Reply to Sunday Mid-day: OPEN YOUR EYES

By Pashmina Mahyar Contractor


To:

The Sunday Mid-day Newspaper


Kimi Dangor,
Group Editorial Director "Bachi Karkaria" E-mail: bachi@mid-day.com
Chief Editor "Aakar Patel" E-mail: aakar@mid-day.com
Director - Operations "Arindam Mitra" E-mail: arindam@mid-day.com
Reporters E-mail: manoj@mid-day.com, mailbag@mid-day.com


CC: TraditionalZarathushtris@yahoogroups.com, Jame Jamshed; Bombay Parsi Punchayet

With reference to the Article "Ire in The Temple"....yes there is Ire...and ire among the faithful for what I believe is a callous attitude of your newspaper towards our community's feelings and sentiments. Would your paper touch upon such a delicate issue to do with any other community Sir ? I think we all know the answer. It is a resounding NO....

And to top it off, you have many facts entirely wrong in your article ( bad journalism ). The plain and simple reason for that is that it seems you relied too heavily on "famous" Zoroastrians for the information you got. Well, being famous does not mean that they are an authority on religion. Just as to get some medical problem solved, you would not go to a Lawyer....you would visist a Doctor and vice versa.....similarly to get authentic religious information on Parsis and Zoroastrianism, you should have apprached a scholar of Zarathushtrian Studies or a scholar Priest.

Anyway Sir, the long and short of it is that Zarathushtrian doctrine is so pure in its origin and so scientific in its every aspect that anyone who cannot live up to it starts taking pot shots at it.

Needless to say that when a person fights to protect the physical boundaries of ones culture and nation, they are termed soldiers...but when we protect the spiritual boundaries of our faith we are termed Bigots, Racists and what not. You know that nothing could be further from the truth.

Parsis are the most peaceloving race ( for lack of a better word) in India or for that matter in the whole world. We have all heard of Hindu, Moslem riots...of Protestants killing Catholics, of Shias and Sunnis killing each other, but have you ever heard of Parsis killing one another or anyone else for that matter ? Why do you think Parsis are so cultured, well educated, why is the crime rate next to nil in Parsis ? Do you not think that this may be due to the fact that we are careful in choosing our marriage partners and because they come mostly from our own community ? There is a saying that people care more for the Pedigree of their Dogs than that of their children......well, we are a community which understands that careful breeding produces good and decent stock that contributes but only posistively to the whole world.

Yes, we are good at infighting becuase we have no one else to fight. ( touch wood ) We are so well loved and respected by all communities so we sometimes pass our precious time by infighting. But Sir, rest assured that every Parsi knows in thier heart of hearts what the truth is ....

Hence we can safely conclude that there is no Ire in the Temple....but only a wonderful, glorious and Blazing Fire in The Temple.

Just as we dont call our HIndu brethren dirty or backward because they consign their dead to the rivers in places like Varanasi, just as we dont call our Moslem brothers bigots because they fight for their beliefs, similarly we would appreciate it if you understood the simple fact that bigotry lies in the notion of attack....not in preservation !

It'is every communities age-old natural urge or instinct to preserve their way of life, their culture, their mores, and it is every community's privelege to believe in God's testament to them. You rightly believe in yours and we rightly believe in ours. If some people cannot deal with it because they have chosen to break that covenant...well its their choice in all fairness, but they cant bend the rules of the worlds first revealed faith to suit their current needs and beliefs.

I know for a fact that if I had ever married outside the religion, I would have quietly continued practicing my faith, wearing my Sudreh Kusti etc...but never would I have challenged the laws of the religion I claim to love.

Our Zarathushtrian faith is very magnanimous. Had it not been for this one strict law of Boonak Pasbani, our magnanimity would have been the death of us.

So let no Zarathushti or Non Zarathushti delude themself as to where we stand viz a viz our religious dictats. The Vada Dasturji's have passed a decree that was long overdue. Anyone who thinks that it is wrong , is wrong in themselves.....making believe that alls fair in love and war. NO SOMETHINGS ARE ALWAYS WRONG....WHETHER IN LOVE OR WHETHER IN WAR. These are the rules that make our world function better. If we got rid of all rules and laws one by one because they did not suit certain individulas, imagine the catastrophe we would have on hand! Thats the difference between us human beings and animals. We have our intellect and on account of this very intellect we will not be led by some meteorite modern day Hocus Pocus Gurus and self procalimed Ratus who have shunned the religion they were born into, who are trying to lead the faithful astray. The real ire sould be reserved for those Zarathushtrians who have turned on the religion they were born into.

And we Zarathushtrians are not the only ones who marry our own kind.....the Armenians, the Assyrians, the Jews.....to name a few. Get out there...meet people of different backgrounds and thats when your eyes open up to the fact how every community has this need for self preservation which is empahsised by marrying within one's own community.

I was talking the other day a very good Armenian friend of mine( bought up in Australia)....He being divorced is finding it hard to find a nice Armenian girl. I said why not then marry just any nice Australian girl, Asian girl or any one for that matter. He said "I could never do that. What messsage would that send out to my young daughter. And besides, it would break my father's heart". "

There you have it folks, and he, I assure you is not a Parsi but a hard core Aussie bloke.....

- Pashmina Mahyar Contractor


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