Last rites of Ratan Tata will not be done as per Parsi tradition, know why Paris leave dead bodies on tower for vultures

Though Ratan Tata belonged to the Parsi community, his last rites will not follow traditional Parsi customs. Instead, he will be cremated at an electric crematorium in Worli, Mumbai.

India is mourning the loss of one of its most revered industrialists, Ratan Tata, who passed away at the age of 86 on October 9 at Breach Candy Hospital in Mumbai after a brief illness. Though Ratan Tata belonged to the Parsi community, his last rites will not follow traditional Parsi customs. Instead, he will be cremated at an electric crematorium in Worli, Mumbai. His body has been taken to his residence in Colaba, where his family members, along with Special CP Deven Bharti, gathered to pay their respects. A portable cold storage mortuary has been arranged, and his body will be kept at the National Centre for Performing Arts (NCPA) until 4 pm for the public to offer their final tributes.

Ratan Tata’s cremation will take place at the Worli electric crematorium, marking a departure from the traditional Parsi method of disposing of the deceased. Typically, Parsis follow a ritual known as “Dakhma-nashini,” where the deceased are placed in a Tower of Silence, where vultures consume the body in accordance with their beliefs about the purity of earth and fire.

What is the Tower of Silence?

In the Parsi tradition, the Dakhma, or Tower of Silence, is a sacred place where the bodies of the deceased are placed as part of the ancient funeral practice called Dokhmenashini. The Parsis believe that both fire and earth are sacred and should not be polluted by dead bodies. As a result, they avoid cremation and burial, which are seen as defiling elements of nature.

In the Dokhmenashini practice, the dead body is laid out atop the Tower of Silence, exposed to the sun’s rays. Vultures, eagles, and crows then consume the body, a process that is considered a natural and respectful way of returning the deceased to nature. By allowing scavenger birds to eat the corpse, the Parsis ensure that neither fire nor earth is contaminated by death, adhering to their religious belief in preserving the purity of these elements.

However, in recent years, due to urbanization and a decline in the vulture population, some Parsis have shifted away from this practice, opting for alternative methods such as cremation, as in the case of Ratan Tata.