India's Supreme Court to Hear 2021 Petition Challenging Parsi Community Membership Rules

India's Supreme Court is scheduled to hear a case filed in 2021 that challenges the rule limiting Parsi community membership to those born to Parsi fathers. Sanaya Dalal, 43, and Rishi Kishnani, 48, both raised in Mumbai's Dadar Parsi Colony, filed the petition after their son Aaresh was denied membership at the Dadar Parsi Gymkhana once he turned five.

The couple had taken Aaresh to the club until that age under a policy allowing children under five to enter without membership.

Aaresh, now 12, underwent a Navjote initiation ceremony. Dalal and Kishnani say he remains unaware of the court case. The 1908 Bombay High Court ruling established that only Parsi men can pass on religious identity, excluding converts and children of Parsi mothers with non-Parsi fathers.

That precedent originated from the case of Suzanne Brière, who converted to Zoroastrianism after marrying into the Tata family and was denied burial at Bombay's Tower of Silence. Brière is buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. The 1908 judgment has governed access to Zoroastrian places of worship, welfare programs, housing, and education for more than a century.

In 2010, Goolrokh Gupta filed a suit after her interfaith marriage prevented her from performing her parents' last rites. India's Supreme Court issued an interim order in 2017 allowing her to enter Zoroastrian places of worship. In 2017, author Prochy Mehta filed a case in the Calcutta High Court after her intermarried daughter's children were denied entry to a Kolkata fire temple.

That case remains pending. India's Parsi population stood at more than 100,000 in 1941 and had fallen to fewer than 60,000 by 2011, according to census data. Experts predict fewer than 25,000 Parsis could remain in India by 2050.