Blaze ravages a slice of city’s Parsi link as flames destroy 186-yr-old fire temple
Times of India | 16 November 2025
Kolkata: The fire that ravaged Ezra Street also destroyed a slice of Parsi history with the gutting of the city's first fire temple constructed nearly two centuries ago.
The agiari or the fire temple was established in 1839 by Parsi businessman, shipbuilder, and philanthropist Rustomjee Cowasjee Banajee.
Prominent citizens of Kolkata, including his close friend Prince Dwarkanath Tagore, were present at the inauguration.
"Dastur Khurshed Bejon came from Mumbai to Kolkata on foot, carrying the ‘holy alaat' that was required for the consecration ceremony attended by all the Parsis of Kolkata. After the Jashan, he announced that the religious rites of both the Kadimi and Shahanshai sects will be performed in this dar-e-meher and he also created a separate estate for the permanent upkeep of the dar-e-meher with the trust remaining in his control and after his death in the control of his heirs in perpetuity," author Prohcy Numi Mehta wrote in the book Pioneering Parsis of Calcutta.
The private fire temple had a priest till the 1950s and continued to function until around the late 1970s when it was abandoned after the number of trustees declined and the last of the remaining descendants lost interest. While the eternal flame petered out years ago, Saturday's fire consigned the temple to eternal darkness.
"KMC mentions it as Rustomjee Cowasjee Church on its heritage list. But it was an agiari or fire temple.
Perhaps the nomenclature ‘church' came from the British and stuck because the lane next to it was named Parsee Church Street. Since it was privately owned, the current generation of Parsis has little connection to it now," recounted Bahadur Postawala. The community fire temple is Zoroastrian Anjuman Atash Adaran on Metcalfe Street.
Once a magnificent structure with a marble staircase flanked by Tuscan pillars and a facade with Doric pilasters, the temple fell into disrepair over the past five decades.
A portion of the roof — that leads to the landing beyond which lay the inner chamber — collapsed. Wooden beams that held up the roof caved in. The temple's condition worsened following the death of the last known trustee, Cursetjee Manackjee Rustomjee, in 2018.
Mehta, whose Navjote ceremony was performed at the agiari at the age of 7, recounted visiting the temple several times when she was a child: "I remember the sprawling courtyard around the agiari. Sadly, all that was encroached upon." The grounds of the temple and even portions of the temple were taken over by hundreds of shops selling decorative lights. Such was the condition that the grade-I heritage building had become difficult to locate in the labyrinth of narrow passageways through psychedelic lights strung up at shops that crammed the entrance and courtyard around the temple.
On Saturday, the shops went up in flames that consumed the last remains of the historic agiari.