Abstract
The autonomy of religious communities in India concerning the realm of personal law allows the direct influence of religion on the configuration of gender relations. This is also the case for the community of Parsi Zoroastrians, an economic elite within Mumbai, whose patrilineal concept of community is legitimated with reference to religious tradition. Liberal Parsis criticize patrilineality and call for gender equity. This article offers a reconstruction of the discursive process and the main arguments therein, which allows a characterization of the communal configurations between gender and religion, and their relations to tradition and change.