4th AUG 1845 - 5th NOV 1915 SIR PHEROZESHAH MEHTA(LION OF BOMBAY)_FEROCIOUS MEHTA
Pherozeshah Mehta
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Sir Pherozeshah Mehta, KCIE (4 August 1845 – 5 November 1915) was a Parsi Indian political leader, activist, and a leading lawyer of Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay), India, who was knighted by the British Government in India for his service to the law. His political ideology was, as was the case with most of the Indian leaders of his time, moderate. Hence, he was not directly opposed to the British Crown's sovereignty, but only demanded more autonomy for Indians to self-rule.
He became the Municipal commissioner of Bombay Municipality in 1873 and its President four times – 1884, 1885, 1905 and 1911.[1]
He was chosen the president of the Indian National Congress in 1890.
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[hide]Early life[edit]
Pherozeshah Merwanjee Mehta was born on 4 August 1845 in Bombay (now Mumbai) to a Parsi business family.
Graduating from the Elphinstone College in 1864 he passed the M.A. examination, with honours, six months later, being the first Parsi to have obtained a Master's degree from the University of Mumbai. He later went to England to study law at Lincoln's Inn in London.
In 1868 he returned to India and was admitted to the bar, and soon established a practice for himself in a profession which was till then dominated by British lawyers.
It was during a legal defence of Arthur Crawford that he pointed out the need for reforms in the Bombay municipal government. Later, he drafted the Bombay Municipal Act of 1872,[2] and is thus considered the father of Bombay Municipality.[3]
Eventually, Sir Pherozeshah Mehta left his law practice to join politics.
Political and social activities[edit]
When the Bombay Presidency Association was established in 1885, Pherozeshah Mehta became its president, and remained so for the rest of his years.[4] He encouraged Indians to obtain western education and embrace its culture to uplift India. He contributed to many social causes for education, sanitation and health care in the city and around India.
Pherozeshah Mehta was one of the founders of the Indian National Congress[5] and its President in 1890, as its president he presided over Indian National Congress session held in Calcutta.[6]
Pherozeshah Mehta was nominated to the Bombay Legislative Council in 1887[7] and in 1893 a member of the Imperial Legislative Council.[8] In 1894, he was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire (CIE)[9] and was appointed a Knight Commander (KCIE) in 1904.[10]
In 1910, he started Bombay Chronicle, an English-language weekly newspaper, which became an important nationalist voice of its time, and an important chronicler of the political upheavals of a volatile pre-independent India.[11]
He saw through the British tactics of binding Parsi loyalty to the crown, by repeatedly making Parsis feel superior by showering them with decorations and praise, as by 1946 as many as 63 Parsis had been knighted. In his presidential address to Indian National Congress, he once said: "In speaking of myself as a native of this country, I am not unaware that, incredible as it may seem, Parsis have been both called and invited and allured to call themselves, foreigners."[12]
Pherozeshah Mehta died on 5 November 1915, in Bombay.
Legacy[edit]
A portrait of Pherozeshah Mehta at the Indian Parliament House, shows his importance in the making of the nation.[13] He was known as The Lion of Bombay. In Mumbai, even today Sir Pherozeshah Mehta is a much revered man, there are roads, halls and law colleges named after him. He is respected as an important inspiration for young Indians of the era, his leadership of India's bar and legal profession, and for laying the foundations of Indian involvement in political activities and inspiring Indians to fight for more self-government.
In Mehta's lifetime, few Indians had discussed or embraced the idea of full political independence from Britain. As one of the few people who espoused involvement of the activity of Indians in politics, he was nicknamed Ferocious Mehta."[12]
Books and references to Pherozeshah Mehta[edit]
- Sir Pherozeshah Mehta, a Political Biography – Homi Mody. New York, Asia Pub. House, 1963.
- Sir Pherozeshah Mehta – Hormasji Peroshaw Mody. New Delhi, Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (1967, 1963)
- Life and times of Sir Pherozeshah Mehta – V S Srinivasa Sastri, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1975.
- Pherozeshah Mehta : Socio-political ideology – S R Bakshi. New Delhi, Anmol Publications, 1991.
- Sir Pherozeshah Mehta memorial volume – Godrej N Dotivala. Bombay : Mayor's Fund Committee, 1990.
- Pherozeshah Mehta : maker of modern India -Nawaz B Mody. Allied Publishers, 1997.
- Sir Pherozeshah Mehta, a sketch of his life and career. (Spanish) Madras, G.A. Natesan 1916.
- Some unpublished & later speeches & writings of Sir Pherozeshah Mehta – POO. Jeejeebhoy. Commercial Press, 1918.
- Ten Indian Biographies, in Hindi – Surendra Sharma; Avadha Upadhyaya; Lakshminidhi Chaturvedi; P S Verma; P N Ojha; Janakosharan Verma; Ganesha Datta Gaur. Prayaga, Hindi Press, 1930.
See also[edit]
References[edit]
Sir Pherozeshah Mehta, (born Aug. 4, 1845, Bombay [now Mumbai], India—died Nov. 5, 1915, Bombay), Indian political leader, planner of the municipal charter for Bombay (now Mumbai) and founder of the English-language newspaper Bombay Chronicle (1913).
The son of a middle-class Parsi foreign trader, Mehta studied law in England for four years, was called to the bar in 1868, and then returned home. During a legal defense of a Bombay commissioner, Arthur Crawford, he noted the need for municipal government reforms and later drew up the Municipal Act of 1872, for which he was called the “father of municipal government in Bombay.” He became a commissioner himself in 1873 and served as chairman in 1884–85 and in 1905. A member of the Bombay Legislative Council from 1886, he was elected to the governor-general’s Supreme Legislative Council in 1893. He presided over the sixth session of the Indian National Congress in 1890. He was knighted in 1904. After a trip to England in 1910, Mehta was appointed a vice chancellor of the University of Bombay (now University of Mumbai). In 1911 he helped found the Central Bank of India, financed and controlled by Indian interests.
Sir Pherozeshah Mehta Facts
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Sir Pherozeshah Mehta (1845-1915) was one of the founders of the Indian National Congress, a member of the Imperial Legislative Council of India, and an outstanding leader of the Bombay municipality.
Pherozeshah Mehta was probably born in Bombay, of respectable middleclass Parsi parents. He was one of the first Indians to secure Western higher education and the first Parsi to take the master's degree. He also became a barrister-at-law in London, where he absorbed the ideals of Gladstonian liberalism, which thereafter guided his political life.
By 1872 Mehta was prominent in the Bombay municipality, and it was to his leadership that the city owed its Magna Charta, the Act of 1888. The Duke of Connaught stated that the municipal constitution of Bombay was the product of Mehta's genius. Mehta was also the founder of the Bombay Presidency Association, which, under his tutelage from 1885 to 1915, was the organizational arm of the National Congress in Bombay. In 1886 he was appointed to the Bombay Legislative Council, where he was noted for his upright and independent character and his willingness to fight for a just cause. He also came to be noted as a splendid orator.
In 1911 Mehta was chosen president of the Bombay municipality, in which he had played so prominent a role for so many years. In 1898 he was named to the Imperial Legislative Council and served with distinction until poor health forced his resignation.
Mehta was active in the founding of the Indian National Congress in 1885. He continued to play a prominent role in the affairs of the Congress until his death. In 1890, and again in 1909, he was chosen president of the Congress. For undisclosed reasons he resigned the presidency a few days before the sessions began. On two other occasions he served as chairman of the important Reception Committee, which, in those days, dominated the proceedings.
A man of broad interests, Mehta was also an elected member of the senate of Bombay University and served on the board of several pioneer Indian business concerns. His career was summarized by a leading British journalist who said that Mehta "had stood alone against the bureaucracy, had displayed a courage equal to Gokhale's, an eloquence hardly second to Surendranath Banerjea's, and power of sarcasm hardly rivaled by Motilal Ghoses's." He continued to exert great influence in the last years of his life. In 1914, when Gopal Krishna Gokhale was on the verge of arranging a harmonious resolution of the serious rift in the ranks of the Congress, it was Pherozeshah Mehta who sent an emissary to advise Gokhale against the move. Gokhale bowed to Mehta's opinion, and the rupture was not healed.
When Mehta died, the viceroy described him as "a great Parsi, a great citizen, great patriot, and a great Indian."
Further Reading on Sir Pherozeshah Mehta
Probably the best book in English on Mehta is Hormasji P. Mody, Sir Pherozeshah Mehta: A Political Biography (1921). See also V. S. S. Shastri, Life and Times of Sir Pherozeshah Mehta (1945).
Additional Biography Sources
Srinivasa Sastri, V. S. (Valangiman Sankaranarayana), Life and times of Sir Pherozeshah Mehta, Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1975.
Encyclopedia of World Biography. Copyright 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
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