A community, which blessed the country with the likes of Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw, JRD Tata, Nani Palkhivala, Dadabhai Naoroji, Nari Contractor, Adi Godrej, Pherozeshah Mehta, Russi Modi, Piloo Modi, Cyrus Poonawalla and the likes who do not require any introduction and who played prominent roles in creating modern India is on the verge of extinction.
A nine year-long inter- continental research held by a team of scientists drawn out from Asia and Europe have found that the Parsi religion to which the above mentioned persons belong is facing a serious existential crisis. “There are hardly 57,000 Parsis left in India, with majority of them based in Mumbai, making them the tiniest ethno religious community in India,” said Shernaz Cama , director, UNESCO Parsi Zorastrian Project.
Even as the research findings portray a grim picture about the religious demography of the Parsis (Zoroastrianism) , the team of scientists brought out some interesting information about the religion, hitherto known from historical facts only. “The DNA studies (the basic blocks with which human life is built) show that Parsis have the traits of 68 per cent Iranians and 22 per cent of Indians. The Parsis represent the unadulterated original population of Zorastrians who fled from Iran to escape the religious persecution unleashed by Islamic aggressors during the 8the and 10th centuries,” explained Dr Gyaneshwer Chaubey, a population geneticist who works with the Estonian Bio centre, Tartu, Estonia and who led the team of scientists in this research told The Pioneer over video conferencing from Edinburgh, UK. He said the studies found that Parsis have traits similar to the Iranians before the Islamic aggression.
Veena Mushrif-Tripathy, a bio-archaeologist who has specialised in biological anthropology and was one of the team members, said their typical style of burial played a significant role in unravelling the hitherto hidden facts about the Parsis. “We collected from the central wells in Towers of Silence (where the Parsis leave the dead for the vultures to feed) bones which proved that the Parsis in India and Pakistan match more with the Iranian population which lived in Iran before the Islamic aggression, said Prof Mushrif-Tripathy of Pine’s famous Deccan College. She said the life style of the Parsis coupled with strict religious rules have contributed to the fall in their demography. “Parsis do not allow religious conversion. Many of them marry late. We found that 30 per cent of the youth do not marry at all. The fall in their population is a sure cause of concern,” she said.
Both Dr Gyan and Prof Mushrif-Tripathy pointed out that Parsis are the only religious minority group in the sub continent which never had any kind of social or cultural conflict. “True to the word they gave to the ruler of Sanjan in Gujarat when they came to Indian as refugees 1200 years ago, they have lived as sugar dissolved in milk,” said the scientists. Accordiong tp Dr Chaubey, what makes the Parsis distinct from other minorities is that they had never sought any concession or privileges from the Government. Dr Kumarasamy Thangaraj, senior scientist, Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad, who is the senior author of this peer-reviewed research paper published in the venerated journal Genome Biology said the most modern genetic techniques were employed to unravel the mystery behind the Parsis in India and Pakistan. “This research confirmed that Parsis admixed with the Indian population 1200 years ago,Historical records tell that the Zorostrians came to Sanjan around the same period,” said Dr Thangaraj.