Multiplicity:Parsis don’t want a reformist in national minorities’ panel

The post of the Parsi-Zoroastrian nominee in the National Commission for Minorities (NCM) has fallen vacant but the community has not been able to reach a consensus on who should be their next representative.

Dadi Mistry, the last nominee retired a few months ago. The Parsi representative in the body is selected on the basis of recommendations by Anjumans (associations) and non-government organisations like PARZOR — a UNESCO supported group that promotes and preserves Parsi and Zoroastrian cultural heritage — and the World Organisation of Zoroastrians (WZO).

One of the names doing the rounds is that of Dinshaw Tamboly, a former trustee in the Bombay Parsi Punchayet (BPP), their largest representative body, and a founder trustee of the WZO. A few days ago Yazdi Desai, the chairperson of BPP, wrote to the national minister of minority affairs that he was withdrawing his letter that recommended Tamboly for the post. He said that many members of the community were unhappy about his endorsement of Tamboly who held ‘radical religious convictions’. Tamboly, it was feared, would use his new position to further the reformist agenda.

Tamboly is the member of a group that has been promoting reforms in religious and cultural laws. The reformists have called for equal religious rights to children of Parsi women who are married to non-Zoroastrians. The group has also advocated the use of alternate methods of funerals as the traditional system of sky burials — where dead bodies are laid out in stone towers to be disposed of by the sun and carrion birds — is not functioning well because of the near decimation of India’s vultures.

As a religious reformer, Tamboly’s biggest project has been the prayer hall at the Worli municipal crematorium. The prayer hall, which was built in 2015 with a donation from a Parsi charity, provides space to relatives of those who chose non-traditional funerals to hold after-death ceremonies. The plans for the facility were made after the BPP banned two priests from using the prayer halls at Doongerwadi – the forest cemetery on Malabar Hill – from conducting funeral prayers of those who were buried or cremated.

The prayer hall is unexpectedly busy. The magazine Parsiana reported that in 2016, of the 772 funerals in the community 97 (13%) were of those who chose to be cremated. This was a 48% rise from the previous year – the figure for those opting for cremation was 64 in 2015; the prayer hall opened only later during the year but crematoriums at Chandanwadi and Worli were used by the community. There was a marginal (2%) drop in the number of bodies that were taken to the Tower of Silence.

Jehangir Patel, editor of Parsiana, Zoroastrian community’s semi-monthly magazine, told this newspaper that the antagonism between the traditionalists and the liberals seems to have taken over the process of selecting their nominee in the national body.

Meanwhile, a group, which includes members of the Zoroastrian diaspora, has started an online petition to nominate senior Supreme Court advocate Firoze Andhyarujina as their delegate in the Commission.

Others are wondering why the issue has created such a storm, especially because the NCM has been dissolved. Shernaz Cama, director of UNESCO Parzor, said, “The saddest part is we do not know whether the National Commission for Minorities will be reconstituted,” said Cama. “Many state minorities commissions have shut down in the last few years. Dadi Mistry was the last member in the national commission to retire.”

It is not just the national minorities’ body that are in disarray. Janet D’Souza, who was the vice-chairman of the Maharashtra State Minorities Commission, said that the body was dissolved in January 2015 after the new government was elected. “The members of the national commission completed their term, but we were not even allowed to finish our five-year term. They have reconstituted the body (state commission) but have not nominated its members (last body had ten nominees). There is only a chairman,” said D’Souza.