In Gujarat, Parsi woman married to Muslim ‘denied funeral rights’ by their communities given Hindu cremation

4 min readSuratJun 6, 2026 08:00 PM IST

On Friday, the body was taken to a cremation home in Navsari's Veraval area. Some close family members of the Parsi woman and a number of close relatives of her husband attended the cremation ceremony. (Special Arrangement)

A 55-year-old Parsi woman who was married to a Muslim man and died on Thursday after a brief illness earlier this week was cremated as per Hindu rituals after her own community and her husband’s allegedly denied the family permission for their respective customary funeral rituals.

Sources told The Indian Express on Saturday that the woman was married to a 70-year-old retired professor of Gujarati literature who hails from Junagadh but settled in Navsari nearly 35 years ago.

The professor had taught at a local college affiliated to the Veer Narmad South Gujarat University where he met the Parsi woman, who was then studying for a Bachelor’s degree in Gujarati language in the same college. She hailed from Vansda town near Navsari and her father worked in a private firm while her mother was a government school teacher in Navsari. The professor and the student grew close and decided to get married.

A close family source said that when she told her parents about marrying the professor who was nearly 15 years older than her, the parents initially did not agree for fear of being excommunicated.

“Seeing her adamant nature, her parents gave in and the couple married,” the source said. The couple lived in a house in Navsari town, but the woman was not allowed to take part in any of the Parsi community’s social gatherings. The parents kept their distance from her for nearly 10 years, but later began to maintain contact.

“She was not allowed to attend the weddings of her older brother and younger sister a few years ago”, says a close family member. The woman did not convert to Islam and practised Zoroastrianism. The couple have no children.

On Monday, the woman fell ill and was admitted to a Parsi-run hospital in Navsari where, after undergoing treatment for a couple of days, she died on Thursday.

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Her husband contacted the Parsi community people and told them that as she followed the Parsi customs even after marriage, the final rites should be carried out as per the Parsi rituals. However, the community leaders turned down the request.

A cousin of the woman told The Indian Express, “I also requested our community leaders, but they said no. The body was kept in the morgue at the hospital. The professor contacted the caretakers of a Muslim kabristan (graveyard), who also denied him permission to bury the body as per Islamic rituals. We were in a critical situation, as for two days the body remained in the morgue in the hospital. My sister’s parents died earlier. We informed her brother and younger sister about her death and they too arrived. Seeing no way out, I called my friend Sajan Bharwad, a social worker and a Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) leader in Navsari, to help us. He proposed that if we all were in agreement, they would consign the body to flames… to which we all agreed.”

On Friday, the body was taken to a cremation home in Navsari’s Veraval area. Some close family members of the Parsi woman and a number of close relatives of her husband attended the cremation ceremony. The ashes were later handed over to her husband by the cremation home authorities.

Navsari district VHP leader Sajan Bharwad told the paper, “The woman’s cousin is my childhood friend, and he told us about the problem of being denied permission for final rites by both the communities. On humanitarian grounds, I told them that I will help in arranging for cremation of the body as per Hindu rituals, to which they agreed. I spoke with one of the trustees of the Veraval cremation home and he agreed. We then carried out the cremation as per Hindu rituals on Friday and handed over the ashes to her husband. It was a pious duty.”

Kamal Saiyed is a senior Correspondent for The Indian Express, providing extensive, on-the-ground coverage from Surat and the broader South Gujarat region and the Union territories of Daman, Diu & Dadra Nagar Haveli. With a reporting career at the publication spanning back to 2007, he has established himself as a high-authority voice on the industrial, social, and political pulse of one of India’s fastest-growing urban hubs.

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