The Sedreh and the Kusti

The two garments given at navjote carry the ceremony's whole theology on the body. The sedreh, always white, is read as a garment of light and a reminder of the soul's purity at birth, and its small breast pocket is popularly explained as a place to store the good deeds a person gathers through life. The kusti, woven from lamb's wool in a fixed pattern, is tied and retied around the waist over the sedreh several times daily, at the start of prayers and on waking, with a set sequence of untying and retying accompanied by specific recitations that renew the wearer's commitment to the Zoroastrian creed of good thoughts, good words and good deeds each time it is performed.

Community practice on eligibility has shifted over the twentieth and twenty first centuries: many Parsi authorities restrict navjote to children with a Zoroastrian father, reflecting the community's long standing and still contested position that it does not accept converts, a stance debated within the diaspora as intermarriage has become common. Where navjote is performed for a child of mixed parentage or, rarely, for an adult convert, that has been a matter of active dispute among Zoroastrian priests and lay councils rather than settled practice, and the disagreement is part of the wider unresolved question of who counts as Zoroastrian at all.