Jiyo Parsi: Is it a case of
too little, and too late?
MULTIPLICITY
MANOJ R NAIR manoj.nair@hindustantimes.com
ePaper, Hindustan Times (Bombay), Friday, 14 Nov 2014, Page 09]
A project called ‘Jiyo Parsi’ hopes to stop the steep decline in Parsi-Zoroastrian numbers.
The community’s numbers reached a peak in 1941 when the census counted 1,14,890 of them. Since then, says Ava Khullar,
a Delhibased sociologist who has done a study on her community’s demographics, the numbers have declined by nearly 10% every
decade.
In comparison, other Indians have increased their numbers by nearly a fifth every decade to grow more than three-fold in
numbers between 1951 and 2011.
The 2001 census counted only 69,601 ParsiZoroastrians. The slide in numbers have continued since then and could have
even gathered more pace, says Khullar who estimates that their decennial decline could now be around 12%. “Actually it (the
demographics) has become worse,” says Khullar.
The decline is explainable to various factors, including late marriages. Khullar says that, unlike other Indian groups, there is
very little family or peer pressure on young people to get married and procreate. Piroj Wadia, a resident of Duncan Road, has a
story that explains this issue.
“I was speaking to a friend who has a son in his late twenties. I asked her whether he was planning to get married; she told
me it is too early,” says Wadia.
So, while marriage is almost a universal practice among other Indian groups, one out of every five Parsis has chosen to
remain single. “20 to 30% of the members do not marry. All the demographic studies show that the number of unmarried persons
is high,” says Khullar.
Many reasons for t he number decline are not unique to the community. As a population group becomes more educated,
gender equal and prosperous, the proportion of children in the group declines and, after a few decades, the population starts
declining as the numbers of deaths and births converge.
One example is Japan where the population peaked in 2008 and has been declining, although at a very slow rate, since then.
Some reasons for the population decline in Japan are similar: fewer marriages; late marriages; and fewer children per couple.
In 2013, according to a survey done by the health ministry there, the number of births was 1.03 million; the number of
deaths in the year was 1.27 million, implying that the population that year declined by more than 2,00,000. But there are more
than 125 million Japanese; there are only around 60,000 Parsi-Zoroastrians.
“The main problem is that the birth rate (the ratio of babies born every year compared to the total population) is low. We are
becoming an aged community with more deaths than births. When that happens, no community can survive,” says Khullar who
adds that any efforts to improve the community’s population situation is ‘too little, too late.”
But Khullar, who is a member of the executive council of Parzor, the UNESCO Parsi-Zoroastrian project, which is
implementing the ‘Jiyo Parsi’ scheme, is hoping that the plan will bring them back from the brink of extinction.
“This is what Jiyo Parsi hopes to achieve. We want the programme to work like an advocacy that will convince the youth to
marry and have children,” says Khullar.
There is scepticism whether the advertising campaign and the other elements of the scheme will stop the six-decade long
decline.
Some have called for reforms in religious laws that exclude children of women married t o nonZoroastrians. Dinshaw
Tamboly, former trustee of the Bombay Parsi Punchayet, their largest representative body, says, “The decline can be slowed, but
we are at a point of no return,” says Tamboly. “But the people who are promoting the ‘Jiyo Parsi’ scheme are doing a good job.”
manoj.nair@hindustantimes.com