• Capt. Praveen Davar

Pherozeshah Mehta, whose 179th birth anniversary falls today, was amongst the giants of the independence movement in the pre - Gandhi era which ended with the passing away of stalwarts like Dadabhai Naoroji, Gopal Krishna Gokhale and Lokmanya Tilak.

Sir Pherozeshah Mehta was the sixth President of the Indian National Congress founded in 1885 at Bombay (now Mumbai), his birth place as well as his karma Bhoomi. He was born on August 4, 1845, in a family of merchants. After his early education at Bombay, his father Merwanji Mehta sent him to England to study law at the Lincoln’s Inn, from where he was called to the Bar in 1868. During his four years in London, he frequented the home of Dadabhai Naoroji (later the President of Indian National Congress) who was to remain a lifelong influence on the young Pherozeshah in moulding his liberal outlook. Alongwith Badruddin Tyabji (later the third President of the INC) and KT Telang (a brilliant lawyer who rose to be the Vice Chancellor of Bombay University), Mehta was described as one of the ‘Three bright boys of Bombay’. Later, his other close associates were MG Ranade, D. Wacha, WC Bonnerjee (the founder President of INC) and Bal Mohan Wagle. This made Pherozeshah Mehta a part of the Liberal School of Indian politics that was largely influenced by Dadabhai Naoroji, the ‘Grand Old Man of India’. In 1866, when Dadabhai Naoroji appealed for funds for the East India Association which he had set up, Pherozeshah, then only 21, took the lead and presented a purse of Rs. 30,000 to him on behalf of the citizens of Bombay.

With his liberal outlook, it was natural that Pherozeshah Mehta would have antipathy for the trio of Lal-Bal-Pal (Lala Lajpat Rai, Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Bipin Chandra Pal). Throughout his political life, he did his best to keep the Extremists from dominating the Congress, and was largely successful. He was the forerunner of the part played by Gokhale who was 21 years younger than him but died in the same year as him - 1915. Long before he was elected as the President of INC in 1890, Mehta became the Municipal Commissioner of Bombay in 1873 and was its President four times -1884, 1885, 1905 and 1911. Even today in Mumbai he is remembered more as the ‘Maker of Modern Bombay Municipal Corporation’ than as President INC. A huge statue of his adorns a square outside the building of the Bombay Municipal Corporation. Pherozeshah Mehta also devoted his energies in the spread of education, both primary and higher, and laid great stress on promotion of English language as a means by which India could modernise itself rapidly. He founded The Bombay Chronicle, an English journal for expressing Indian public opinion. Earlier, in 1878, Mehta had taken up the cause of vernacular press against which the Viceroy Lord Lytton had passed a Press Act ‘to defend the British Empire.’ According to Lytton the Indian language papers were indulging in vicious campaign against the British. Warning the government that the Act would defeat its purpose and annihilate honest criticism, Pherozeshah Mehta wrote in a Bombay paper that ‘The government would be deprived of all trustworthy sources of keeping itself well informed of the real inner feelings and thoughts of the people towards it. Deprived of free and sincere criticism, it would hardly know to steer its way through servile adulation or scurrilous abuse.’ The candid views of Mehta were appreciated by the vernacular press which wrote ‘The press was an instrument to create public opinion about the government laws and measures. If that were to be muzzled then both the people and the government would be ill served.’

Before the INC was founded in December 1885, Pherozeshah Mehta had already founded the Bombay Presidency Association which merged its identity with the former alongwith East India Association and other similar associations in Calcutta and Madras which were the precursors of the INC. Pherozeshah Mehta was elected as the President of the sixth session of INC at Kolkata in 1890 and was the second Parsee after Dadabhai Naoroji who was bestowed with this honour. But more honours came to him easily. He was knighted in 1905 and in 1915, the year he died, the Bombay University conferred upon the honorary degree of Doctor of Law. But till his death, Pherozeshah Mehta remained a diehard Moderate who, unlike Gokhale, refused to compromise with the Extremists led by Lokmanya Tilak. The coming of Gandhi however united the Congress as never before.

(The writer is a columnist and ex. Secretary, AICC)