I was born and raised in Bombay, educated at St Xavier’s High School and St Xavier’s College. From the very beginning, I found myself drawn to Parsis because I thought them to be an almost instinctively decent, honest and upright people. I am 75 now and that early impression has stayed with me over the years.
A few months ago, I came across a copy of Parsiana, and although — or perhaps because — it was wholly about matters related to the Parsi community, I immediately took out a subscription and I have enjoyed much of what I have read in it since then. For example, the story on Mithoo Coorlawala ("A blessed centenarian,” July 21, 2018) was so heartwarming. To me, she, and the life she has led, epitomizes what it means to be a Parsi: elegant, generous of spirit with an abiding commitment to all that is kind and good.
But it isn’t a perfect world and it hurts me to discover the many disagreements that seem to plague the community. Some of them are amusing. Pervin Mistry of Ontario says a few priests "never eat food cooked by a non-Parsi!” ("Iftar impropriety?” Readers’ Forum, Parsiana, July 21, 2018). What a limited social life one would have in the food capital of Canada. Others are more thoughtful. Yezad Kapadia writes: "The greatest problem facing the community today is how to retain our assets in a scenario of diminishing numbers” ("Of greater import,” Readers’ Forum, Parsiana, July 21, 2018).
To my mind, much more distressing is that too many of the Parsi community’s disagreements have at their root the limitations placed on who is a Parsi Zoroastrian and who is or isn’t permitted to ever be one. That makes me very sad. The community is now down to less than 40,000 in Bombay, its epicenter, where once there were 75,000. The age of the Parsi deceased in Bombay listed in the July 21 issue averaged out at 80 years. Clearly, you are living long enough to beget many more new generations and so increase and multiply your community. But you have to re-visit that old Zoroastrian case law which doesn’t permit acceptance into the community of any but children of Parsi Zoroastrian men.
In today’s world, that is a hopelessly retrograde notion — and the more so if it presides over the diminishment and, ultimately, the disappearance of an entire race. Women have been given equality with men all over the world. The Isle of Man gave women the right to vote in 1881, New Zealand in 1893, Australia the year after, the Soviet Union in 1917. It was in 1968, that Mao Zedong famously said "Women hold up half the world.” Is it then not time for you, an enlightened and much-exalted people, to re-consider?
I realize that what I am suggesting will draw the ire of many of your readers. There will even be those that ask "Who the devil is he to tell us what we should do?” But I prefer to think the naysayers will be in the substantial minority. I hope I will live long enough to see the Parsi community enlarged and enriched by welcoming into its ranks those who have been excluded from them for the sole reason of their parentage. Then perhaps one day the children of my friend married to a Punjabi Hindu will be permitted entry into the Parsi Zoroastrian ranks in the same way that their first cousins, children of their maternal uncle married to a Kerala Muslim, are. STANLEY PINTO
stanleyvonne@gmail.com