Open letter to Mr Burjor Antia, new Trustee of the BPP
16th December 2002
TO:
Mr B H Antia,
Mumbai.
Respected Sir,
Congratulations on your election as Trustee of the Bombay Parsi Punchayet.
While we are happy to see a person with orthodox leanings and also possessing a zeal for doing community service becoming a BPP Trustee, there is one issue which is causing a great deal of heartburn to many of us concerned orthodox Parsees, which we feel necessary to bring to your notice.
It concerns your involvement with The WZO Trust Funds as Trustee. While this trust fund is projected as an independent charitable arm of the WZO, it is without doubt an arm of the WZO, which as you are most probably aware, promotes the heterodox agenda being advocated by WZO. A commonality of certain Trustees obviously ensures perpetuation of the same ideology. Any organisation which officially accepts non- Zoroastrians and children born of intercommunal marriages as members and uses charity as a conduit for inducing change in our religious practices and canon law cannot be called World Zoroastrian(?) Organisation. It is a contradiction in terms. Their office bearers merrily go about espousing the cause of intermarrieds and their so- called rights. They espouse change to our time-tested religious tenets and practices in the name of pragmatism and change. In the light of this, is it not desirable for a person of your calibre and leanings to be dissociated from them in thought, word and deed? Now, please do not contend that the WZO in UK has a different constitution from the one in India of which you are a Trustee. Repeated attempts in the past to procure a copy of each of the constitutions to verify this claim has met with a deafening silence. Also, if you have observed, the membership application forms are the same for both the organisations.
Though it is the BPP which represents the ethos of the Parsee/Irani Zoroastrians the world over, WZO is trying to project itself as a representative body of Zoroastrians world-wide. But not a whimper is heard from them when Ali Jafarey and his cohorts merrily go all over the globe and convert(?) all and sundry into Zoroastrians, though this is against the very grain of our religious existence. But obviously WZO does not think so.
Is it not correct that you personally told someone last year that you disliked what the WZO is doing in religious matters and that you intended to resign from the WZO. The fact is one year later you have still not resigned.
You are against adult franchise. You expressed fears at the Dadar meeting that adult franchise would bring in the wrong type of leaders who would wipe out the BPP's corpus. Isn't it a case of double standards that the leaders of WZO insist on voting rights of individuals, but when it comes to BPP, they think the Parsees of Mumbai are not intelligent enough to elect capable leaders and they want to continue this outdated oligarchy system so that they can manipulate a small electorate?
Now, when the BPP and the WZO have such contradictory objectives, is it justified on your part to hold office in both. We know that other BPP Trustees are doing the same, but Sir, is this what you want? Since a man is judged by the company he keeps, we request you to mull over these issues and take the bold step of severing all ties with this hetereodox organisation called WZO once and for all in the interest of the survival of the religion and community.
Yours sincerely,
Hanoz M Mistry
Adi F Doctor
Ms. Rita F Doctor
Ms.Tannaz S Parakh
Sohrab Parakh
Karl K Sahukar
Noshir H Dadrawala