With the rapid decline of vultures in India, Iran and Pakistan, traditional Zoroastrian burial rites are becoming increasingly impossible.
For thousands of years, Parsi communities have traditionally disposed of their dead in facilities called . Dakuma, Or “Tower of Silence.” These circular high-rise structures are designed to protect the soil and the sacred elements of earth, fire, and water from being contaminated by corpses.
The bodies are placed at the top of the tower, where they decompose, and vultures and other carrion eat the flesh of the bones. The bones are bleached by the sun and wind for up to a year before being collected in an ossuary in the center of the tower. Lime accelerates their gradual decomposition, and the remaining substances are filtered through coal and sand along with rainwater runoff, and then flow into the sea.
“We can no longer fulfill our tradition,” said Hoshan Kapadia, an 80-year-old Karachi resident. “We lost our way of life, our culture.”
Kapadia explained that the purpose behind Parsi burial customs is to “have less and give more” to the world. “The whole idea is not to pollute the planet,” he said.
Built on a riverine ecosystem on the west bank of the Indus River Delta, Karachi is home to only 800 Parsis out of a population of 20 million. Only two of his Towers of Silence remain in the city, both barely functioning.
Shirin, another Karachi Parsi, said, “The mystical eyes of the vulture are believed to aid the soul’s passage into space, and offering one’s deceased body to the bird is the ultimate act of charity for devout Zoroastrians.” “It is considered as such,” he said.
“Karachi’s massive urbanization and environmental changes have forced us to rethink burial rituals. duffmas It was usually built on top of a hill, away from urban areas.
“Our traditions are disappearing. As environmental changes intensify, our culture is dying out.”
Unlike many scavengers, vultures are classified as “obligatory.” This means that they rely solely on finding and eating animal carcasses, rather than opportunistically switching between predation and scavenging like mammals.
In recent decades, vultures Massive death toll across Indian subcontinentThis is primarily due to inadvertent poisoning with the anti-inflammatory drug diclofenac, which is widely administered to cattle in India and Pakistan.
When these cows die, vultures feed on the carcasses and ingest the drug. This causes painful swelling and inflammation in the vulture, which eventually leads to kidney failure and death. A 2007 study estimated that about 97% of the three major vulture species in India and surrounding areas are extinct.
India’s Parsi community is exploring captive breeding of vultures and the use of “solar concentrators” to speed up the decomposition of carcasses. Solar concentrators only work when the weather is clear, so some people have been forced to choose burial instead.
“Parsis of Karachi,” Kapadia said. [are forced to] The two Towers of Silence in Karachi are largely non-functional, so choose alternative disposal methods such as cremation or burial in a designated Parsi cemetery. ” He added that when the number of vultures decreased in the Tower of Silence, some local residents suggested capturing small groups of vultures in aviaries to continue the traditional practice.
To prevent the extinction of vulture species, scientists have recommended banning the use of diclofenac in livestock, a step that India, Pakistan and Nepal have taken so far. In India, captive-bred vultures are being released into the wild in an effort to boost the endangered vulture population.
