The Parsee community, one of the most educated and influential sectors of Indian society, celebrated Navroze, the Iranian New Year, yesterday with the customary zeal for the onset of spring.

Thousands of families in Bombay, the city with the highest concentration of the followers of the ancient Zoroastrian faith, gathered in their best attire at baugs — gated trust-owned complexes — to offer prayers, exchange greetings and partake of a grand feast.

Behind the positive rituals of thanksgiving, however, lies a lurking fear that one of the world’s oldest religions is heading rapidly towards extinction through a combination of inbreeding, infighting and the distractions of modern living.

From a high of 114,900 in 1941, the Indian Parsee population — which fled persecution by the Arabs in Persia in the 10th century — has shrunk by about 10 per cent a decade, while the wider population has grown by 21 per cent.

The latest census, in 2001, recorded 69,600. Demographic studies, finding a third of the community over the age of 60 and its highly educated women increasingly choosing career over children, have predicted that there will be 21,000 left by 2021. There are estimated to be between 150,000 and 200,000 Parsees worldwide.

Now a Bangalore-based biotech company has begun a £15 million genetic study to try to map the hereditary diseases that plague the bloodline. Led by Avestha Gengraine Technologies, it will involve the collection of DNA samples from community members over the next five years, together with complete genealogical and medical histories.

The database, the largest of its kind, would be used by scientists to predict the onset of new ailments and allow them to develop treatments more quickly. The next generation of Parsees could use it as a tool to help them to avoid passing on genetic defects. “It is an ambitious study, but this is the last chance to get a sample from a pure genetic pool,” Villoo Morawala Patell, the study leader and a Parsee, said. “Someone needs to do this now because every year we wait is another 1,000 to 2,000 gone.”

Inbreeding, caused by the continued prohibition in orthodox quarters of inter-community marriage and the sanction of unions between first cousins, has led to a series of specific genetic flawsn among Parsees. These include an enzyme deficiency and the greater likelihood of Parsee women suffering breast cancer, reduced fertility and ovarian diseases.

Parsees count among their number high-profile Indian industrialists such as Adi Godrej, Nusli Wadia, Pallonji Mistry and Ratan Tata, the chairman of the family-run conglomerate that owns Tetley Tea and the former British Steel.

Other well-known Parsees include Rohinton Mistry, the novelist, Zubin Mehta, the conductor, Boman Irani, the Bollywood actor, and Freddie Mercury, the singer. The former Queen frontman, born Farrokh Bulsara in Zanzibar and brought up in India, was given a traditional Zoroastrian funeral upon his death in 1991.

Divided into three sects — Faslis, Kadims and Sehensahis — Parsees settled on the western Indian coast and came of age during colonial times, flourishing as conduits between the Indians and the British rulers. Possessed of a strong work ethic and entrepreneurial flair that led them to being dubbed the Jews of India, they rose to the top of commercial and professional fields.

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