Karachi:
From a community closed for his Zoroastrian faith in Karachi, Elisha Amra, 22, has revised many friends migrating abroad while the old Parsi community decreases.
Soon, the film student hopes to join them – becoming one more loss against the Zoroastrian people of Pakistan Parsi, a community that goes back their roots to the Persian refugees of Iran there is more than a millennium.
“My plan is to go abroad,” said Amra, adding that she wanted to study for a master’s degree in a country without the restrictions of a Muslim majority conservative society. “I want to be able to express myself freely,” she added.
Zoroastrism, founded by Zarathoustra, was the predominant religion of the old Persian Empire, until the rise of Islam in the seventh century. In Pakistan, once the Parsi community had up to 15,000 to 20,000 people, but now the number is 900 people in Karachi and a few dozen other elsewhere.
Amra recognizes that her life is more comfortable than many in Pakistan – Parsis are generally an easy and very educated community. But she says that she wants to escape the daily challenges that assaulted the city with 20 million people – cuts of power, water shortages with violent street crimes.
Zubin Patel, 27, a parsi working in electronic commerce in Karachi, has seen more than two dozen friends Parsi leave Karachi abroad in the last three years. “More than 20-25 of my friends lived in Karachi, they all started to migrate,” he said.
It is not unique to the Parsis – many young qualified Pakistani people want to find jobs abroad to escape a country embraced in political uncertainty and security challenges, an economy in difficulty and a lamentable infrastructure.
The number of highly qualified Pakistanis who left for jobs abroad have more than doubled according to the latest figures from Pakistan Economic Survey – 20,865 in 2022, at 45,687 in 2023.
Parsis find it difficult to adapt in a rapidly evolving world. “There is a better chance of finding a Zoroastrian partner in Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom and America than in Pakistan,” said Dinshaw Behram Avari, 57, the head of one of the most important Parsi families.
Avari, who directs a chain of hotels, underlines that the population of Parsi de Toronto is about 10 times greater than Karachi. He said that a wave of parsis had left Pakistan under the military rule of the hard line of Ziaul Haq in the 1980s.
Since then, violence has targeted religious minorities and, although Startis said that they have not been targeted, they remain suspicious. Avari suggested that the high levels of community education and the Western perspectives of life meant a lot abroad, while for those who remain, the size of the family is shrinking.
“Couples are more interested today in taking care of their career; they are not interested in the family,” he said. “When they get married, they will have a child – and a child is not enough to have a positive impact on the population.”
The members of Parsi were among the pioneers of the navigation and hotel industries in Karachi, and the historic district of the city era is dotted with Parsi buildings, including hospitals and schools. But as the community decreases, many buildings collapsed.
For many among the young generation, the only traction that remains to keep them in Pakistan is their aging parents. Patel said he would leave if he could. “It would be a difficult decision,” he said. “But if I had an opportunity that would give my parents … a healthy lifestyle, then I would obviously go”.
