It is Parsi new year today (August 15), Navroz. India’s Iranis, our fellow Zoroastrians who arrived a millennium later, celebrate theirs on March 21, the vernal equinox. At 57,264 in the 2011 Census, we could just about have filled Mumbai’s DY Patil stadium. After the ongoing count, we could do so even while lying down. Our numbers have been falling by nearly 18% in every all-India tally. The projection for 2101 is 9,599, relegating the community to a “tribe”.

Parsi population has showed negative growth since 1971; but even as early as 1882, the annual increase had shrank to well under 1%. Our compromised gene pool is both the cause and result of inbreeding — and it has had an alarming impact on fertility. The Union government’s 2013 ‘Jiyo Parsi’ project aimed at stemming the decline of India’s Parsi population, mainly by financing assisted reproduction. Well intentioned as that was, the initiative helped add just 550 babies in 10 years, and it is not a surprise that it had to be expanded and updated (for instance, with a new portal for beneficiaries).

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Infusing fresh blood through intermarriage (Parsis marrying outside the community) could stall this precipitous demographic decline and perhaps rescue the community from a slow extinction. Already, over one in every three Parsis has a parjaat (“outsider”) spouse; the incidence of such marriages is as high as 51% in Mumbai, as per 2024 data. But the “solution” is itself entangled in a huge controversy, splitting families as much as the larger community. Here’s why.

Being Parsi is inseparable from........

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