I’ve read with great interest your Editorial Viewpoint "Bring them back” (Parsiana August 21-September 6, 2024), about non- Parsi spouses not being accepted into the religion, especially when you write about "fire temples in India… that pride themselves on the number of people they exclude (such as all non Parsis, children of Parsi women married to non Parsis and in some cases the women themselves)… How many people would venture into a house of worship that bars entry to their closest family members? The conventional belief is that a family that prays together stays together. If that is the case, then fire temples are not only weakening an already fragile family structure but driving people away from traditional practices.”
My Parsi wife Perin and I, a non Parsi, were married in Bombay on March 12, 1966 and lived in Australia until Perin died in 2017. We visited her family in Bombay more than 30 times over those years. Whenever in Bombay, Perin faithfully visited the fire temple to say her prayers, while I lingered outside, unable and unwelcome to enter. In Australia, Perin continued with her daily Zoroastrian prayers while also being freely welcomed as a member of our local Anglican Church.
I have developed a great respect for the Zoroastrian religion but fail to understand why our children and I are not accepted into a Parsi fire temple.
Falling membership? Fifteen prospective members of the Zoroastrian religion rejected/refused: our three children, their three spouses, eight grandchildren and me!
BARRIE HARDING
Victoria, Australia
barrie@ieee.org
Justice Frank Beaman: irreligious exclusion
The editors reply:
The reason why non Parsis are barred is best stated by Bombay High Court Justice Frank Beaman when he wrote in 1908 Petit vs Jeejeebhoy (The Parsi Punchayet case): "The defendants expressing as we now know the orthodox Parsi views, are prepared to overlook immorality, bastardy — anything but alienage. They are ready to admit any and every Irani Zoroastrian about whose antecedents they cannot know anything. But they will not admit the purest, most blameless foreigner, of whose character and conduct they may have the completest assurance. They will admit all the illegitimate children of Parsi parents, begotten of prostitutes or kept mistresses, but they will not admit the noblest, more exemplary foreigner. Why? Because a foreigner is outside the caste, and caste is an institution into which you must be born. Of the modern Parsi they say emphatically nascitur non fit [(like a poet) a Parsi is born, not made]. This is not religion, it has nothing to do with religion: it is essentially distinctly irreligious; but it is pure, unadulterated oriental caste.”