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The community debates its traditional death rites

By Farah Baria

When my grandmother died we took her to the Towers Of Silence. Four men carried the body into one of the towers. I heard the harsh cry of the vultures and knew that in a matter of minutes they would strip the flesh from the bones. The skeleton would then lie under the fierce glare of the tropical sun until it calcified, after which the powdery remains would be cast into a central well and seep into the Earth. I wasn't revolted because we have been doing it for centuries. And my grandmother wanted it this way."

Straight from the pages of a horror story? Not really. It's an account of the Parsi system for the disposal of the dead -- a medieval desert ritual that is still practised in the heart of Mumbai. The Parsi Towers Of Silence stand on Malabar Hill shrouded by a thick, beautiful forest where buzzards co-exist with peacocks, right next to some of the swankiest skyscrapers in town. The towers or dokhmas are about 50 ft high. Inside, it's like a three-tiered arena, paved with stone slabs where the bodies are laid. Non-Parsis are prohibited from entering the forested grounds, and no one except the khandiyas -- traditional pall bearers who are virtually social outcasts -- are allowed into a tower.

"The practise is one of the seven pillars of the Zoroastrian religion and a spiritual legacy that has been handed down by our forefathers," explains Homi Dastur, deputy executive secretary of the Hindu Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, who comes from a priestly Parsi family. "Ninety-nine per cent of Parsis still follow the system, and very few really question it."

But now there are practical obstacles. With an average of about three deaths every day, the six-odd buzzards at the dokhmas are overfed; experts say it would take at least 150 birds to cope with the inflow. The problem is likely to get exacerbated because the Parsi community is facing extinction: more than a third of the Parsis in India are over 60.

Worse still, vultures themselves are facing extinction all over the country. According to Asad Rahmani, director of the Bombay Natural History Society, vultures in India are dying in huge numbers from an unknown disease; the cause is currently being researched in Pune.

Now the Bombay Parsi Panchayat (BPP), the community's apex administrative body is casting around for a practical solution to this religious crises. Last month, it sought the assistance of Jemima Perry-Jones, an expert from the Prey Centre in England, to set up a vulture aviary near the dokhmas. "It is hoped that by breeding them in captivity we can preserve this 2,000-year-old system," says former municipal commissioner and BPP trustee Rustom Tirandaz. Plans are also on to revive other unused towers across the country.

The decision has deepened the gulf between the community's so-called backroom "reformists" who want to do away with the dokhmas altogether and the orthodoxy which wants to perpetuate it. "In many ways, the Parsis are India's most progressive community," points out Jehan Daruwalla, 85, former editor of the Mumbai Samachar. "We are educated, and modern in outlook. Why then follow an ancient practice that has outlived its purpose?" Liberals like him obviously have a following: in a snap poll conducted three weeks ago by Jam-e-Jamshed, a popular Parsi weekly, 332 of 528 respondents said they favoured an alternative rite of passage. But the ensuing outcry forced the newspaper to apologise for hurting the sentiments of the status quoists.

"The dokhma is the most ecologically sound and practical system in modern times," says Khojeste Mistree, an Oxford-returned Zoroastrian scholar and self-appointed conscience keeper of the community. "It requires no burial land, does not pollute the air through burning, or sully water with ashes. Parsis worship the elements -- earth, fire and water. To defile them in any way is going against the grain of our religion. This is the very essence of environmental conservation that our planet so desperately needs today."

His verdict: "The community must move ahead by basing its future on its past." Going by the crowded register at Mumbai's Towers Of Silence, most Parsis still seem to agree.

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