Parsis turn to technology for disposal of bodies

Vanishing vultures pose problems for the community

Tower of Silence, the final resting place of 1,200 member Parsi community in Hyderabad, now has a solar concentrator to speed up decomposition of mortal remains due to dwindling numbers of vultures that used to devour flesh.

Vultures have been almost wiped out in India during the last 15 years and have not been sighted in Andhra Pradesh at least for three years now. Vultures dwindled as they had consumed cattle carcass which had been administered diclofenac drug by farmers to relieve them of pain. The presence of the drug in the carcass proved fatal for vultures.

Diclofenac is toxic to any vulture that feeds on the carcass of recently treated cattle. The drug was banned for veterinary use in India, Nepal and Pakistan in 2006, but it continues to be sold and used illegally today.

According to Ervad H Bharucha, head priest of Chenoy Fire Temple Zoroastrian scripture and tradition, a corpse is a host for decay. Consequently, scripture enjoins the safe disposal of the dead in a manner such that a corpse does not pollute the air, water and earth. “Although the 8,000-year-old system of disposing of our dead has not collapsed in the absence of vultures. If they resurface, we will be very happy,” Bharucha added.
“If the vulture population grows, we will do away with the solar concentrators. Vultures eat away the flesh in an hour or two but solar concentrators take a few days. While in the summer it is much faster, the duration gets prolonged in the winter,” says Omin Debara, a Zoroastrian.

Parsis here are divided on the use of solar concentrators. While some conservatives feel that leaving the body for nature is the right way to dispose of the dead, the liberal minded say that the community should move ahead due to disappearance of vultures. Some are also proposing electric crematoria.

“We might be a progressive community, but we cannot disown our rituals. A majority of us would still like to be left at the Towers of Silence after death,” says Gulbanu Yadgar Chenoy, president, Parsi Anjuman.

However, a small number of Parsis has started burying the deceased. "Why not? When there are not enough vultures to eat the bodies, it is an insult to the dead to let their bodies rot for  months,” says Farida Tampal, a Parsi and an environmentalist. But the priest at the Fire Temple at M G Road, Keki Dastoor will not have any of this. “Cremation desecrates the sacred element of fire, burying defiles the earth and drowning pollutes the
water,” he says.

Facing similar predicament, Bombay Parsi Panchayat has tied up with the Bombay Natural History Society to start vulture breeding centres in the Tower of Silence area in Mumbai.
Adding to the woes of the Parsi comm­unity, which is shrinking, the ambitious vulture breeding at the centre located in the Nehru Zoological Park has not taken off. Conceived on the lines of the vulture breeding centre at Pinjore in Haryana, the Rs 41-lakh project funded by the Central Zoo Authority took off in 2010.

Nearly four years after the programme was launched, the results have not been encouraging. Dashing long-awaited hopes of breeding a chick that was born in captivity died due to a congenital birth defect at the vulture breeding centre in the zoo. Officials said it was crucial for the chick to survive as that would have initiated captive breeding of the endangered birds. Zoo authorities said that the post-mortem revealed that the chick’s
elementary canal was missing.

After that the first egg laid in the breeding centre by a white backed vulture was damaged as it fell from the nest to the ground. “When the female went in search of food, the male vulture pulled out some twigs from the nest and the egg fell down,” said Shekhar Reddy, curator (in-charge) of the zoo park. Though experts said that once the first egg is lost, the birds usually lay a second one but that did not happen at the zoo park.

The centre in Hyderabad, currently operating in collaboration with the Centre for Cellular and Micro Biology (CCMB), has two male and three female vultures aged over 20 years. Officials said the breeding is likely to begin again in the next season starting October.

They said that this was the first time the egg was laid in the centre. As per the CCMB plan white backed vultures would be reproduced through artificial insemination. “To this end, the Central Zoo Authority is about to transfer a flock of vultures from Gujarat to the Nehru Zoological Park in Hyderabad,” said CCMB Deputy Director S Shivaji.

Saving Asia’s Vultures from Extinction (SAVE), a consortium of like-minded,  regional and international organisations, created to oversee and co-ordinate conservation, campaigning and fund-raising activities to help the plight of south Asia’s vultures says that just 15 years ago there were thousands of vultures, now they’ve almost completely disappeared. “Vultures might not be the prettiest birds, but does that make it all right for us to let them disappear,” it asks.

Three species of South Asia’s vultures have declined by 97 per cent and one of the species by 99.9 per cent. Their decl­i­ne has been quicker than that of any  other wild bird. SAVE argues that in the absence of scavengers like vultures feral dogs have moved into carcass dumps increasing the spread of diseases such as rabies. Also, traditional sky burials of some Himalayan and Parsi communities cannot be carried out.