The Parsi community in India is on the verge of extinction.
The 2004 census revealed that there are only 69,000 Parsis in India. In a small, tightly-knit Parsi community, marrying outside is frowned upon, and aggressively downcast. However, this is just an old-fashioned concept, not pertinent in the 21st century.?
In Mumbai, which has the maximum Parsi population in India, almost 35% population is married outside of the community.? "There are only 60,000 of us in the community. If everyone had to marry a Parsi, two-thirds of the women wouldn't be married," says Shiraz Patodia, lawyer by profession and the face of a battle for a woman¡¯s right to religion.
While most Parsis are ousted from the community if they marry outside their religion and are barred from entering Fire Temples, a group of over 100 ¡®reformist¡¯ Parsis have inaugurated a Fire Temple in Pune. What sets this temple apart is that it gives recognition to the children of Parsis marrying outside the community as well as allows entry to non-Parsis.
The shrine made on a budget of Rs 2.2 crore is an attempt to end the discrimination meted out to non-Parsi spouses in the community.
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Noted lawyer Fali Nariman, former advocate general Darius Khambata and industrialist Anu Aga are some of the donors of the temple under the banner of 'Association for Revival of Zoroastrianism'.
The inauguration witnessed a record number of Parsis and non-Parsi spouses and children. Some also flew from abroad.
"We have a gender discrimination issue due to which if any Parsi woman gets married to a non-Parsi, she is not allowed to enter the sacred fire temple. Even their children are not allowed inside the temple," Vispy Wadia, a reformist told PTI.
"When a Parsi man marries outside the community, his children are allowed inside the fire temple, but the spouse is not allowed. When they visit a fire temple, the non-Parsi spouse is made to wait outside the temple," he says.
Vispa Wadia was alarmed by the 2004 census and that¡¯s when he decided to do something that would help bring numbers up, in a strong way.
?Wadia and his brother got busy collecting funds to build a fire temple. "To end this gender discrimination, we thought we should have our own place of worship, where there is no gender discrimination or any other constraints," he says.
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Wadia thought that there¡¯s an urgent need to have a separate place of worship, where anybody can come in with their heads held high, without any fear, prejudice and discrimination. He firmly believes that orthodox rules are dividing the Parsi families.
Goolrukh Gupta and her lawyer sister Shiraz Patodia waged a war against orthodoxy in Zoroastrianism. Ranged against them was the Anjuman Parsi trust of Valsad, Gujarat, which insisted that a woman who married out was no longer welcome in the sacred precincts of the community.
The sisters went to the Supreme Court and that¡¯s when the trust backed off. The duo won the right to enter the fire temple and attend funerary ceremonies. In the process, Parsi women, and women everywhere, have got some acknowledgement of their rights.
?Both the women moved married non-Parsi men under the Special Marriage Act, decades ago. Their Marwari husbands, children and families are comfortably blended together. The women carry on the habits of their family and this makes their family more of a Parsi than a Hindu.
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The Special Marriage Act, 1954, is meant precisely for both spouses to retain their identities and not have to convert, points out Patodia.
"We are born to Zoroastrian parents. Our DNA doesn't change because we got married," she says.
The Supreme Court maintained this view while hearing the petition, and eventually passed an order favouring the women on December 14. Their case was bolstered by affidavits from Parsi trusts across the country ¡ª Delhi, Mumbai, Kanpur, Kolkata ¡ª all of which allow women access.
The Parsi Zoroastrian population in India is diminishing fast and will come down sooner in the years to come because 35% of Parsis are in the age group of 60 and above. In about 20 years, the Parsi population will be somewhere around 20,000, if the same customs continue.
The new fire temple is not just an effort but a ray of hope that would revive the Parsi Zoroastrian population in India.