The last Zoroastrian conspire to prevent its disappearance

New Delhi, June 5, 2008. - Desperate for the steady decline of its population, Zoroastrians or Parsis in India have initiated an emergency plan that goes from promoting fertility and marriage to preach even change the definition of their lineage .
Of the around 100,000 Zoroastrians, who follow the monotheistic cult led by their prophet Zoroaster (or Zarathustra) - left in the world, 69,691 live in India-which came from Persia a thousand years ago, according to the latest census (2001).
The data reflected an unstoppable trend toward the disappearance of this community, which in 1951 when the first census was conducted in independent India, came to have almost 112,000 members, and has led its leaders to seek help from the National Commission for Minorities (NCM).
"We want to help them control the decreasing numbers," he told IANS agency india NCM President Mohammad Shafi Qureshi.
The NCM seeks to promote early marriage and a family spirit shared among the Parsis, suffering from a propensity to singleness, migration, declining fertility and geographic separation of communities.
From January to August 2007, nationwide there were only 99 births in the community, which has a rate of 4.7 percent of children under six years and a mortality rate almost three times the birth rate.
Continuing population decline, the Zoroastrians could reach even lose the status of community in India and have to be considered "tribe" which has led many to consider whether to change the strict basis of belonging to their religion.
For the Parsis, the lineage is transmitted through the male line, and women who marry men from outside the community automatically lose their status within the Zoroastrians.
Ask the most liberal redefine the status of "Parsi" and conversions to relax and consider community members to children born of mixed marriages.
That solution, however, conflicts with the clergy purists, who came to issue a ruling in 2003 invalidating such marriages, although 35 percent of Parsis marry outside the community members.
In addition, the problem is Parsi success are the most literate community in India (97.9 percent) remained non-issues like female feticide and also have high wages in urban environments.
This social scenario helps explain the decline in fertility, high rates of late marriage, singleness or divorces that affect the community, according to a recent survey commissioned by the National Commission for Minorities.
"Our number is falling fast, and the trend must be reversed," he told IANS the former rector of the University of Bombay Mehroo Dhunjisha Bengalee, who is entrusted with leading a panel that offers solutions to the Parsees.
"The panel wants to bring together community leaders to save the Zoroastrians of extinction," he said.
"There is a tendency to expect a good match for marriage and an urgency to find jobs faster, instead of strengthening family ties to live together and follow the Zoroastrian way of life, weaving in good thoughts," he added.
The Zoroastrians arrived in India from Persia about 1,000 years ago, fleeing religious persecution, and settled in the coastal regions of Gujarat and Maharashtra, whose capital is Bombay.
In this city, the minority Parsi established the immense footprint axis: founded the first political party in the country, the bag, a steel plant, university, film studies, media and business groups like Tata, Godrej and Wadia .
India's financial capital is still the stronghold of the Zoroastrians, and there the Parsi Council has proposed a package of measures including raising aid for the third child, a proposal anomalous in a country with a serious problem of overpopulation.
And in Bombay has opened the first clinic fertility Parsee, who, as exclusive as the Zoroastrians, only supports faithful among its clients and seeks to shore the remains of "the oldest prophetic religion the world."

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