An Indian woman has ignited a furious row over the centuries-old tradition of using vultures to dispose of the dead by sending gruesome pictures of rotting corpses to hundreds of homes.
About three bodies a day from the dwindling Parsi community in India are left to be stripped clean at a private 18-hectare complex in Mumbai, but the practice is threatened by a dramatic decline in vulture numbers.
The issue erupted after scenes from inside the Towers of Silence were revealed by Dhun Baria, 65, who printed leaflets with grainy pictures of bodies and distributed them to 2,000 Parsi homes in Mumbai.
She said she only learned what happened behind the walls of the squat circular towers after her mother's body was taken when she died eight months ago.
"The staff told me everything. They said: `Madam, it's a hell inside,'" she said.
"I was crying a whole day and a night. It's the biggest mistake of my life that I have put my mother inside there. I thought I must help to change this system," she said.
The Towers of Silence are off limits to all save pall bearers and the vultures who once circled overhead in large numbers before they dramatically died off.
Pictures circulating within the community are understood to show several dozen bloated and blackened bodies arranged around the upper platform of a tower and decomposing bones of other bodies in a well about 6m below.
The process, known as Dakhma, dates back to ancient Iran where earth, water and fire were considered sacred and not to be polluted by the bodies of the dead.
Bodies were first put on top of mountains and later on to specially built towers. It is not practiced by Parsi migrants in other countries.
But the process that once took a few hours or days now takes months, according to reformers, with crows and snakes taking over from vultures.
Baria said she was sent pictures anonymously and received threatening telephone calls over her campaign to persuade senior figures to allow cremation or burial.
Her actions have horrified the orthodox wing of the community which condemned her for making public a sacred place for the Parsis, part of the 3,500-year-old Zoroastrian religion.
"It's not going to be a big garden of roses inside," said Anahita Desai of the orthodox World Alliance of Parsi Irani Zarthoshtis. "But we feel she's exaggerating the situation."
But the Parsis' troubles are minor compared with the vultures that have suffered the biggest decline of any animal species in the world, from millions in India to just a few thousand in little more than a decade, according to the Bombay Natural History Society.
The drop has led to continuing debate over how India's Parsi community should dispose of bodies.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
RSS