Phil Hazlewood

Agence France Presse

MUMBAI: High in the hills of western India, Homi Dhalla looks around the Bharot Caves complex, pointing out the cracked and crumbling stone in the roughly-hewn rocks.

“If we wish to save these caves, the world community has to stand up and do something about it now before it’s too late,” the founder and president of the World Zarathushti Cultural Foundation says, at his Mumbai home. He plays a web video that fades to a still image of two Parsi priests worshipping in one of the stark grey vaults.

Time and neglect have left the ancient caves in a dangerous state of disrepair that now threaten them as a place of pilgrimage for India’s fire-worshipping Parsi community.

In the 14th century, their ancestors fled to the caves with the sacred fire of their Zoroastrian religion, to escape a Mughal invasion.

According to legend, the “Iranshah” – the first fire to be consecrated in India – remained alight throughout the 12 long years they were there.

So far, 3,000 people have signed a petition on the www.zoroastrians.net portal – where Dhalla’s video is shown – which will be sent to the Archaeological Survey of India, urging it to repair the protected caves.

“If we have 7,000 to 8,000 [signatories] I will be happy,” he says. “There is an urgent need to conserve the caves for posterity without delay or else this sacred heritage will be lost forever.”

Whether the caves near Sanjan, close to the state border of Maharashtra and Gujarat, survive or collapse is not just dependent on funding.

The project – and others like it – more than anything depends on people.

Zoroastrians, who follow the prophet Zarathustra and worship Ahura Maza as the creator of the universe, fled persecution in ancient Iran and arrived in India in the 10th century.

They have risen to prominence over the centuries as industrialists, philanthropists, teachers, musicians, artists and writers in India and abroad.

Famous Parsis include the conductor Zubin Mehta and Queen’s singer, Freddie Mercury.

The population of India’s most successful and celebrated minority has been in steady decline, however, with numbers down to just under 70,000 in India, according to the last census in 2001.

As the birth rate falls and Parsis marry outside the community or migrate, experts say they face a race against time to catalogue the distinctive religion and culture for future generations.

Kainaz Amaria has seen the decline first hand, particularly in rural areas where once-thriving Parsi communities have died out and their homes and fire temples now lie abandoned.

The 32-year-old photojournalist, who comes from a family of Indian Parsi priests, arrived in Mumbai last year and has been documenting everything from wedding ceremonies to water rituals in the close-knit community.

“I like to focus on customs, cultures and traditions that are typically Parsi,” said Amaria, who is in India on the US-government’s Fulbright scholarship program as part of her master’s degree in visual communication.

Comparing her experience growing up on the US west-coast with Parsi life in India, she said all it took was her parents to emigrate and one generation for some rituals to disappear.

“If they’re not documented they’ll fade away,” she said. “This is my little way of giving something back to the community. I feel a very strong sense of responsibility.”

The decline in Parsi numbers doesn’t mean that their tradition has been left unpreserved.

The Zoroastrian Information Center has been built in the coastal town of Udvada in Gujarat, where the “Iranshah” still burns at one of the most important Parsi fire temples in the world.

The UNESCO-backed Parzor project has saved damaged or decayed ancient manuscripts at the Meherjirana Library in nearby Navsari and transferred them onto microfilm.

It is also recording Parsi oral-history and charting the lives of famous Parsis, while scholars from around the world take an increased interest in the endangered Parsi-Gujarati dialect.

Dhalla has led archaeological digs in Sanjan, where the first Zoroastrians settled, and unearthed artifacts shedding light on their trading past.

His foundation’s other areas of concern include recording and reviving religious chants and traditional Parsi songs, calligraphy and promoting the community’s linguistic heritage.

Other work includes new breeding programs for vultures, which Parsis depended on to eat their dead on “Towers of Silence” because they face near extinction in India.

The head of the Parzor project, Shernaz Cama, sounded pessimistic as she spoke of lost skills in the Parsi community such as traditional embroidery.

“Whatever one is trying to do it’s a race against time,” said the head of the project. “This has been our biggest problem.”