The country’s Parsi community is in a bind over a proposed law to regulate surrogacy, a little over a year after it had successfully negotiated resistance from within to this assisted reproductive technique. Article in The Telegraph The Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill, 2016 – that the Centre has cleared – seeks to replace commercial surrogacy with…
Parsis: The Zoroastrians of India
Category Archives: Issues
Most divorces among Parsis due to adultery
Jury trials came to India with the British and were abolished after the now infamous 1959 Nanavati murder trial, not many know that matrimonial disputes among the Parsi community is still tried by a five-member jury system in the country. Article by Ayesha Arvind | Hindustan Times This Friday, the Bombay high court concluded a…
India’s vanishing people
India’s vanishing people New Delhi: It is a fact that India’s tiny Parsi community is dwindling but the latest census figures show the ethnic group hurtling towards extinction. Parsis are Zoroastrians – one of the world’s oldest religions – from Persia, where it was the official religion for centuries until the advent of Islam. Persecution…
Petition: Secure the future of Persian GCSE and A-level qualifications
100,000 signatures are required for the UK Parliament to pay attention to Secure the future of Persian GCSE and A-level qualifications Sign and share with anyone you know. ZTFE President Malcolm Deboo writes… It is with great disappointment that we have to inform you of the examining body OCR’s plans to discontinue Persian GCSE and…
Pakistan Parsi community’s migration alarming
KARACHI: As you enter the Parsi Colony from MA Jinnah Road you experience a strange feeling. You are truly taken away by the architecture of beautiful bungalows and houses. But then you are taken aback to find that their owners have long gone and now no one lives in these houses. Once a vibrant community,…
Reluctance to Intermarry Puts Zoroastrians on the Brink of Extinction
Over ten centuries after coming to India, the Zorastrians are facing the challenge of assimilation in India. Many of them fear that, soon, there won’t be any Zoroastrians left behind. The Zoroastrians were a religious community that fled to India somewhere between the 8th and 10th centuries as a way to free themselves from the…
Section of Parsis Cry Sin As More Opt For Cremation
Cremation among Parsis see rise Article by Ashutosh Shukla | DNA India The information by weekly magazine, Parsianna, stated that the number “Parsi/Irani deaths recorded at the new Prayer Hall in Worli were 33 for the months of September-December 2015. The corresponding deaths for the same period at the Bombay Towers of Silence were 229”.…
A half-breed in Bombay: Suhasini Haidar
How do you preserve the purity of lineage and yet propagate the line of an ever-dwindling community? This is the question that Parsis continue to debate fiercely Article by Suhasini Haider | The Hindu Half-breed. I could see my grandmother flinch as I read out the term in an article in her carefully curated issues…
Challenges of being Parsi in a mixed marriage
At 20, India-born Dilnawaz Zaveri nee Bharucha was gasping to see the world. The daughter of a retired engineering company manager and a doctor, she was looking for a ticket out of India. Now 46, she recalls: “My mother wanted me to be a doctor, but I wanted to do something that was not academic.”…
India’s Parsis search for new funeral arrangements
India’s Parsis search for new funeral arrangements as there are not enough vultures to dispose of bodies by Leila Nathoo | Independent UK Katy Gundevia spent her final days in an apartment in one of Mumbai’s designated Parsi colonies, a few hundred yards away from the cavernous, circular wells where her community traditionally disposes of…
