Some suggestions to combat intermarriage
Fellow Traditional Mazdayasni Zarathushtris,
We dont hate. We just disapprove and say intermarriage is a sin and a destructor of any small community. To willingly destruct your father's lineage is considered a moral and spiritual crime in any ancient community around the world.
For eg. the aborigines in the outback used to cast out any children of intermarriage between aborigine and white. These products were not considered to be aborigine. Several aborigine leaders said in the late 1800s "I am proud to be a full blooded aborigine".
If a man goes out and holds up a bank, the police do not "hate" the man. However, they say what he has done is wrong and should be punished. In the same way, when a man/woman intermarries, we should not "hate" the person but still say that what he/she has done is wrong and will be punished in the spiritual world.
In this physical world, as far as possible, there should be non-cooperation with intermarrieds. Our children should be taught that it is a sin to inter-marry, whether man or woman.
Also, inter-marriages are not love. Most of them are nothing but convenience or lust.
A Parsi girl I knew in my childhood in Andheri started to work for a non-Zoroastrian restaurant. The non-Zoroastrian got her drunk and seduced her. When she was with child, he married her and then he started to live in Panthaki Baug.
Is that love?
The girl was fair and beautiful, so the non-Zoro liked her, and he also obviously liked the house she lived in.
It is wrong to take the name of love and then sin. True love can never go against religion, it can never destroy something which is good and noble. Therefore, it means that intermarriage is not true love.
We have to understand why intermarriage is happening. It is an after-effect of the modern age. Intermarriages have rocketed due to the age of evil we are in today.
The very culture in India today, based on modern foreign ideas of a "mixed" society, has helped towards that. The educated young - educated in the modern education and influenced heavily by Western ideas - do not believe in the ancient rules of preserving a people's identity. The ideas of "mixing peoples" have come from the modern foreign countries which call themselves "melting pots". In these countries, the rate of inter-marriage is astonishing - people have forefathers from 10 different countries, and dont know their own identity.
The Indians are following the foreigners, and as a result inter-marriage is increasing.
Suggestions to combat intermarriage
I thought about this a year or so ago - We print out pamphlets explaining why intermarriage is wrong and distribute them in colonies among the young.
Take out an ad in the Jame/Parsiana about the Zoroastrian Matrimonial page at http://www.ParsiZoroastrianism.com. Make more people aware of it. Tell your Zoroastrian friends about it.
Take out a full page ad in Jame/Parsiana against intermarriage.
Do we have funds for all this? Can we get funds? A Parsi charity has given 2 lakh rupees to the inter-marrieds. Why not to preserve our identity and help marriage within our community? Who can take the lead in Mumbai in this regard?
Let us actively fight intermarriage. We have to fight a propaganda war. Even if we convince one Zoroastrian couple to preserve their forefather's lineage, it will be a great deed.