Eccentricities apart, the anomalous behavior of the community comes to the fore in the item "Ahmedabad back in FPZAI" (Events and Personalities, Parsiana, January 7, 2013), which is very unhealthy.
The executive council meeting of the Federation of the Parsi Zoroastrian Anjumans of India (FPZAI) was scheduled to be held in Jabalpur in November 2012, but Madhya Pradesh being a WAPIZ (World Alliance of Parsi Irani Zarthoshtis) bastion, the venue was overruled. A fact that reflects on the "popularity" of WAPIZ and the trust we can repose in non-progressive persons!
Over the years Parsiana has most convincingly and objectively covered the malfunctioning of an inert, sluggish FPZAI which meets and departs acrimoniously in defeat with agendas unattended and with stereotyped excuses given by the chairman which are totally untenable.
The Bombay Parsi Punchayet (BPP) has nothing to speak about but accuses Zoroastrians of wasting the BPP’s time in court cases.
It is heartening to learn that the Ahmedabad Parsi Panchayat will be participating in the FPZAI, as reported by you. Their grouse was once again based on a known, incorrigible windbag of our community, incomparably qualified as a sensational trumpeter (of his own qualities) at such an old age. There was opposition to his presence at meetings, which again speaks of WAPIZ’s irreligious, non-orthodox showmanship and little else. It is thankfully resolved, at least until WAPIZ stirs some new, trifling issue into a matter of federal importance.
The shape of things to come can only portend more and more peevishness, splintering, ruptures, mud-slinging and recriminations and all attention that will be awaiting failure of a substantially non-substantial aspect of our customs, conceived as religious obligation but ridiculed by one and all. The Rs 25 crore vulture project is as assuredly doomed as WAPIZ has been since its inception!
RASHID G.KHOSRAVI