body of the FPZAI. A FPZAI sub committee has been formed to look into the subject and WAPIZ may use the zonal meet to lobby against any radical changes.
Parsiana sent three emails and a text message to APP president Brig Jahangir Anklesaria inquiring if the publication was invited to the meet as it had been in 2012. Khambatta is inimical to Parsiana and in the past the publication was not invited to zonal meets in Gujarat when he was vice president or Andhra Pradesh when Kerfegar Antia was vice president of the south zone. On July 12, 2013 APP trustee Shirin Kanga conveyed to Parsiana, "Mr A. Khambatta will directly inform Parsiana.”
On July 13, 2013 Khambatta wrote to Parsiana, "I have received your email addressed to Brig (Retd) Anklesaria. Please note that the Ahmedabad Parsi Panchayat has been nominated by me to host the meeting of the anjumans of West Zone B and therefore your email was forwarded to me for reply being the vice-president of the Zone.
"I was pleasantly surprised to learn that you want to attend and cover this meeting, as earlier I very well remember that you had rejected our invitation and therefore we had stopped inviting you. I would love to have you attend the meeting provided you give me an assurance that you will be reporting only the true facts without your biased coverage. I have been observing since the time the Cosmopolitan World Body was cremated, that your Parsiana has lost its ability to be an impartial reporter of events as they unfold in the community and has been instead trying to impose its editor’s views on the community and change the fabric of the community.
"Responsible journalism entails that as the editor it is your professional and moral duty to be fair and not lean always towards the Convertists, laying great stress on publishing anti-religious activities like cremation and the so called Russian navar’s ceremony etc which wrongly encourages our younger generation to go against our religion and its tariqats. Unfortunately we as a community conceded unwarranted liberties to fake exegetes which we must disable so that traditions are perpetuated.
"Anyway I am really surprised that you are now keen to come, which I do not mind provided you adhere to what I have said above.”
On July 16 Parsiana replied: "We will be happy to attend the meet. The only invitation we have declined was to the meet held by you in Bardoli. At that time we expressed our inability to attend as our personnel resources are limited and we restrict out of Bombay assignments. We however have never refused to attend a Federation meeting realizing the significance of the all-India body’s proceedings.
"WAPIZ, since its inception, has followed a policy of excluding Parsiana from all its events. This short-sighted policy has hurt WAPIZ more than Parsiana.
"Our reports on the Federation meetings have always been objective. No anjuman has anything to fear except the publication of the truth, or as close to it as one can possibly get.”