SECTION: INTERNATIONAL; Pg. 10
LENGTH: 874 words
HEADLINE: Oldest Prophetic Religion Struggles For Survival
BYLINE: John Zubrzycki, Special to The Christian Science Monitor
DATELINE: BOMBAY
HIGHLIGHT:
India's Parsi community may have to change customs in order to grow.
BODY:
Deep in the heart of downtown Bombay, a century-old blue-granite
building stands like a silent sentinel to an ancient community in rapid
decline.
The dilapidated building houses the Parsi Lying-in Hospital, established
in 1893 as a maternity unit for the city's once-thriving Parsi community.
Built to accommodate 40 beds, its wards are almost empty today. "We get
only four or five patients a month," says Zarin Langdana, the doctor-in-charge.
"And most of them are not Parsis."
As India's population expands steadily, the country's Parsi community
faces extinction. Emigration, falling birthrates, the growing tendency
to marry outside the community, and an injunction against accepting converts
is threatening to erase Zoroastrianism, the world's oldest prophetic religion,
and its followers from the map of India. "We are an endangered species,
just like the tiger and the lion," says Jamshed Guzdar, chairman of the
Parsi Panchayat, or council.
A recent demographic study predicts that by 2021, when the population
of India will be 1.2 billion, the number of Parsis will drop from their
current level of 60,000 to just 21,000.
Bombay legacy
Parsis once dominated Bombay's commercial life. Almost every major
municipal building built in the 19th century had the bust or statue of
a Parsi benefactor perched on a pedestal outside. Parsis started the city's
first hospital, university, and municipal corporation. The city's best-known
landmark is probably the Taj hotel, built by Jamshetji Nusserwanji Tata
in 1903 after he was refused entry into the exclusive Green's Hotel because
he was a native.
Mr. Jamshetji's great-grandson Ratan controls India's largest industrial
conglomerate, the Tata group. "Now the Parsi population's outlook has changed,"
laments Mr. Guzdar. "There is no urge to step forward and create for themselves
high positions in business and industry. Now they find they cannot meet
the competition."
For most communities, the prospect of extinction would unite members,
but it has divided the Parsis. In Bombay, the world's Parsi "capital,"
the gulf between those who refuse to question orthodox Zoroastrianism and
those clamoring for reform is breaking apart a once close-knit community.
Perhaps the most divisive issue is whether the children of a Parsi
woman who marries outside the community can be considered Zoroastrian.
"It's a very emotional issue," says Jehangir Patel, editor of the monthly
magazine Parsiana. "As the community gets smaller, your chances of finding
a Parsi spouse to your liking are dwindling. More and more families are
being touched by this problem."
Questioning Zoroastrianism
With almost 1 in 4 women marrying outside the community and almost
as many not marrying at all, the mixed-marriage bias is being challenged.
"People are questioning the faith much more," says Smiti Crishna, vice
chairperson of the Association of Inter-married Zoroastrians. "The religion
has to undergo a change in order to protect and propagate the community."
A member of the wealthy Godrej family of Parsi industrialists, Ms.
Crishna broke the taboo on intermarriages when she wed a Christian businessman.
According to the orthodox keepers of the faith, her two daughters cannot
undergo a navjote, or baptism ceremony, or enter a Zoroastrian fire temple.
"Women like us are ostracized," Crishna says. "Why should people look down
on us when there is no injunction against intermarriage in our holy books?"
That's wrong, retorts Dastur Firoze Kotwal, one of the religion's eight
high priests, who leafs through a religious text in his south Bombay flat.
According to Dastur Kotwal, the Zoroastrian scriptures outlaw all intermarriages.
He also dismisses demands that the ban on conversions be lifted to swell
the community's numbers, a stand that has put him at loggerheads with the
normally conservative Parsi Panchayat. "Zarathustra never said you can't
convert. If you don't allow conversions, how does the community grow?"
asks Guzdar of the Parsi Panchayat.
Alarmed by the steady demographic decline of the Parsi population,
Guzdar persuaded the Panchayat to sponsor the third child of every Parsi
couple to encourage larger families. The Panchayat now looks after the
material and educational needs of 45 children. "I thought to myself, I
cannot let my community perish," Guzdar says. "I hope that by doing something
like this, the population will increase."
A successful businessman who established India's first air freight
business in the 1940s, Guzdar plans to set up a venture-capital fund to
encourage young Parsi entrepreneurs to start businesses in India rather
than moving abroad.
The disappearance of the Parsis would not just be a loss for Bombay.
This small but talented community has produced composers like Zubin Mehta,
novelists like Rohiton Mistry, and the late rock star Freddie Mercury,
the former front man of the band Queen. "Last year when I was asked to
become the chairman of the National Foundation for Social Affairs and Family
Planning, I was told, 'Do all you can to control India's population but
make sure the Parsis increase in number,' " chuckles Guzdar.
GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: 1) YOUNG ZOROASTRIANS: Zoroastrian priests give Parsi children sacred lamb's wool belts during a navjote, or baptism ceremony, in Bombay. The city's Parsi population is shrinking due to emigration, falling birthrates, and a religious ban against accepting converts. 2,3) SACRED RITES: A Parsi child receives a Sudreh, a fine cloth worn during a Zoroastrian navjote ceremony. The ritual marks the time when a child becomes directly answerable to the Zoroastrian deity, Ahura Mazda. 4) Zoroastrian activist Smiti Crishna says, 'The religion has to undergo a change in order to protect and propagate the community.' 5) Dastur Firoze Kotwal, a Parsi high priest, dismisses demands that a ban on conversions be lifted to swell the community's numbers. PHOTOS BY MONIQUE STAUDER/SPECIAL TO THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE: May 12, 1998