Bombay

Harley:  On the shores of India's most wealthy and modern city – a flame burns for one of the world’s oldest religions. The secretive ceremonies of Zoroastrianism – are the private domain of Bombay's distinctive Parsis.

0:00

Parsis praying

These followers of the Persian prophet Zarathrusta worship god through the elements.

0:34

Today it’s water, though nothing’s ever done without the purifying force of fire. This divine spark of the soul is usually off limits to outsiders.

Mirza

Mirza:  We revere fire as the representative of the almighty. We revere fire as the glory of the almighty. We revere fire as the master of the house.

1:00

Music/Chanting

Harley:  But the house is deeply divided over the disposal of Parsi dead.  For centuries they've been taken to the Towers of Silence to be scavenged or picked clean by vultures.

Towers of Silence

Cremation and burial are banned, but the vulture culture's in trouble. The vultures are fast disappearing, and the dead are being left to rot for days, even weeks.

1:36

Karanjia

Karanjia:  One does not like one's body to rot, and create problems for others.

1:49

Mirza

Mirza:  If a member of any other religion choose to cremate, we cannot say anything. But when a member of Zoroastrian religion chooses to cremate, we have to make all the efforts to stop it.

1:55

Godrej: I don’t quite remember when I saw a vulture last. Maybe a few years ago I think. But I do see a lot of bodies just lying there for months on end and it’s polluting the area, it’s polluting the air, it’s not hygienic.

2:11

Map

Music

2:28

Harley:  Business runs in Parsis’ blood.  This entrepreneurial spirit's meant that this tiny community  -- just 75,000 in a city of 16 million -- has prospered.

Inside dairy

Bombay’s famous Parsi dairy has delivered reputedly the city’s best milk, yoghurt and sweets since 1916 – every single day. And since then, not a lot has changed.

2:58

Urvaksh:  This is actually silver which is hammered into very thin foil, it's edible.

Harley:  Urvaksh Hoyvoy wants to drag this declining empire into the 21^st century, and the world market.  It's a case of adapt to the modern world or fade away.

Urvaksh

Urvaksh:   It’s difficult for the older generation to understand that -- they are afraid -- the fear is of losing something. They believe in trying to grow without change. That’s not possible.

3:28

Harley:  Are Parsis stuck in the past?

Urvaksh:  (laughs) Some of them are.

 Rusi Nararian:  This chair was used by my father for a very long time, till he died. After he died, we’ve kept it vacant in his memory.

Harley: How long ago was that?

Rusi Nararian:  It was 31 years back. In 1970.

Harley:  It's been empty all that time.

Rusi Nararian:  Yes, yes, yes.

Harley:  As a reminder…

Rusi Nararian:  This is his photograph.

4:03

Harley:  But not everyone’s in love with tradition. This was once Bombay's busiest dairy. But it’s steadily losing customers to cheaper competition.

4:08

Harley to camera

Harley:  The Parsis came to India's west coast more than 1,300 years ago – fleeing Muslim persecution in their Persian homeland.  Since those desperate beginning, most of them have settled here in Bombay, and they’ve prospered to become one of India's richest and most tight-knit communities. But the very traditions which have kept the Parsis together are now threatening their survival.

4:20

Towers of Silence

The tradition causing the most controversy lies in the Dunawardi, the Towers of Silence. Shrouded in trees and mystery, it's here on Bombay's most expensive strip of real estate, that the Parsis have traditionally been laid to rest.

19:44

The aim is to stop the rotting body from polluting the sacred elements. They're left to be cleaned up by vultures, once as common Bombay as seagulls at Bondi.  Problem is, the vultures are falling off their perch. Numbers have dived by 95 percent over the last decade.

5:00

Rahmani and Harley look at vultures

Super:

Asad Rahmani

Bombay Natural History Society

Rahmani:  We suspect that there is a virus or sort of a pathogen, which is killing them. Because the symptoms are very, very clear. They die, they remain there with their drooping neck for many weeks and then they die, either on the nest or they fall down from the trees.

5:25

Harley:  This crisis for the vultures is bringing to a head a clash between Parsi orthodoxy and the modern world.

Karanjia at desk

At 82, Bujor K. Karanjia, looks like he’ll live forever. The former Bollywood magazine editor turned historian arrives at work at 8 o’clock, 6 days a week. As a Parsi – he wants to be cremated – and believes the high priests have got it wrong.

5:53

Karanjia

Karanjia:  What we say, we say as Parsis that the dungawadi is common property for the Parsis. Every Parsi has two rights – he has the right to choose his mode of disposal of his body and he has the right to use this infrastructure for prayers, the infrastructure that is already there, that is dungarwadi.

6:12

Mirza

Mirza:  No, in the Zoroastrianism, in the religious matters, there are no choices.

21:33

That is suicide… the work you used… That will be the suicide.

Music

Parsi priests

Harley:  A wedge has been driven between the orthodox high priests and the Parsis' civic leaders – the panchayet.  They’ve accepted that to burn or be buried is a sign of the times. And they want to open the  Towers of Silence for all Parsis last rites– however they’re disposed of.

6:56

Music

Karanjia

Karanjia: Having taken this decision, there’s been so much controversy that they have now kept it in suspension.

7:20

Harley:   It's paralysed the community?

Karanjia:  Yes.

Bombay

Harley:  The Parsis are moving towards  building a  special vulture aviary. But no-one knows if it will work.  Matters aren’t helped by the endless spread of Bombay's concrete jungle.  And just as the vultures are dying out – so too are the Parsis.

7:34

Music/Singing

7:54

Parsi wedding

Harley:  Parsis love a party. They’re a gregarious lot who love food, a bit of drink and a sing-a-long. They were the darlings of the British Raj -- educated, entrepreneurial and European in their tastes.

But while the Parsis are outgoing, they’re also inbred.  When they first took refuge in India their pact with the local Hindu king stopped them from marrying outside their ranks.

Mazreen

Mazreen: I wanted a Parsi guy. That was one thing very clear for me that I would marry a Parsi and I think Bezaad fitted all my counts, nearly all my counts.

8:42

Bezaad

Bezaad:  I think the Parsi community is on the decline, so we feel that it's better, we feel its better to have our children also marry within the community.

8:54

Harley:  And like most good Parsi couples, they plan for no more than two children.

Mazreen

Mazreen:  Two children you bring them up properly. I think that it’s better than having three or four, and not being able to take care of them. Both of us working.

9:18

Wedding

Harley:  But small families – and a  growing number  of young Parsis marrying outside their community – mean numbers are dwindling.

9:27

Parsis pride themselves on being fair-skinned and fair-minded. To be Parsi is to be pure bred --  and those who contaminate the tribe are damned.

Harley walks with Smita

Smita Godrej is heir to the mighty Godrej industrial dynasty. Their wealth’s bought the best of Bombay penthouses -- complete with a birds eye view of the Towers of Silence.

9:56

She may live above the towers but she won’t die in them, because the priests took away her death rites when she married a Hindu.

10:10

Smita

Smita:  He said all children of women who’ve married out of the community are illegitimate. So those are very, very nasty things that they said about us.

10:18

Smita looks at book

Harley:  Orthodox priests won’t recognise Smita’s children as Zoroastrian. Though this ban does not apply when Parsi men marry outside.

Mirza:  It is an exclusive custom, doctrine, practice that we have to marry within the community. We cannot increase the number at the cost of our religious tenets, at the cost of our religious customs, at the cost of our religious practices.

10:37

Parsi priests

Harley:  The priests regard the Zoroastrian faith and Parsi bloodline as one and the same, and any attempt to bring in outsiders is viewed as threat.

11:06

Riches are also at stake -- many elders fear non-Parsis will plunder the community’s wealthy trusts and philanthropic funds. But without change the Parsis themselves may face the same fate as the nearly extinct  vultures.

But the Parsis are resilient. They’ve kept the same sacred flame burning behind these walls for 1,280 years.

11:31

Temple at Udvada

In the tiny town of Udvada, north of Bombay -- the Iran Shah temple’s been re-built four times – though the fire has never gone out. It’s the Parsis most sacred and secret site, and today they’re celebrating its birthday and their identity.

11:40

Meher

Meher: To belong to the Zoroastrian community means that your soul is spiritually very highly evolved. That it belongs to a very exclusive group of souls who in nature have reached a certain stage of evolution. That’s what it means.

12:00

Harley:  That sounds very exclusive. It sounds rather superior.

Meher: Yes it is. Exactly so.

Harley:  Certainly there’s nothing endangering Parsi pride.  But the community is struggling with how to live and how to die.  Famous for helping others – the Parsis must now help themselves.

12:22

Karanjia

Harley: Is the Parsi community facing extinction?

Karanjia: No, I don’t think so. I don’t know, by numbers there seems to be a danger. But I have such a strong faith in the survival and the adaptable attitude of the Parsis that I don’t think the community could ever die out. I just can’t bring myself to believe that such a thing could happen.

12:36

Music

Credits: 

Parsis

Reporter:  Jonathan Harley

Camera:  Manesh Mehta

Editor:  Simon Brynjolffsen

Producer:  Tony Chapman