Click to play videoMumbai: “Raving up your night life†screams a billboard at motorists passing the Towers of Silence at Doongerwadi where the dead of the Parsi community are laid to rest.
The garish hoardings in the 55-acre forest have angered Paris, who have been using the Towers of Silence since 1673. The Bombay Parsi Panchayat has rented out space for hoardings, so that it can get funds for maintaining the vast 50-acre property.
Many Parsis don't like this venture. "This is the place where our dead rest. We should not be generating money out of it and if the Panchayat needs money we would have contributed readily,†says Niloufer.
Community members accuse the panchayat of commercialising the sacred place and claim the huge hoardings violate the Supreme Court order which declared the Towers of Silence as a heritage site.
"We must leave the tower of Silence alone. Its not meant for commercial purposes," says Sam Patel, a former ACP.
The panchayat gets Rs 2 lakh monthly as rent from a hoarding but needs Rs 30 lakh annually. By planning more hoardings, the panchayat would make close to Rs 90 lakh a year—three times its annual requirement. Parsis says this is crass commercialisation of the Towers of Silence.
The panchayat for long claimed that there was nothing illegal about the hoardings, but now stung by the criticism it is now reviewing the issue.
Just as it seems, these overshadowing billboards are the most visible sign of a community fighting a losing battle to retain its culture and tradition.
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