The announcement of an upcoming Navjote ceremony in Nagpur, which will initiate a young boy into the Zoroastrian faith despite having a Hindu father and a Parsi mother, has sparked a heated debate within the Parsi community. Scheduled for November 14, the ceremony has been met with resistance from the Bombay Parsi Punchayet (BPP), the apex body representing the Parsi-Zoroastrian community, which has declared that the child will not be recognised as a Parsi.

Navjote ceremonies are usually done at the age of seven, after which the child bears the vestments and sacred thread that a practising Zoroastrian wears. The family, Rahul Budhraja and the mother, Dina, have sent out invites for the ceremony. The family declined to talk about the ceremony. “It is a private, family ceremony,” said a family member. “It is not a religious conversion.”

Nagpur has a small Parsi community of around 500, and the local association of the community in the city has said that they will not accept the Navjote. BPP trustee Adil Malia, who is reported to have spoken to the Nagpur Parsi Panchayet on the issue, said, “This is an agreed stance for all cases, so the question of acknowledging the Navjote does not arise. They (the Nagpur association) will not allow it.”

Debate on social media, community newspaper

In Mumbai, where a majority of India’s Parsis live, the news about the Navjote has spurred debate on social media and community newspapers. One message doing the rounds in the community said, “A child named …, son of a Parsi mother and Hindu father, having his Navjote performed in Nagpur…Kalyug! Is there no way to check this farce?”

Another person suggested filing a suit against the priest conducting the ceremony and against the parents. One comment said that a complaint could be filed against the priest for converting a Hindu child to Zoroastrianism. “The BPP, in conjunction with the Athornan mandal (local association) ought to pass a resolution to defrock the rogue priests involved in performing this sham Navjote, and debar them for life from pursuing their ecclesiastical duties. This kind of strict penal action would act as a deterrent to the other greedy and indifferent clergy, too, who, for the lure of the lucre, indulge in acts of ‘deen dushmani’ and blaspheme the lofty Zoroastrian faith,” said one particularly angry member of the community.

Priests at city’s only fire temple will not perform ceremony

The Nagpur association is reported to have said that the priests at the city’s only fire temple will not perform the ceremony, and it is unclear whether the family will get reform-minded priests from outside the city to conduct it.

The Navjote has revived an old debate about who can be called a Parsi. Malia said that Supreme Court orders have established that a child with a non-Zoroastrian father cannot be initiated into the ceremony, whether at religious premises or at home. He said that the parents of the child have created a controversy. “Initially, the ceremony was not talked about, but they (the parents) decided to publicize the event, as if teasing the community,” said Malia. “Even if they do the initiation, the child will not be allowed into the fire temple. It is unfortunate that the child has to go through this,” added Malia.

For the religious orthodox, Parsi ethnicity and religion are intertwined. “Since we follow patrilineal rules, even the legal system will not recognize the child as a Parsi,” said Anahita Desai, trustee in the BPP. “At the most he can be Zoroastrian, but according to us Parsi and Zoroastrian are the same. We will not recognize him as a Parsi.”

Court cases challenging the view

There are at least three court cases challenging this view, one each in Mumbai, Kolkata, and Gujarat, where Parsi women married outside the community have sought equal religious rights for themselves and their children. Jehangir Patel, editor of Parsiana, the fortnightly magazine, it has been an established practice that only children with a Parsi father were recognised as members of the community. “Everybody has a right to undergo Navjote, but according to rules at most fire temples and community housing trusts, you have to be born of a Parsi father to be recognised as a Parsi,” said Patel.

This means that children of Parsi women and non-Parsi men are denied entry to fire temples or flats in housing estates owned by community trusts. Most fire temples, including the one in Nagpur, also bar Parsi women married outside the community. However, groups within the community said the rules were patriarchal and denied equal religious rights to women. Goolrukh Gupta, a Nepean Sea Road resident and a Parsi married to a non-Zoroastrian who challenged the rules at a fire temple in Valsad, her hometown in Gujarat, said that she supported the initiation of the Nagpur boy. “Why not? If there is a Parsi father and non-Parsi mother, the child is recognised as a member of the community. Why don’t women have the rights? The law should be equal for men and women,” said Gupta. “Also, I think a child acquires maximum culture from the mother.”

Gupta, who was worried that she would not be allowed into the Valsad fire temple for the last rites of her old parents (who are still alive), got an interim order from the courts that she would not be debarred from the premises. Her petition for equal religious rights for Parsi women is, however, pending in the Supreme Court.

Many community members are also of the view that the community’s stringent rules about who can be called a Parsi have exacerbated their demographic woes. The community has the lowest birth rate among all religious groups in India, and rules barring children born to Parsi women married to non-Zoroastrians have contributed to their decline in numbers. “It is good to have new members in a community that is dwindling,” said Gupta.

(We are on WhatsApp. To get latest news updates, Join our Channel. Click here)