“The heritage value of most of these places would probably be about the external structure and the façade. Inside is the centre with the fire, around which there are wings from where one can view it,” says Meher Rafaat, an environmentalist and a member of the Association of Inter-Married Zoroastrians (AIMZ), offering an insight into what these structures are like from the inside. Rafaat says the move will protect the structures and their surroundings from sale or commercialization.

On the age-old controversy about entry into fire temples, Rafaat opines that the Zoroastrian religion is one of inclusion. “We are a religion of converts. In Iran, anyone is allowed to enter a fire temple, and there is nothing in the scriptures that indicates that it should be otherwise in India,” she says.

Zoroastrian historian Khojeste Mistree, who represents the orthodoxy, says there are four main sections in a fire temple. “The outermost section is the physical world, followed by the psychological world, the spiritual world and the divine world,” he says. Mistree adds that fire temples are made with a definite interplay of measurements, and that while there is not much by way of art on the inside, protecting these structures will help them retain their cultural identity.

Mistree believes that the rules of inclusion are best left the way they are. “We don’t allow non-worshippers in for reasons of rituals and because there are formulae of prayers one has to recite on entering, which non-Parsis don’t know. We must see everything within its context,” he says.

His wife Firoza, a member of the World Association of the Parsi Irani Zarthoshtis (WAPIZ), says that the fire temples are simple structures, with a very minimalist feel to them. “Of the 47 structures listed, 80 per cent represent a period of architectural history of Mumbai that can never be repeated,” she says.

According to Jehangir Patel, editor of the magazine Parsiana, the structures may not be architecturally outstanding but are special nonetheless. “Mainly depending on the consecration of the fires within them, there are three different kinds of fire temples — Atash Behrams, Atash Adrians and Atash Dadgahs,” he says. The Atash Behram fires are created from 16 different sources, taking up to 1,128 days to be created. The Atash Adrian fires take over three weeks to prepare, and the Atash Dadgah fires take a day or three to be created.

Once fires are established in temples, they burn unabated. “The room where the fire is has windows on all sides, except the North, and usually, the fire faces the East. Some of these fires have been burning for over 150 years,” says Marespand Dadachanji, a priest at the Vatchagandhi fire temple at Hughes road.