WHEN Anju Dawar, a Parsi lawyer based in Ahmedabad married a colleague, she was expelled from the community. ‘‘At best her husband will convert but will this not dilute the very essence of the religion?’’ asks her father,

R Dawar.

Air hostess Feroza who married a pilot in Mumbai too was expelled from the community but when her husband died a few months ago in an accident, her parents in Ahmedabad reluctantly accepted her and her children as Parsis. Others are not that accommodating. ‘‘We cannot accept the children of our girls who marry outside the community,’’ says F H Kavina, a trustee with the Ahmedabad Parsi Panchayat.

This is a question that has created a rift that’s pitted Mumbai against Ahmedabad. The Ahmedabad Parsi Panchayat claims the Federation of Parsi Zoroastrian Anjumans of India, the governing body of the Parsi Panchayats across the country, is thrusting its reformist agenda on the entire Parsi community.

The clash between the ‘reformist’ Bombay Parsi Panchayat (BPP) and its allied panchayats from Delhi, Madras, Hyderabad, Secunderabad and Jamshedpur and some fifty ‘traditionalist’ panchayats of which Gujarat has a majority, goes back to a December 2004 meeting of the Panchayats at Thane. At the meeting the ‘reformist’ Panchayats initiated a change in the century-old Parsi Constitution by bringing in a new voting pattern in the Federation. This, the Ahmedabad Parsi Panchayat, believes will leave Gujarati and other ‘traditional’ Parsis in minority.

The major reformist agenda includes legalising adoption and accepting children of Parsi girls who are married to non-Parisis, a move many say can increase the Parsi population . ‘‘But we have told the reformists in no uncertain terms that we won’t allow this,’’ says Areez Khambatta, president of the Ahmedabad Parsi Panchayat.

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