THE DYING PRACTICE OF DOKHMENASHINI

How rapid urbanisation, the vulture's habitat loss, and a 1990s painkiller led to the breakdown of a 3000-year-old religious tradition of disposing of the dead, leading to a divide between conformist and reformist Parsis.

Early 20th-century drawing of the dakhma on Malabar Hill, Bombay, Source- Wikipedia

A grief-stricken daughter’s investigation had come to show the unfortunate breakdown in the working of the Towers of Silence.  Termed 'dakhmas’, they are built spaces where the Parsis leave their dead ones, to transcend away to the celestial sphere, leaving behind their physical bodies to disintegrate.

In 2006, 65-year-old Dhun Baria had finished the final rites of her mother and started visiting the Towers of Silence in Doongerwadi, Mumbai. These are large tracts of forest land of nearly 60 acres with built spaces such as towers, prayer halls, cottages, and staff quarters. All sitting amidst thick vegetation and an extensive tree cover. During one such prayer visit, she spoke with one of the Khandiya men. The alone category or ‘caste’ of Parsis is tasked with carrying the dead to the dakhmas, clearing the remains, and maintaining them all year round. She enquired whether her mother’s body had disappeared entirely. The pallbearer laughed at her and replied, “Your mother will be here for at least two years”. A morbid response that perfectly captured the dying condition of this traditional way of disposing of the dead.

Parsis are a Zoroastrian community, who have a reclusive and introverted process of disposing of their dead. ‘Dokhmenashini’, originating in pre-Islamic Persia, is a type of sky burial, where the dead body is left exposed to the sun’s heat and the rapid scavenger eating habits of a carrion bird- the vulture. The second part of the process takes place in the dakhmas, away from the family of the dead. The Khandias carry the dead body from one of the halls up to the towers located on the hills. Here they enter through a single large doorway, up a long flight of steps, and onto the main floor of three concentric rings. The stone floor has concentric rings of spaces for various functions. The Outermost is for male bodies, the middle for female bodies and the innermost ring is where the bodies of children lie. Vultures sitting on the periphery of the tall walls of the dakhmas, then swoop down and in small groups, rapidly eat away the body, leaving only bones. The center of the Dokhma is a well or ossuary pit. The Khandias push the remains into this ‘bhandar’. From the bhandar, the dried and disintegrated bones go down to wells, four in number. This dead matter, due to rains, meets a volume of sand and charcoal in the wells, which acts like a filter allowing only water to pass through. This is the ideal way that this process worked, unfortunately only up until 2002, when one of the last vultures was seen circling the towers.

Diclofenac, a 1990s painkiller drug prescribed for livestock is the primary reason for completely decimating and making the vultures disappear from the habitat of the dakhmas. It acted as a fatal poison for the carrion birds, who fed on the cattle remains and died of renal complexities. Coupled with rapid urbanisation and habitat destruction, dokhmenashini which depended on these birds was broken and thus became inefficient. Modern solutions such as solar reflectors to concentrate the heat also did not completely resolve the issue since bodies have to be dragged multiple times to disintegrate uniformly. Other solutions such as chemicals also proved inadequate and dangerous for the khandias., who slipped on the resultant sludge from the chemicals The solar method is still in use in combination with a stench-masking strategy of concentrated flowers in multiple pots and ozone gas. A proposal to establish an aviary and breeding centre also did not progress beyond its early stages, due to the high expenditure it would incur. From the introduction of diclofenac to the death of the vultures to finally the slow death of this precious process of the Parsis, this progression of man-made consequences has now led to a divide in approach and beliefs.

Reformist Parsis and their priests were in a tussle with the conservative and traditional groups. This led to the establishment of separate prayer halls for Parsis who wish to take the cremation route, and crematoriums to dispose of the dead but a high disregard by the conservative priests towards the reformist priests and the common folk ensued. As for dear Dhun Baria’s beliefs, she did not want the traditional way to be scrapped but rather give the alternate option of cremation or burial within the large extents of Doongerwadi and other such Towers of Silence.

Adopting an informed and farsighted solution is the need of the hour while avoiding what happened to the vultures through a narrow understanding of the fragility of our natural ecosystems and the interdependence of man, animal, and plant species. Thus, live and let live or rather die and let die.