The protection of the Zoroastrian religion and Parsiism is the business of all who constitute the Parsi community as well as the Zoroastrians living abroad. It is sad to see that a high profile traditional scholar assisted by his chosen drumbeaters, feel that they are the sole custodians of the community’s interest.
What happened at the Ahmedabad meeting of the executive council of the Federation of Parsi Zoroastrian Anjumans of India ("World body stymied,” Parsiana, January 2005) calls for deep introspection. The unruly pre-planned behavior of orthodox delegates strategized by their leader cum scholar should be condemned.
Hurling abuses and making personal attacks, accusing Parsiana (of fudging figures) these rowdy elements had demonstrated that they have a perverted sense of inculcating lumpenization within the Parsi community.
When a respected delegate inadvertently uttered Inshallah (God willing), mob mentality was at its best. The poor delegate was humiliated and threatened with being stripped and burnt alive.
Such crude primitive dogmatism and obstructionist attitude will only succeed in sowing the needs of Talibanization in the community. The liberals, moderates, rationalists and Parsiana should carry out a crusade against such unworthy elements.
Prof F. D. VAKIL
Secunderabad
I read a beautiful line the other day, it says: ‘Two of the greatest gifts we can give our children are roots and wings.’— Hodding Carter.
And as a parent and a Parsi at that, I slightly see it in the context of the present controversy that is rearing amidst us.
To go back to the two lines above, to me being a Parsi is my roots, and this I would like my children who have flown away for better pastures, to always remember. Our children should see to it that wherever they go they must in turn instill the word Parsi in their subsequent generations so that there is never again an identity crisis.
We follow the Zoroastrian dharam (religion) but we are Parsis; therein lies our culture, religion and our soul!
Probably had we not left Iran and had remained there, then to be called Zoroastrians would be fine, but we left Iran to escape the conversion to Islam, and the Parsi identity was accepted thereafter. Now, after so many thousands of years we are debating over whether we should be called Parsis or Zoroastrians. I ask, why? I feel jeopardized, insecure and suspicious. Well, like it or not we were the chosen few to safeguard Zoroastrianism, and this we have done and are doing even now, so why this world body minus my identity?
Could it not be possible to call it the ‘World Body of Parsi/Irani Zoroastrians’ instead of the ‘World Body of Zoroastrians?’
Here is why people like me feel cheated by the very people to whom we have given our trust!
I call myself a Parsi Zoroastrian. I also believe that we are diminishing in numbers. So if the world body is allowed to be formed without the word Parsi then one thing is certain, that over a period of time, sooner if not later, the word Parsi will be wiped off the face of the earth. Is this what we want? If it’s the will of Ahura Mazda we will once again multiply and increase as Parsis, if not then at least the forthcoming generations would know that Parsis were the original Zoroastrians because the world body would be "World Body of Parsi/Irani Zoroastrians.”
If it’s said that the western world is far more knowledgeable in our religion, then is it not a duty of every Parsi whether in India and specially in the West to instill the word Parsi in their children? Is this too much to ask? Doing this would automatically sow the seeds of Parsipanu in the whole world. We can still bring about all the changes that need to be addressed in our religion and culture, to be up with the times, under the canopy of Parsis. Simple!
Think about it Parsis and just don’t give in to people who are trying to steer the community towards the World Zoroastrian Organisation.
This is a topic that needs a very clear consensus and only then a decision!
RODA D. HAKIM
Baroda
The Editors reply
The appellation Parsis was used initially by other communities to refer to the emigrants who came from Iran. Zoroastrians began to refer to themselves as Parsis only around 200 to 300 years ago as Justice Frank C. O. Beaman states in his judgment in the famous Parsi Punchayet Case (Petit vs Jeejeebhoy, 1906) while referring to the terminology used in the early Zoroastrian trust documents. The judge noted:
"Not (in) one do we find the word Parsi. In their own solemn religious utterances, the Indian Zoroastrians had not, even so late as this, thought of designating themselves, or their religious communion, by the popular caste appellation of Parsi. Such a term in such a connection would probably have had no meaning for them. On these expressions the plaintiffs have argued that the various religious endowments were clearly intended by the founders for all genuine professors of the holy Zoroastrian or Mazdiasni faith. And there are among these extracts some that certainly support that contention. Here it is said: "We know that the holy Mazdiasni religion commended the making of converts: we have before us contemporaneous proof of what the founders of these trusts really meant. They say that the trusts are created, not for born ‘Parsis’ — a word with which they were not familiar — but for all members of the holy Zoroastrian church. And since that church enjoined conversion, they must have contemplated the extension of those benefactions to converts, who, properly admitted, would, of course, profess the holy Mazdiasni religion.” That is a reinforced form of the original syllogism, which I own carried the very greatest weight with me throughout the entire case. Still it will not do to be carried away by one or two isolated phrases. We must first appreciate the collective effect of the whole, if we are to gain anything like a correct insight into the intentions of those who used them. And doing this, I think that it may fairly be that the cumulative effect of all these expressions is rather in favor of the view, that the prevalent idea at that time was to provide the community with suitable places of public worship and burial and to place those institutions under the control of the communal anjuman.
This term ‘anjuman,’ with its allied notion of ‘panchayet,’ deserves attention. In the first part of his fine judgment, my learned brother has traced these institutions from their birth in India to the period where one of them, at any rate, vanished. Both, however, suggest an assimilation of the prevalent Indian sentiments relating to caste and the management of caste and communal affairs. The anjuman is the tribal or caste body politic. Amongst Mussulmans, whence the term must come, there is, of course, strictly speaking no caste, in the Hindu sense, and the anjuman came to be identified with representative committees of responsible elders and so forth. But it implies control by the whole body, when used as it is used in these inscriptions and documents. And in western India, even Mussulman ideas have been deeply tinged by infusion from the customs and sentiments of the Hindu population. It is not therefore in the least surprising that the Zoroastrian anjuman should have given birth to the Parsi Punchayet, the latter of course being essentially a caste institution and working the development of the caste sentiment. The question is how far — at the date of those foundations, say, 150 years ago — the caste had superseded the early religious sentiment? We are not now dealing with an antiquity so remote that all events and personages in it are obscured by the haze of vast lapses of time. The community of 1750 could not have been so very different from the community of today. The sentiments which animated it are probably very much the same — substantially as the sentiments which animate the Parsi community today. If anything, we should ordinarily expect the latter to be more, not less, liberal. Of course, it is not safe to generalize too rashly on such points. All sorts of conflicting interests may have come to the surface: changed conditions may have given birth to changed notions of policy. But if I am right in believing that, long before the foundation of these trusts, the Parsis had virtually become a caste, saturated with caste prejudices, then it is certain that natures reared in that atmosphere do not change rapidly. It takes long periods, and the continuous pressure of an altered environment, to eradicate the bigotry of caste. Two hundred years ago, the Indian Zoroastrians, though by no means as advanced in culture and wealth and status generally as they are today, were still a people who might well be proud of themselves. They still retained, in all its purity, the religion of their fathers; they commanded universal respect as honest, law-abiding citizens; above all they prided themselves on the "theoretical,” at any rate, purity of their morals and the uniform thrift of their people. It has often been said that in no other eastern community are so few beggars and prostitutes to be found. In a word, they had by that time very good reason to respect themselves as a community, to be jealous of themselves as a caste, and to dislike intensely the idea of contamination by too close social intercourse with the inferior classes of the Hindu population. Such I take to be an indisputably true picture of the Indian Zoroastrian community about 150 years ago. And the question is, whether leading men of that community, men of conspicuous piety, would have intended to open the doors of their churches and burial towers to any and everyone who might choose, for whatever motives, to profess the holy Zoroastrian faith, and had money enough to get some venal priest to formally admit him into the fold. It is not as though the admission of converts could have been effectively regulated by the sense of the community.
It has become abundantly plain in the course of this enquiry that the priesthood have practically a free hand. And while, as a body, they probably do not compare unfavorably with the priesthood of any other great religion, it cannot be denied that there are many among them who would not hesitate to sell their priestly functions to any good bidder. My learned brother has dwelt forcibly on this aspect of the case. And no one — while we have little or nothing to do with it as merely revealing a possible consequence of deciding in favor of converts — can deny it has a direct bearing upon the central question, what was in the minds of the founders of these trusts? Would they have been blind to such a vital consideration? Would they, proud of their people, religious community, caste, call it what you will, have left it at the mercy of any unprincipled priest? How strongly the caste sentiment has entered into — how completely it has obliterated — the original religious sentiment in this important matter, has been made plain to me over and over again in the course of this suit. We learn with what fierce jealousy the Indian Zoroastrians observe the complicated rights of burial, or rather exposure of the dead on their Towers. We hear of priestly, and for that matter family restrictions, which are virtually universal in many of the smaller details of life, as well as at the celebration of its great events. And all these are clearly the growth of a highly developed caste spirit. Looked at from this and not from the purely religious point of view, it would be sacrilege — the worst kind of profanation — to allow any juddin — that is, a person of another religion, literally but really born outside the caste — to participate in the most preliminary of the death ceremonies. It would undoubtedly horrify the orthodox Indian Zoroastrian to allow such a one in his fire-temples. It would be idle to tell him that he had been formally admitted to the holy religion. That might appeal to his reason, but his caste instincts would at once rebel. To test this we have only to suppose that, instead of a well-bred cultured European lady, the proposed convert had been a Bhungi. No amount of religious conviction, no sincerity of belief, however profound, could, in the eyes of the Indian Zoroastrians — brought up as they have been for generations under the influence of caste prohibitions — purge such a one of the inherited taint of his foul caste, or make him an acceptable fellow worshipper in their temples. Of that no one who has heard the evidence in this case, who is acquainted with the sentiments of even the most liberal and advanced sections of Oriental society, could entertain the smallest doubt.
It seems to be reserved for the Christian missionary alone, in this country, to invite into his communion the lowliest, the most despised, the very scum of eastern humanity. But, then, the christian church has never come under the dominance of caste. It developed in the West, among free peoples, and it has remained — in its proselytizing enterprises, at any rate — truly Catholic. The same cannot, of course, be said for Zoroastrianism. And the Bombay Zoroastrians are the last people in the world, it would appear, to put forward any such claim. The furthest that the most liberal of them seem disposed to go is that, if undesirable converts of that kind must be made, they must be segregated, for purposes of worship and burial, from those who are born into the faith. In other words, while conversion, as a religious dogma, is not denied, it, as every other social and religious observance, must fall under the rigid regulation of caste. It may, of course, be said that these are the sentiments of today, while we are to ascertain the sentiments of 150 years ago.
In the interval, the community has expanded, has flourished, grown wealthy, and politically influential. There are many reasons today, which did not exist a century and a half ago, why the Zoroastrians of Bombay should wish to keep themselves to themselves and sternly repel any external invasion. To some extent, that is of course true. The learned gentlemen who gave evidence for the plaintiffs afforded some examples of the lengths to which partially informed opinion will go in the direction of social precaution. We were told, amongst other things, that one reason why the conversion of aliens to the holy Zoroastrian faith was no longer permissible in Bombay, if it ever had been, was that unscrupulous European women would pretend to be converts, in order to marry eligible Parsi young men, and so there would not be enough husbands to go round. The Parsi maidens we were told would be deserted; and one high priest even assured us that, owing to this lamentable tendency, he knew of a Parsi virgin of 40 still looking out in vain for a husband. This is the merest absurdity. No doubt, the point of view shifts with circumstances. What might have been thought desirable in a struggling and not too influential community, might be thought very undesirable after that community had progressed and stepped into the first rank. And I am quite sure that the good men who founded these trusts, even if they had, when the matter was fully laid before them, declared that they did not wish them to be available to converts, would never have had recourse to such unsubstantial reasons in support of their decision.
Let us now suppose that these men when they were founding the trusts had had the question fairly and squarely put to them: "Do you intend that these Towers of Silence and these fire-temples shall be used by converts as well as members of the holy Zoroastrian community?” What would their answer have been? We have abundant evidence to show with what disapproval the better class — the class from whom these founders come — regarded the lax morals of the mofussil Parsis. It was not only because that conduct was irreligious — though that, too, doubtless weighed with them — but because it was lowering to the status of the community. Keeping Dubri mistresses and having Dubri children, was not only shocking to the correct Zoroastrian, as a marital offence — an offence, too, against his religion — but because the Dubri woman belonged to a very low caste. It may be very well doubted whether at that time the same disapproval would have been extended to intermarriages — real marriages — with men of equal or superior rank. The early history of the Parsis, or rather the Zoroastrians, shows conclusively that such marriages often did occur, and that no one dreamed of stigmatizing them as religious sins. But that was before the community had become a caste, while still the Zoroastrians were a nation; and the alliances were with people of their own or higher rank. At the time, however, that these trusts were founded, it was hardly likely that any Parsi would intermarry with superior races, while there was a constant and growing danger that he might intermarry with inferior castes. Probably the founders of these trusts would at first have replied, as all the priests and doctors have consistently replied: "By all means let converts use our endowments, if they are converts who will be a credit to us.” But that would not have done. It would have had to be explained to them that they must admit all or none. And they would instantly have realized that for one Akbar who was ever likely to become a convert, there were a hundred Dubras or Bhungis. And with that terrible possibility before their eyes, no one can doubt — I am sure that I do not doubt — that they would unhesitatingly have replied: "No converts, then, on any terms.”
•••
Khojeste Mistree has a bone-of-contention with the membership make-up of the world body ("World body stymied,” Parsiana, January 2005), since it allows all Zoroastrians, including what Mistree refers to as pseudo Zoroastrians or neo-Zoroastrians. He further insults these pseudo or neo-Zoroastrians, as "altoo-faltoo (worthless).” Mistree also believes that "there is no proportional representation” given to the Parsis of India, and as a result, "15 to 20 years from now, you (the Parsi community in India), and I (Khojeste Mistree), will be marginalized and these converts will have a say.” Mistree may be correct in predicting the marginalization of Parsis. But that is happening today for entirely different reasons.
Joining or not joining the world body is of minimal consequence to the average Bombay Bawaji. Mistree, however, by alarming the community in rallying the support against the world body can make the Parsis of India more isolationist. It can also be detrimental to the cause of good community stewardship and global vision.
It seems that Mistree has suddenly taken the formation of the world body very seriously and personally. Mistree believes that "the Bombay Parsi Punchayet and Federation of Parsi Zoroastrian Anjumans of India’s badmaashi (roguishness)” in keeping the formation of the WZO-I (World Zoroastrian Organisations of Individuals), and WZO-F (World Zoroastrian Organisation of Federations), "chhupi chhupi (secret)” from the community, involves "hollow platitudes and secret communiques.”
I believe that in Mistree’s mind it is an insult to some 60,000+ defenders of the faith — the Parsis of India, if FPZAI goes ahead in becoming a member of the world body. Mistree believes that the world body charter is not giving due respect, prominence, gratitude, and unquestionable authority to the Bombay Parsis. At one of the Federation meetings Mistree said that "the world should come and do sahebji, salaam to us and not us do sahebji, salaam to them” ("Protecting Parsi trusts,” Parsiana, October 2004). Mistree has warned that the "tentacles” of the world body would be "more intrusive to the Parsi way of life” and therefore can be disruptive and also disrespectful.
Mistree’s distress and frustration is in witnessing the widespread practice of Zoroastrianism by peoples from all around the world. The Zoroastrian faith and its universal principles are openly, willingly and happily embraced and practiced by more and more people, without coming to India (or Iran) and asking for permission and approval. Mistree also realizes that over the period of the past 30 years, the Zoroastrian population living outside India is highly educated, sophisticated (especially in religious matters), open to different views and pragmatic. They question authority and hierarchy, and are die-hard practitioners of freedom in thinking, speaking and acting. They have no community finances or housing and the places of worship they have built need no protection from intruders. The only community asset they have is their good religion, as propagated by Zarathushtra and they willingly share it with all the peoples of the world.
Mistree’s so-called "activism” over the past 30 years in India has failed the Parsi community, and has direct connections with the dwindling numbers in the community. To those who ask what the connection is, the answer is simple. Stubbornness, prejudices, discrimination, doctrinal misinterpretations, demanding blind obedience, self-importance, rigidity, divisiveness, ignorance, deception and rejection of facts and realities.
Mistree should make an attempt to understand that the future of the world Zoroastrian community lies in world-wide Zoroastrian fellowship, establishment of international Zarathushti identity and in servicing the global presence, in large numbers, of its followers. A world body, if formed to truly represent all Zarathushtis, including the beloved Parsis of India, will be a body that will rightfully take its long-awaited place, among the other great and recognized religious bodies of the world.
SHAHROKH MEHTA
Syracuse, New York
The report on the Federation meeting ("World body stymied,” Parsiana, January 2004) left me disappointed, if not disgusted. We claim to be the most educated community in India, and yet behave in a fashion that would do a street mob proud! Do we not have the culture, civility and the courtesy to listen to another point of view? You don’t have to agree, you don’t have to accept but you do not have any right to be virulent and threatening either. That is inexcusable. Maybe our friends from Surat have had private tutions in vile invectives from Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi!
I am sure the same individuals would pontificate how intolerant the Taliban and Muslim fanatics are. They need to look in a mirror, and reflect on their own conduct.
Regarding the " Memorandum of Disagreement,” I admit... I do need to buy a more detailed map of India! I have not heard of some of the places where the punchayets and anjumans are located! But I shall certainly look them up!
It would be nice if the Parsi population of all these places is mentioned, and the strength of the anjuman/punchayet membership.
How come Bangalore and Calcutta seem conspicious by their absence at the Federation meeting? There seems to be no mention of them. These two cities have fair sized Parsi populations. Is there more politics involved?
Commander TEHMASP MOGUL (Retd)
Bangalore
The Editors reply
Bangalore is not a member of the Indian Federation as the orthodox lobby there views the all India body as liberal. The delegates from Calcutta do attend but not all meetings probably on account of the distance involved.
•••
Zoroastrianism is the first monotheist religion founded 3,000 years ago by Prophet Zoroaster in Iran. Twice in the past, Zoroastrians almost vanished, like the Phoenicians. Alexander the Great in 330 BC destroyed their empire and burnt their library. For the second time, Arabs, soon after the demise of Prophet Muhammad in 632, defeated the Zoroastrian empire. When Arabs converted Zoroastrians into Muslims, a few escaped to western India.
Fifty years ago, the Parsis of Bombay numbered about 100,000. Thereafter their population fell every year, so in 2005 they number 40,000. During the last 30 years many Parsis have migrated from Bombay. It is almost certain that in spite of Herculean efforts to preserve their religion and culture, their third generation will be lost in the melting pots of those countries. The Parsis of Bombay will remain as the main stock of practicing Zoroastrians in the world. Will Parsis of Bombay survive or end as the Phoenicians?
Let us therefore declare a truce on disputes, during which we can concentrate on our real problems, reversing the negative growth and stay firmly saddled on the Zoroastrian steed. Instead of wasting our precious time on who was right and who was wrong during the recent Federation of Parsi Zoroastrian Anjumans of India (FPZAI) meeting at Ahmedabad ("World body stymied,” Parsiana, January 2005), etc, let us be faithful to our ancestors who voluntarily went into exile in unknown lands, but who by their own labor rose up like the Phoenix, bringing unparalleled glory to their adopted motherland. With enlightened leadership, our noble faith has weathered the heaviest of storms and survived. So let us have a dream that we shall overcome, with heart within and Ahura Mazda overhead.
NOSHIR M. LAM