A Joint Enterprise: Indian Elites and the Making of British Bombay

Introduction

xi Introduction Regent’s Park in London is home to a drinking fountain, a structure that might draw little attention to itself except that it was paid for by a well-known nineteenth-century philanthropist from Bombay (Figure I.1).The Gothic fountain’s sculptural features reveal the connection between Britain and its empire. Each side of the basin has a triangular pediment . The sculpted visage of Sir Cowasji Jehangir Readymoney, the fountain’s donor, is flanked on one side by the face of a European lady and on the other by a European gentleman (Figure I.2). Beneath each of the four pediments is an arcuated frame.These contain a dedication stone, a coat of arms, a lion with a palm tree, and a horned Indian buffalo with a palm tree. Even without the dedication and portrait of Jehangir, the animals and vegetation suggest a tropical empire beyond Britain. Although the dedication plaque displays the gratitude of a loyal subject of the empire who benefited from colonial rule by being given imperial honors and a knighthood (1872), the similar location and detail of the sculptured medallion portraits suggests equality, not subservience, to the British worthies. The dedication stone points to the history of the fountain’s construction and its continued upkeep as a piece of Britain’s heritage.The plaque announces that the fountain was raised by the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association and was gifted by Sir Cowasji Jehangir, who was a Companion of the Star of India,a chivalric order founded by Queen Victoria.Jehangir is described as a “wealthy Parsee gentleman of Bombay”; the gift was given “as a token of gratitude to the people of England for the protection enjoyed xii Introduction by him and his Parsee fellow countrymen under British rule in India.” Princess Mary, Duchess of Teck, inaugurated the fountain in 1869. Jehangir was knighted by the Queen in 1872, the second Parsi to receive such an honor.The dedication gives prominence to Jehangir’s community—the Parsis. The Parsis, followers of the Zoroastrian religion, settled in India from Persia in the eighth or tenth century. They forged a close and beneficial relationship with the British , who encouraged them to think of themselves as distinct from the natives of India.The dedication articulates this community’s self-consciousness by noting that this gift was made by a Parsi who, along with his fellow community members , had “enjoyed”the “protection”of British rule in India.The most prominent philanthropists in nineteenth-century Bombay were from the Parsi community. It often seems as if the Parsis, rather than the British, built British Bombay. Described admiringly as the “Peabody of the East,” Sir Cowasji Jehangir Readymoney (1812–78) was one of the most prominent Bombay philanthropists of his time. This tradition is continued by his family, making encounters with the Jehangir family name part of everyday experience. From an early start as a godown (warehouse) keeper, Jehangir gradually built a fortune, large sums of which he used in founding public institutions in Bombay and the Bombay Presidency—the province of which Bombay was the capital—and donating large amounts to public charities.1 In the 1860s, Bombay Governor Sir Bartle FIGURE I.1. Fountain gifted by Sir Cowasji Jehangir and erected by the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association . Inaugurated in 1869, Regent’s Park, London. Photograph by author, 2007. FIGURE I.2. Detail showing Sir Cowasji Jehangir’s sculpted portrait above the dedication plaque on one side of the fountain. A sculpted portrait of an anonymous male figure above a sculptural panel with a lion and a palm tree in the background are carved on a second side. Photograph by author, 2007. xiv Introduction Frere’s call was to construct a new Bombay; Jehangir was one of many wealthy men who responded to this call by pouring money into institutions, monuments , and other structures for the public-at-large. These philanthropists, a multiethnic and multireligious elite, gave their names to buildings and institutions ; these names—Jehangir, Jeejeebhoy, Sassoon, Premchand Raichand, Gokuldas Tejpal, Cama, and Wadia, to name just a few—have a continuing impact on people’s lives.While these native philanthropists constructed institutions for the benefit of their own communities,the new shared public landscape inaugurated by Governor Frere was marked by institutions for all members of Bombay’s public. From the second half of...