Mumbai's proud Bawis say courts and clerics are demanding the impossible

Persis Khatau (in red) enjoys a word game with daughter Dimple Makwana (right), grand-daughters Divyana Chikhal (far left) and Jiyah Makwana. Pic/Satej Shinde

Veera Sawkar's amusement at the mention of what is in fact, a serious matter affecting the lives of women from the Zoroastrian community, is understandable if you belong to the more-than-3500-year-old faith. She cannot comprehend how a Parsi can manage to stop being Parsi. "We are too proud of our faith," says the Tardeo resident.

And yet, the Gujarat High Court in 2012 ruled that Goolrokh Gupta, a Parsi woman born Goolrokh Adi Contractor, who married Mahipal Gupta, a Hindu in 1991, would cease to be Parsi, presumed to have acquired the religious status of her husband. If she wished to continue being Parsi, she would have to "give up her husband's religion in court or prove that she led the Parsi way of life".

Wary that she would meet the same fate when her Valsad-based parents passed on, Gupta had filed the petition because the Valsad Parsi Anjuman Trust that administered the fire temple and Tower of Silence in the south Gujarat town, had allegedly prevented another Parsi woman who had married outside from performing the last rites of her mother in 2008. On April 21, the Supreme Court hearing an appeal against the Gujarat HC order, said it would in August examine whether a Parsi woman can be deprived of her religious identity and rights after an inter-faith marriage. Gupta's lawyer Indira Jaising told the court that she had expectedly been denied entry to the Tower of Silence during her father's funeral.

The ruling, say observers, will not only have implications on the rapidly declining Zoroastrian population, but could provide clarity on other inter-religious marriages that fall under the Special Marriages Act. The likes of Gupta and Sawkar are calling the conservatives' bluff, arguing that the issue falls squarely in the realm of gender inequality. A Parsi man marrying outside the faith is expected to make no such sacrifice, and his children are accepted within the religion's fold. On the other hand, Gupta and her gang lose their right to own a home in a Parsi baug, access any Zoroastrian place of worship, and their children cannot avail the facilities of any Parsi trust.

Sawkar met her husband Ashish at a sports camp in Powai back in 1975 when they were both 15. They were there to participate in a shot put contest. Their courtship lasted until they were 30 when they decided to marry. Ashish's Saraswat Brahmin father was skeptical. "He was okay that we were good friends, no more," she smiles. In the December of 1990, the couple married after Sawkar senior encountered a pleasant surprise. When he got his pundit to match the couple's astrological charts, 34 out of 36 traits matched. The wedding was performed according to Hindu rites, but Sawkar continues being a practising Zoroastrian, finding strength in prayers from the Avesta, and frequent visits to the agiary. "By the end of it, he [father-in-law] liked that we, Parsis, dined together in the evenings, the entire family. He joked that I had turned him into half-Parsi," she says.

"No Parsi will denounce his faith. I haven't changed a thing, simply married someone from another community. I will do what I want to do, but I'm not afraid of respecting the community's sentiments. If someone feels I should not attend a funeral, I'll be more than willing to sit out. But I will go to my agiary, attend all the jashans [ceremonies] and lagans [marriages]. I cannot stop being a proud bawa."

Veera Sawkar with her family at their Tardeo home. Pic/Sameer Markande

Persis Khatau, born Persis Irani, is baffled how a court can decide who she will turn to in times of strife. "Even today, whenever I am worried, I recite the Yatha Ahu Vairyo," she says of the simple, short Avestan prayer that's said to be a potent protector. "I wear my sudreh-kasti, and this year, managed to visited Udwada twice," she adds referring to one of the faith's most religious sites in Gujarat. In 1978, she married Hemant Khatau and moved to his Lokhandwala residence from her home in Gamadia colony, Tardeo's Parsi enclave. "We had a full blown Hindu wedding, with pheras. But my in-laws never suggested that I give up my faith." She argues against the sexist Parsi Personal Law, saying, "How is it fair? Why should a woman not have the rights a man does? If I haven't taken on Hinduism, and the clerics say, I am no longer a Parsi, who am I?"

Khatau has a valid point. She wonders how things will pan out once she passes on. Will she be allowed to rest at Dongerwadi, Mumbai's Tower of Silence? "The system must change. The controversy [surrounding gender bias leading to depleting numbers] is decades old. I know of women marrying outside the faith encountering challenges, facing flak from neighbours." Khatau's friend Zenobia Praveen Dutta, 62, is married to a Punjabi. "My husband was a shippie, and I'd often take my children to the fire temple. Suddenly, one day, some neighbours requested that I stop this practice. I don't believe in a religion other than my own. How is taking it away from me fair?"

Sawkar's husband Ashish, 56 says religion isn't all-pervading. "Yes, my wife would have liked to be included [in the community] by right. She is not considered a Parsi in certain places, which is plain stupid. Our children, Sanaya, 26 and Rohan, 22 have imbibed both Hindu and Parsi traditions. When someone is being debarred from a religious place, the law should protect him/her. The law must be equal for all," he says. The community hopes that the judgment offers clarity.

A Parsi woman, requesting anonymity, questions that ad hoc manner of enforcing rules when she says that women like her are left at the mercy of a priest's whim. "Often, the rules are different depending on the agiary. The liberals would allow me access to a fire temple, and then some won't. For instance, my son has had his Navjote [ceremony that inducts a young Parsi into the faith]. I doubt the SC ruling will have an impact on the ground. People will do what they wish." Bombay Parsi Punchayet chairman Yezdi Desai says women who make the choice Goolrokh Gupta did are "well aware of the consequences".

"I think she is being unfair," he says. "She knew what would happen if she married outside. There might be a few reformists, but 95 per cent of the community is orthodox because this [endogamy] is the very essence of our survival. She (Goolrokh) even changed her name. Why?"

Desai says that in the absence of a court decision, the Gujarat HC's ruling is final until the SC decides to overturn it." When asked if there was a written edict stating that a Parsi woman had to give up her faith after a mixed-marriage, he admits, "No, there is no such doctrine. Our religion was founded nearly 3,000 years ago and at that time, I doubt this concept existed."

Yezdi Bamji, 49, the officiating priest at Tardeo's Sethna agiary, agrees with Desai. "There is no edict that says so. It's the Indian patriarchal system that's largely to blame [for disadvantaging women]. Getting married outside the community is a matter of choice."

Khojeste Mistree, former BPP trustee, and Zoroastrian scholar, argues that the scriptures cannot support the inter-faith argument because the concept of choosing your marital partner is a modern one. "One must understand that this is about custom and tradition; when the scriptures were compiled there was no question of Zoroastrians marrying outside the community because the elders arranged marriages. Not in a direct way, but certainly in an indirect one, in order to maintain one's ethnicity, one has to marry within the folds to preserve our identity. Marrying outside the community is not the answer."

Mistree uses the fact that Zoroastrianism is a patrilineal faith to explain different rules for different genders. "There is certainly enough material which speaks about our community being a patrilineal one, one in which the religious seed passes on through the male, unlike the Jews where it does through the woman. Small communities are either patrilineal or matrilineal. From this point of view, we have enough historic evidence to show that the Zoroastrian tradition is a patrilineal one. People may not accept it since we are living in modern times, but as far as scriptures go, this is what they say. There is gender compatibility in Zoroastrianism, not necessarily gender equality. Today, equality is hailed, but it is compatibility which is more important."