The Parsees in India and elsewhere have zoroastrian faith according to which when some one dies in their family, the dead body of the person concerned is placed in the open to be consumed by vultures, and this they think is the best way of performing the death ritual. Such a ritual is called by them as ‘Tower of Silence’. There is now an environmental problem coming in their way of doing it. The vultures in states like Gujarat and Mumbai in India, where Parsees are in a bigger measure of population, are facing acute shortage of vultures whose number is dwindling day by day. This results into dead body of an individual particular Parsee family lying in the open for several days remaining unconsumed. As an alternative to this problem, the Parsees are now opting for other measures like cremation and burial of the dead body instead of dropping it in the open with emission of a bad smell for a longer time. Some hard necked orthodox Parsee families are opposed to it but majority of them are now going for burial and cremation as an option.
4 comments:
Very peculiar custom.
Does this apply to other communities also.
such practice should be eradicated from society
Option of alternative thought is a requirement of the time because when the parsees would have adopted such ritual,I am of the opinion that by that time the population of them would have been very short and in comparison of human population the vulture would have been enough.Now geographical circumstances have become widely changed,therefore the new option is best than the old.
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