The Orthodox V/s The Orthodox!
Anahita Subedar quipped ‘From the Editor’s Desk’ PT of 27 October, saying, “To think Zoroastrianism needs ‘defending’… is seriously undermining the glory and the power of our religion.” One can call puny present defenders of faith as having holier-than-thou attitude or being presumptuous or pompous or simply bigoted. The world’s oldest faith has faced the ravages of time, from Alexander the terrible, the Greeks, the Spartans, right down to Sassanian times, when our Persian ancestors fought the attempts by the highly trained armies of the Roman Empire to over-run the Zoroastrian Persian Empire and spread Christianity, and a little later the onslaught of the Islamic hoards in Iran and in India too.
Yet the religion survived and flourished. Today, in more benign times we have very little to worry about, from the outer forces to destroy our faith. Unfortunately we have disrupting forces within our very own Parsi, Irani Zoroastrian community, under the cognomen of the Defenders of the Faith, the liberals, the orthodox, the progressives, the traditional, giving ludicrous names to each other like ‘dhongidox’, the ‘regressive’ and a lot more. Please stop! Desist!
What we are facing is a battle, if one may call it that, between the two groups, Orthodox V/s Orthodox – one being those who believe in Zoroastrianism as given to the world by Asho Zarathushtra as laid down in His Gathas; and the other believing in traditions established after landing in India, the Post-landing Parsis, based on the promises we are supposed to have made to the King of Sanjan and more or less upon the dos and don’ts from the Vendidad, a composite literature compiled several centuries after Zarathushtra. Thus we are faced with two orthodoxies.
The difference can be bridged if both the sides agree upon a bit of give and take, and a lot of handshakes, the Hamazor. We have received much from our foster mother land, a chance to come up and achieve greatness in every field of human endeavor but most of all the freedom to practice our religion which otherwise would have vanished from the face of the earth. Let history not say that a community of Parsis faced fearful odds and survived but succumbed to their own in-fighting which could have been avoided had we stretched our hands out to bury our differences.
– Dara Khodaiji (dara_mk@hotmail.com)
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This is with regards to Dara Khodaiji’s letter Orthodox bvs Orthodox.
Whilst I agree with Mr Khodaiji on bridging the gap between segments, I sadly noticed the contradiction in his advise and his action of pinning the blame on only 1 segment.
But more so distressing is his “one being those who believe in Zoroastrianism as given to the world by Asho Zarathushtra as laid down in His Gathas; and the other believing in traditions established after landing in India”.
Mr Khodaiji, with his good intentions , make 2 glaring historical and factual Blunders.
One is the creating of another segment and division where in reality and historically , none exists but more so in debunking the saviours of Zoroastrians as being different and being ignorant of True Zoroastrianism.
How low can one get whilst ridiong a high horse of being sherlock holmes , decoding zoroastrianism by these falacies and False Premises. If not for those that saved the zoroastrian flame and faith in india, Zoroastrianism in Iran and thus Zoroastrians of Iran would have ceased to exist and there would be no Dioaspora around the world to then sit jury, judge and Execiutoner that they no more than those responsible for Zoroastrianism surviving.!!
And for what was this faulty degrading and dimunative premise, created in the first place? Just for a difference of Opinion with regards to conversions these now demean the saviours of Zoroastrianism. These even nearly achieved what Hoardes of Byzantines, and Fnatical Arabs and even Alexander could not achieve by burning our books.These sherlock holmes to jutsify their POV started debunking all other Zoroastrian texts other than the Gathas. If these would have just studied the siubject , it would be clear that the Gathas act like Synopsis of the entire gambit of books, some that lay destroyed by our adversaries , whilst the remianing they want to destroy by debunking them from within.
Coming to the point of external threat and conversions.
Well lets analyse who stalled beinging people of our roots back. Let us go back a few decades when the Soviet Union broke up into different states, whereby the world maps once again resembled the pre soviet union states. Soviet Union was a communist- no religion state. Thus one of the reasons for the thirst for collapse of Soviet Union was to religion-ise it and thus thru that Grab power in the area. Once Soviet broke up,a power struggle grew and as middle and Modern history shows, once again religion was leveraged to grasp Power. The Islamist wanted to hold on to areas it percieved as its stronghold and so did the Vaticvan to . A common fear erupted , about Zoroastrian roots surfacing, which woulld have a domino effect on perripherial geography namely Iran, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan etc. Add to this, another facet, of those having made the Taliban to maintain Power which saw the fall of Soviet Union which was a communist no religion state. The taliban was to be used elsewhere to grab power too. With Zoroastrian roots resurfacing, what if the Taliban left the gun ,and/or what if the prevailent tensions between Azerbaijan and Iran were cooled thru a mutual ancient roots. This would make things uncomfortable for those having spent huge money on their strategies to grab power.
At that very Juncture , what was needed from the Zoroastrian community , was a study of if and if so, how to get back those wanting to return to ancient roots. An intellect debate of how to filter out , even traces of talibanistic , or other war-ing facets coming into the fold only to have a political or social advantage, or to completely re direct zoroastrianism from within, should have been done, Hand in hand , the impact of war-ing tribes taking political asylum by protraying themselves as Zoroastrianism just for show , and the impact of such wrt Zoroastrians worldwide should have been studied.The repercusions within India too should have taken some time for thought and after due delibration, one could have proceeded forward in getting people shariing our roots, back. But what happoened was erupted this cotorie that demanded that conversions are arbitary and arbitaraly good. Any deviation from that, and one would be labelled as “you dont know zoroastrinaism you are a parsi and not zoroastrian!!”. The pendulam swung in the opposite direction, and books were shown. This cotorie that now holographed the saviours of Zoroastrianism as Ignorant now degraded all other books apart from the gatha to the status , which the destroyers of these books wanted!.
A group of druggies claimed that it was prescribed oin zoroastrianism to take drugs and a court case thad to be fought to redeem zoroastrianism from such false claims. Imagine 300000 converts, some stating dfrugs are apart of Zoroastrianism, some stating, vendidad is not zoroastrianism , some stating that we shoulkd follow the vbatican and some stating that the islamist are right in their power struggle and the 1 lakh Zoroastrian community now being redirected into such. Basically the intelectual road map towards whether to convert or not was talled by these sherlock holmes.
These nearly achieved what a catastrophic Millenia could not achieve thru the 3 holocauts faced by the zoroastrians and the ones responsible for not letting the zoroastrian flame and faith die out are now blamed as not knowing about zoroastrianism by the cotorie that plays sherlock Holmes.
I would redirect Mr Dara Khodaiji to the wars taking place today in What was Persian Lands. Iraq, sanctions against Iran, Syria being bombed by 2 Non islamic countries, both telling syrians that it is for their good. Though the taliban is composed of Islamists,The creators are not islamists, same wiith the ISIS. If one studies the movement of ISIS, it would appear that ISIS is a tool of those that send it to a host country after weakening it and once chaos and anarchy is chanelised , portraying thremselves as fighting terror, being welocmed as saviours…after washing their hands off sin. In short the history of Sasanian Byzantine war and thirst to convert that is pulverising the human spirit and soul being replayed elsewhere too.
In such a scenario, it would be prudent to take recourse in the wisdom of the saviours of Zoroastrianism in gaining solutions be it how to convert or whether to convert, instead of debunking them. In words of a well known professor ” Just by navjot-ing someone, one does not become a zoroastrian, to profess its ways,to understand its concept, rituals and traditions makes one a zoroastrian”. The Zoroastrians made sure that passage of zoroastrianism is passed on every generation and not dying with Books being burnt, was done by oral passage that are termed as traditions, rituals or concepts.
For us to survive as Zoroastrians, it is imperative Zoroastrianism thru its traditions, rituals and concepts survive, and debunking the saviours of Zoroastrianism is a sure shot way of contradicting the promotion of Zoroastrianism.