The betrayers of Zoroastrianism

From: Geve Narielwalla
Date: Tue, Jun 21, 2011 at 7:39 PM

I have been thinking of this for several days, and I keep getting the feeling I should put my thoughts down in writing. 

These BPP elections, presently and in the future, seems to be also a well camouflaged fight between those who are traditional and very religious or who consider all our heritage and traditions precious and worthy of preservation on one hand, and those who have developed disrespect and mockery for our heritage and religion, well hidden in a front image that these things are of no interest or value, a waste of time.  

Those who are bent on getting inter marrieds' spouses and their children into the Zoroastrian fold, and also do away with the system of dokhmenishi, are not just the enemies, the worst hidden enemies are those who display very disrespectful, indifferent and confrontational  attitude to all  Zoroastrian religious practices and rituals/tarikats. These are ready market for the liberals

Not only do they avoid these rituals and tarikats, but they also criticize and discourage and mock those who wish to practise these.

This is the acid test of who these people are. They look down and criticize everything, the nirang used before the Navjote, to the ceremonies for the dead, the difficult and strenuous rituals to become a navar martab, total disregard of holy places, even the house holy objects/shrine can be approached close by a women in menses........everything is poohpoofed.

These are the real enemies of the religion, not just our Zoroastrian religion, but any religion, because these are probably atheists need not be posing as liberals, but more as indifferent individuals, that religion is very oddly out of place in this age, without being these so called liberals. 

Use every logic one can use for deliberating this very curious phenomena in our community:

If an individual does not find that rituals and tarikats are of any good use, spiritual or otherwise of benefit, at least respect and display  pride and magnanimity towards the religious institutions, above all respect the wishes of those who want to be traditional or orthodox. Why run down all those who do not suit their views? 

A decent human being would disagree, but not climb on those and try bully and scoff and ridicule those who differ from their views. 

This senseless and arrogant push to mock and look down on our Zoroastrian institutions, rituals, ceremonies is in fact that these individuals wish to destroy all these millennia old heritage of Zoroastrianism. They have proudly discarded wearing the sudreh-kusti, gloatingly sharing their secret with their cronies of like mind. 

These will scoff at the current writing s in various media etc that Zoroastrianism was the world's first monotheistic religion, or that Iran was once a great power .......these are "westernised" or "Bollywood films, and/or only Indian history only is great" types, to the point where anything relating to their own ancestral heritage is an embarrassment!    

Then there is, curiously, this further arrogant attitude from this group.......they have no fellow feeling for their Zoroastrian community members, they will only rub shoulders with those who are 'high society' within the community, no desire to help the poor in the community or run charities on a genuine basis of helping the real needy, accommodation allotted to the wrong people,  and more showcase charities to non-Parsis, to get a mileage in the country.

They could also be counted amongst the middle middle class, one can easily spot them, because they will avoid any talk on religious or community issues, or when pressed to give opinion, display total indifference, or turn on you and say they are not interested. 

If you try and count the number of these who are already stabbing and betraying Zoroastrianism, may be find they are pretty big numbers.

Geve Narielwalla