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By the year 2020, India will have achieved the distinction of being the most populated country on earth with 1200 million people. Parsis, a very unique, distinct religious minority in India with numbers less than 60,000, a community which is likely to be wiped out in less than a hundred years at its present decent. The population trend of the Parsis in Indiamimic that of the western world. A third of the Parsis remain unmarried, a third marry outside the community, a third marry very late in life (30-35 years, coupled with high divorce rates), and a large percentage of them in ages over 50, lead to a sharp decline in growth.
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We have compiled some video of Parsis/Zorastrians worth checking out.
Simply run your mose over the player to pull up forward " > " and reverse " < " controls.
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According to the last census (1991), there are 76,342 Parsis in India with current numbers less than 70,000. The largest population (around 56,000) resides in Mumbai. The city registers 300 births and 900 deaths per year for them. At some point, the Parsis, will cease to be termed a community and will be labelled a 'tribe'. The Bombay Parsi Panchayat with its immense wealth accumulated through the generous donations of the Parsis of yesteryears, hands out meager assistance to financially handicapped, aging or displaced Parsis. Such gestures may seem enormous to some, but when one asks a Parsi in India about the assistance and leadership provided by the Parsi Panchayat the story is very different.
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Many newlywed Parsis wanting to start families of their own cannot locate decent housing within the city limits. Their attempts to acquire flats through the Panchayat never materialise, years afer the initial application. Instead, stories of affluent families occuping the same residences come to light and their only error being they did not know the murky process of selection. Stories of corruption and insider bribing abound. The very race that migrated from Persia, holding to their belief in their prophet Zarathustra, arriving in a foreign land surviving for a 1000 years, impacting their host motherland, growing to adapt and prosper, now face their greatest challenge of "survival". | | |
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