The Parsees came to India around twelve hundred years ago and settled down on the coast of Gujarat. As traders, farmers and artisans belonging to a minority they adopted a dialect of Gujarati as their language. Parsee culture gradually developed around that language and the Zoroastrian religion. The arrival of the East India Company on the West Coast opened up new opportunities to Parsees in trade and commerce. From the villages and towns in Gujarat, Parsees migrated to the city of Bombay to take advantage of the new economic activity. When the capitalist mode of production was introduced in the city, the Parsee community was among the first to enter into new industrial ventures. From the surplus they had accumulated in trade and commerce, the Parsees could invest in a big way in these industries.
Along with their entry into the new economic enterprise, Parsees also took to English education and became an important segment of the educated middle class. Having no deep roots in the native tradition, the Parsees were also the first to adopt Western ways of behaviour. With their enhanced social prestige and control over economic activity, the Parsees found it easier to influence the course of action both in the social and political spheres. Soon some Parsee businessmen and educated Parsees joined hands in organising social and basically political activity in the city. The businessmen being more cautious and conservative, found themselves at loggerheads with the educated class. But ultimately the two seclions came to cooperate with each other, the educated section getting the green signal in the political sphere. The members of the educated class were either educated in Bombay or had training in England. They were influenced by the liberal and moderate political traditions of England. Pherozeshah Mehta belonged to this group of Parsees who along with others laid the foundation of liberal politics in the city of Bombay and also in the country. In this paper my main purpose is to identify the characteristic features of Pherozeshah’s politics.
From local to national level politics Pherozeshah tried to apply the principles of liberalism which he had imbibed during his college days in Bombay and the years between 1865 - 1868 which he had spent in England. The mid-19th century was a remarkable period in the history of England. The liberalism of J. S. Mill and the Liberal Party of Gladstone had come to acquire a dominant position in England. Pherozeshah, who had taken his early lessons in English history and politics at the Elphinstone College was bound to be influenced by. the dominant political ideas of those days. And then there was Dadabhai Naoroji (1825-1917) who had founded the East India Association (1866) to promote Indian interests. Contact with Dadabhai and his activities proved to be important for the young Pherozeshah. On his return to India Pherozeshah was to plant his public career in the light of the liberal principles which he had learnt during his years in England.
Giving a full account of Pherozeshah’s public career will amount to reproducing his biography. Let us therefore limit ourselves to only important phases in his career. Two collections of his speeches and writings, One edited by C.Y. Chintamani (1905) and another by J.R.B. Jeejeebhoy (1918) are available to us alongwith an authoritative biography by Homi Mody (1921). These three sources give us a detailed account Of Pherozeshah’s public career. In our analysis of his politics we are going to depend basically on these sources. Pherozeshah used two forums, one was that of political associations of Indians and the other of governmental bodies from municipal to the Imperial Council. In our discussion of his politics we are not going to cover his work in the educational institutions like the University of Bombay. Secondly, we Shall avoid taking a survey of events. Instead we will restrict ourselves to, analysis of the stance and positions Pherozeshah took on various thinker or an ideologue. He was basically a leader having a tremendous skill for organisation and management of politics, an orator of repute and a councillor possessing legal acumen. No wonder we come across more speeches than writings in the collections of his speeches and writings mentioned earlier.
Political associations of Indians in order to further Indian interests and to act as communicating agents between the Imperial power and the Indian people were the most important political forums organised by the educated class in those days. Pherozeshah began his political career as one of the two secretaries of the Bombay Branch of the East India Association in England. It did not have an independent existence. Pherozeshah and his colleagues like K.T. Telang and B. Tyabji felt the necessity of having a new association to give adequate expression to public opinion in the province and especially in the city of Bombay. Therefore they formed the Bombay Presidency Association in January, 1885. One of the important functions of the Association envisaged by Pherozeshah was to influence. Parliamentary elections in England by making the Indian question a party question. He thought that the Indian political associations must put the Indian problems to the criticism of party warfare in England. In this process Englishmen would be convinced about the necessity of political reforms in India. The Bombay Presidency Association eventually provided a solid base to Pherozeshah’s politics not only in the city of Bombay but also in the Indian National Congress.
The Bombay Presidency Association was one of the important political associations which laid the foundations of the country-wide association, named the Congress in 1885. The first session of the Congress was held at Bombay with the help of the Bombay Presidency Association. One of the resolutions passed at the session was about a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the working of the Indian administration. While seconding this resolution, Pherozeshah observed that the Commission should pursue its investigations in India itself and that Indians should be represented on it. Within a few years Pherozeshah became one of the most important leaders of the Congress and was elected as the President of the session held at Calcutta in 1890. In his Presidential address we find a statement of his political views in a systematic way. At. the outset he attacked the attempts to isolate the Parsees from the political movement by arguing that a Parsee was a better and truer Parsee the more he was attached to the land which gave him birth. And then he went on to discuss the charge that the Congress was demanding the representative institutions which in England had been the product of the growth of centuries. Pherozeshah pointed out that the Congress believed in slow and cautious growth of such institutions. But it did not mean that the interests of India were to be left in the hands of the bureaucracy until the masses were educated to understand their rights or duties. In fact what was required was to give an opportunity to present Indian interests to the educated class. He also referred to the charge that the Congress was nothing but a voice of a microscopic minority and not the masses. He argued that since the masses were still unable to articulate their political demands that duty devolves upon their educated leaders and that had been the law of the progress of representation in all countries including England.
The third significant point which Pherozeshah made in his address was about the connection between England and India. He said that this connection was a blessing to both India and England and also to the whole world for countless generations. When the Congress was getting divided into two camps of moderates and extremists, the responsibility of giving a leadership to the moderate camp fell upon the shoulders of Pherozeshah. In the 1904 session of the Congress held at Bombay, he could counteract the extremist forces. In his powerful speech at the Congress session Pherozeshah reiterated his view that British rule was a divine dispensation and that the Congress had not become useless as a forum to represent the [Indian opinion. He narrated the achievements of the Congress at length and also the propriety of the constitutional methods, being used by the Congress. Here he was responding to the politics of the extremist type led by Lokamanya Tilak and was trying to defend the castle of moderate politics which was becoming more and more irrelevant in the changed circumstances.
The councils from the municipal to the national level were another political forum where Pherozeshah made a mark of his own. He held the view that the representative principle should be introduced in the consutution of the municipal bodies. He rejected the opinion that representative instituuions were altogether foreign to Indians and that they were Out of place in a system of paternal government. He was particularly interested in the municipal administration of Bombay. The Municipal Act of 1872 was influenced by his viewpoint in more ways than one. Again in 1888 Pherozeshah siezed an opportunity to guide the Municipal Act which was an improvement over the earlier legislation and incorporated in it some of his ideas on local self government. Throughout . his career Pherozeshah never lost touch with the Bombay Municipal administration.
Pherozeshah was the first non-official member to be elected to the Bombay Provincial Council which was enlarged by the Act of 1891. He was unanimously elected by the Bombay Corporation as_ its representative in 1893. From the membership of the Provincial Council, Pherozeshah climbed to the position of a member of the Imperial Council. The new Act provided for one.representative from non-official members of the Provincial Council to be sent to the Imperial Council. Pherozeshah went to the highest council as a representative of the Bombay Council.
Pherozeshah’s independent judgement and his moderate liberalism used to reflect in his responses, speeches and criticisms in these councils. He made the best use of this opportunity to level an attack on the bureaucracy and illiberal policies of the colonial administration. He perceived himself as a responsible member of the Opposition and considered it his duty to be loyal to the Imperial government while retaining the right to criticise the conservative and imperialistic policies of the government from the floor of the council. In the legislative councils Pherozeshah got an opportunity to come to terms with the economic policies of the colonial Government. Pherozeshah, who was influenced by the economic ideas of Dadabhai and M.G. Ranade (1842-1901), believed that free trade policies were not suitable to a backward economy like India. He, therefore, vehemently criticised the Cotton Duties Bill in the Imperial Council in 1894. Thus, Pherozeshah a member of the educated class, came forward to protect the interest of the business community.
Both from the floor of the councils and the platform of the Congress, Pherozeshah always levelled a severe attack on the retrograde and reactionary policies of the bureaucrats like Lord Lytton or Lord Curzon. Pherozeshah felt that he and his colleagues in the Congress or Council belonged to the Indian Liberal party, while the officers like Curzon pelonged to the ruling despotism having no regard for the will of the Indians.
By using constitutional and moderate methods Pherozeshah believed that the Congress would be able to achieve its aim of having, representative government in India within the framework of British Imperial Power. He thought that the work in the councils and in the annual sessions of the Congress would gradually bring about a necessary change in the attitude of the government. In his speeches on the budget and other economic matters, we see a hope that the Indian economic interest could be guarded from the floor of the council and that the Indian economic resources would not go to England. But this liberalism and moderation of Pherozeshah and his like became increasingly unimportant with the changing circumstances of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century.
Pherozeshah’s politics was mainly the politics of the urban educated class. He talked in the western political idiom and made speeches in English for a limited audience. The organisation and associations which he led were composed of elites.
At the beginning of the twentith century the situation had radically changed. The truc character of the colonial rule was revealed by that time. Education had not remained the monopoly of a few of the provincial cities. It had now percolated to the lower classes who refused to join the liberal politics of Pherozeshah and others. The unfavourable response of the government to the demands of the liberals like Pherozeshah made their position awkward in Indian politics. The height of reactionary policy was achieved during Curzon’s Viceroyalty from 1889 to 1905. To-such changed situation the Liberals like Pherozeshah refused to adapt. They could not face the challenge of the new conditions. Their methods and style soon became out of date. Instead of changing, revitalising and giving new shape to their methods and strategy, the Liberals of the Pherozeshah type continued to depend on the same old tactics and beliefs.
Therefore by 1905 Pherozeshah’s liberal politics had started becoming: irrelevant and by the 1907 Surat Congress it got marginalised in Indian politics though the liberals made a feeble attempt to pursue their movement in a demoralised mood. .
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