The reports of those who helped others during the current pandemic are heartening. Despite the despair all around, the economic setback and the threat to life so many face, the New Year is a good time to honor and recall the numerous courageous, caring and compassionate Parsis and Zoroastrians, as well as the institutions that selflessly serve others. Both have provided succor, companionship and comfort to the economically disadvantaged, the infirm, elderly, vulnerable and lonely, disregarding the risks of exposure to the lethal virus. They embody the mantra of good thoughts, words and deeds. They discarded convention, let their hearts rule their heads and shaped the course of events. Community history will record their ever pioneering deeds, just as the Zoroastrian tradition of courage, charity and compassion has been chronicled for posterity.
People often yearn for the return of a savior (saoshyant), or some moneyed individual or trust to usher in salvation, or as Prime Minister Narendra Modi phrased it, achhé din (good times). But why long for something which we already have: numerous changemakers who bring about the betterment of the less fortunate.
Before the lockdown, the National Gallery of Modern Art displayed a retrospective of abstractionist Mehli Gobhai’s paintings and sketches; this April Harvard University Press released a book on Dr Dadabhai Naoroji by scholar Dr Dinyar Patel; medical historian Dr Shubhada Pandya submitted to Parsiana an article on Dr Nusserwanji Surveyor who helped create a vaccine to combat the Bombay plague of 1896; and the Poonawallas of the Serum Institute of India have invested their own family wealth to mass produce a vaccine to counter the Covid-19 virus in collaboration with Oxford University, AstraZeneca and others.
Another example is the formation of the Committee for Electoral Rights (CER) 40 years ago. Around 1978 a meeting of a few community members was held in the Bombay House office of Shiavax Vakil to discuss the archaic Bombay Parsi Punchayet (BPP) election scheme. A legal advisor to the house of Tatas and a former trustee of the BPP, Vakil had stunned the community with his exposé on the horrendous conditions prevailing within the Towers of Silence in Bombay. Vakil’s disclosure caused an outburst from traditionalists. They threatened a morcha to the BPP office on Dr Dadabhai Naoroji Road. Police were summoned to ensure no disturbances were caused prior to or during the BPP board’s fortnightly Tuesday meetings (now held weekly). Vakil decided to step down on condition that the board backed the candidature of his friend, industrialist Jamshed Guzder.
Knowing Vakil’s clout, the then BPP chairman B. K. Boman-Behram had every reason to view the meeting in Vakil’s office as a threat to his hegemony. To thwart any such step, Boman-Behram formed a committee to study the electoral scheme and present suggestions. Among those selected to serve on the new committee was Indian Administrative Service officer Jamsheed Kanga who soon realized the committee was an eyewash without a mandate to initiate change. Kanga, along with solicitor Dadi Engineer who also had been inducted onto the committee, decided to initiate change from without. With the support of industrialist Noshir Sidhwa and others they formed a ginger group named CER.
Kanga wanted to observe the existing protocol while undertaking an ambitious voter enrolment drive.But others cautioned him that if he did so it would never materialize. He relented and volunteers set about registering thousands of Parsis, most of whom had never voted in a BPP election. When it was decided to create awareness by holding a public meeting at the Sir Cowasjee Jehangir Hall, some fretted about being able to fill the ground plus two storey auditorium. Sidhwa then used his considerable networking skills to propagate the event. The Hall overflowed with attendees.
The trustees barred Parsi women married to non-Parsis the right to register as voters. The CER sadly shied away from taking up the women’s cause, believing the move would alienate the more traditionally minded electorate. But that compulsion did not deter solicitors Rustam and Jangoo Gagrat from pursuing the case in the Bombay High Court where, after an initial setback, the women won the right to vote.
A traditionalist body, the Committee of United Zoroastrians was formed to counter the CER. But they found limited support and the CER, which had initiated the voter registration drive, swept the 1981 elections to the Anjuman Committee, the body that elected trustees to the BPP.
Thus a major socio-political movement was successfully launched with meager resources, minimal expenditure and without office premises or staff. Meetings were held in peoples’ offices and homes, volunteers did the work; everyone lent their expertise gratis. What motivated and held the group together was the pursuit of an ideal, of a more just and equitable representation of the community on its premier institution. We see the same scenario playing out in the "Me Too" movement in the West against sexual harassment and the "Black Lives Matter" agitation against police brutality in the USA and other countries. In India, where marital rape is legal and women are generally treated as second class citizens, the movement against sexual harassment is limited to a small section of society; and as for police excesses, often their wantonness is not only condoned but applauded.
As far as the Parsis are concerned, no other community movement in the past 50 years or more has occurred on the scale of the erstwhile CER. The crusade served its purpose and then, as often happens, the idealism dissipated. But the CER continued a long tradition of the able assisting those who aspired to a better life. The community’s response to the Covid pandemic is also part of that tradition, assisting others in times of need. Our numbers are smaller, our resources scarcer, but the will to nurture others remains steadfast.