‘Who’s Pure-Bred?’

I got married in 1991 to Mahipal, a Marwari, in Mumbai. I’m from Valsad, a small town in Gujarat. Till 2003, Valsad had a liberal Parsi trust, where girls married to non-Parsis could enter the agiary and nobody would raise an alarm. I was even allowed to be involved in my uncle’s last rites. But after Rusi Shroff, a liberal secretary of the trust, passed away, things changed. When my friend Dilbar Valvi, who married a non-Parsi, lost her mother, the trust, in true Taliban style, did not let her sit anywhere close to where the last rites were performed. I realised we were going backwards, applying different rules to the rich and the poor, to men and women, with diktats changing from city to city, village to village.

So I have been fighting for equal rights for men and women—if  Parsi men married to non-Parsis are allowed to perform the last rites of their parents, enter the agiary, and be a part of the religion, then women who marry out should have the same rights. I approached Parsi panchayats in Delhi, Calcutta, Karachi, Kanpur, Jabalpur and Chennai; they were far more progressive than the Valsad panchayat. I realised that customs are followed according to the whims of panchayat trustees. That’s when I took the Valsad trust to court. In the high court, I lost. I was told a woman should follow her husband’s religion. My case is pending in the Supreme Court, where senior counsel Harish Salve is fighting my case pro bono, as is my solicitor-sister Shiraz Patodia. It’s heartening to see the massive support I have received.

And now we’re faced with this crazy, ridiculous Jiyo Parsi ad campaign that does nothing but shed light once again on where the issues in the community really lie. Why are we making complete fools of ourselves in front of the world? In today’s day and age, raising one child is tough enough—how will we raise innumerable Jiyo Parsi kids? And why is the onus of raising a cricket team laid on the women? The whole issue boils down to the same thing—that a set of Parsis think women should forgo their careers, change their lifestyle, get married to random Parsis just to keep numbers up. First, a campaign like this isn’t going to change numbers—it’s not a long-term solution. And then, what are you trying to save anyway? What is a pure breed? When men marry out, they don’t produce a pure breed. By clinging to illogical ideas, they are driving more people away from the religion. Today, my daughter Natasha sees me fighting for my own existence, not knowing whether I’ll be able to attend my own parents’ last rites. That is barbaric and inhuman. It’s driven her away from Zoroastrianism and made her embrace Hinduism, which she believes is much more welcoming. It’s sad that community members are busy cutting wings, instead of welcoming everyone into the fold. We are judging people regressively—we are judging them by whom they marry.

As told to Neha Bhatt

Goolrukh Gupta, 49, is a real estate consultant based in Mumbai; E-mail your columnist: goolugupta [AT] hotmail [DOT] com