The article "Entitled to enter? — VII” (Parsiana, August 21, 2012) about the Goolrookh Gupta case, though thought provoking was not encouraging. It takes ages to be heard in the Supreme Court, which I can vouch from personal experience. During the intervening period anything is possible, and if a stay is not granted expeditiously, Gupta will be left hanging fire in the event of any tragedy in her family.
I repeat again as in my previous letter to Parsiana that she should call Ervad Khushroo Madon and other priests and have her navjote ceremony performed once more and close the chapter.
To buttress my argument I quote from The Times of India dated February 22, 2012, "Lawyer’s plea to renounce faith quashed.” Advocate Khambete a practising advocate pleaded that he did not want to be identified with any particular tradition or faith and wished to abandon his religion.
Justice S. S. Todkar of the Thane Sessions Court observed as follows: Quoting Article 25 pertaining to the right to freedom of religion, the court observed that any person is free to embrace or give up his religion. He said, should the court sanction the title "non-religious” it could complicate matters for family members of such a person.
Now as per Article 25 if one can embrace any religion how can a Parsi Pope or a diehard bawa prevent anyone from embracing the Zoroastrian religion?
I wish Gupta all the best for standing up with courage. She should take heart from the following.
As notes Theodore Roosevelt in "Citizenship in a Republic,” a speech at the Sorbonne, Paris on April 23, 1910: "It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs
to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”
BEHRAM AGA
behram_r_aga@yahoo.co.in