The editorial "A ray of hope” (Parsiana, March 7-20, 2021) brings to the fore the all-important point of updating the names on the Bombay Parsi Punchayet (BPP) voters’ registers.
I agree that the more difficult task is verifying which Parsi voter has discontinued professing the Zoroastrian faith. This would be unknowable as there is no standard generally accepted definition of what constitutes "professing the Zoroastrian faith” in the court sanctioned election scheme.
How many of the registered voters of the BPP would remain duly registered if there is such a definition which, for example, mandates the wearing of sudreh and kusti 24x7, visiting an agiary, dadgah or atash behram daily, knowing the navjote prayers by heart, reciting the Gatha prayers, knowing names of the mahs and rozs of the calendar, observing Bahman mahino and the anrojas (days on which meat should not be eaten), knowing one’s own mah and roz of birth and that of the immediate family, etc?
Would the courts approve of such a change to be incorporated in the election scheme? Or maybe the ever ingenious trustees who rejected a candidate’s nomination on the ground that her proposer was no longer professing the Zoroastrian faith, might come up with a "suitable” definition of what constitutes "professing Zoroastrianism.”
Unless and until such a definition gets duly incorporated in the scheme, this ambiguity will remain and the famed affidavits might continue to be the preferred tool of the trustees to demonstrate professing of the Zoroastrian faith. There might be quite a few vested interests connected with the BPP that would want it to so remain.
However, I disagree with the editorial when it states: "Even if the BPP were to (update the electoral rolls) they would not know where to go outside of the colonies. The problem appears insurmountable.”
On the contrary, it is doable.
There is an address available against every voter entry. All that the BPP needs to do is to delete the names of deceased voters. The data is available with the BPP which manages Doongerwadi and names of the deceased are published in Parsiana, Parsi Times and Jam-e-Jamshed. The BPP should publish the existing names in the voter registers in the Parsi Press, inviting objections from the community. Where there is doubt about a particular entry, a BPP representative should be sent to the address mentioned and inquire. All names that cannot be ascertained should be collated and published once again with the 30-day time limit for deletion, as provided in the court sanctioned scheme of election.
KAYOMARZ PATEL
kayomarz@ymail.com