Railway came to India not because of British but because of Nana
Railway came to India not because of British but because of Nana
A Slice of History, very few will be aware of. 15 September 1830. The world’s first intercity train ran between Liverpool and Manchester in England. This news spread everywhere.
In Bombay, a man found this very inappropriate. He thought that the Railway should run in his village too. Railways had just started running in America and spreading out at a very slow pace. And this man in India, living in a poor British company-ruled colony like India was dreaming of railways. Had it been anyone else, people would have laughed at him thrown out his ideas. However this man was no simpleton. Nana Shankarsheth, a Bombay moneylender who himself was a banker and gave loans to the East India Company itself.
Nana Shankarsheth’s real name was Jagannath Shankar Murkute, from Murbad. Generationally rich, his father was a big money lender to the British. He earned a lot of money during the British – Tipu Sultan war. His only son was Nana. This boy came with a Golden Spoon in his mouth. But not only Lakshmi but also Saraswati’s hand of blessing was on his head. The father also got the boy educated in English etc. by hiring a special teacher. After his father’s death, he expanded the home business.
When the whole world bowed before the British, the British East India Company officers used to bow down their head for the blessings of Nana Shankarsheth. He became a good friend of a Scott man Mountstuart Elphinstone. He was a Scottish Statesman and historian, associated with the government of British India.
He later became the Governor of Bombay, where he is credited with the opening of several educational institutions accessible to the Indian population. Besides being a noted administrator, he wrote books on India and Afghanistan. His works are one the pertinent examples of the colonial historiographical trend.
Mr Elphinstone sympathized with Indians. He used to strive to eradicate poverty and connect the country with the modern world. Call it the effect of his friendship or what else, but Nana also started efforts to get rid of the rusticity of his brethren and for the progress of his village. Bombay University, Elphinstone College, Grant Medical College, Law College, JJ School of Arts, first girls’ school in Bombay, University of Bombay were established by Nana. Many roads were built in Bombay, hospitals were founded, India’s first shipping company was established.
Even the British will never deny that Nana Shankar Sheth had a lion’s share in transforming the village of seven islands into the city of Bombay.
So Nana Shankarsheth thought of starting a railway in Bombay. The year was 1843. He went to his father’s friend Sir Jamshethji Jijibhoy alias JJ. After the death of Nana’s father, he was like a father to Nana. He told this Sir JJ his idea, he also took the opinion of Supreme Court Judge Sir Thomas Erskine Perry who came from England about whether the railway can be started in Patlimumbai. They too were amused by the idea. Together these three formed the Indian Railway Association.
At that time, the company government had no plans of building railways in India. But when people like Nana Shankarsheth, Sir JJ, Sir Perry said they were behind, they had to pay attention to this. On 13 July 1844, the company submitted a proposal to the government in London. Plan was appreciated and Company was asked to prepare a preliminary report on how far the railway line would be laid outwards from Bombay.
After that a ‘Bombay Committee’ was formed. Nana gathered some other big businessmen, British officials, bankers and established a Company the Great Indian Railway. It was during this time that capitalists in England became aware of the ongoing movement to start a railway in Bombay in India. Later Lord J. British capitalists led by Stuart Worley established the Great Indian Peninsular Railway in London.
The office of this company was also opened in Bombay. The office of the company was started in Nana’s Bungalow. Under his guidance, expert engineers from England started working on the construction of railways. The train was going to run for the first time not only in India but in the whole of Asia.
Finally the day dawned. On 16th April 1853 at exactly 3.30 in the afternoon, the Train left Bombay’s Boribandar Station for Thane. This Train had 18 compartments and three locomotive engines. Nana Shankarshet and Jamshetji Jijibhoy were also among the Passengers of this Train which was specially decorated with flowers for its maiden journey.
Due to ignorance, everyone gives credit to the British East India Company for starting railways in India but actual credit should go to the contribution and hard work of Nana Jagannath Shankarsheth.
Today Indian Railways is one of the largest Railway network in the World. Railways were considered the lifeline of Bombay. Today, Mumbai is a Metro City, known all over the World as an Industrial City, because of the impossible dream of Nana Shankar Sheth, a simple but forward looking man.
Men of Dreams and Passion like Nana are beyond Awesome. They do so much without publicity that one unwittingly bows down.
Bombay’s iconic Nana Chowk is named after Him.
Jagannath "Nana" Shankar Sheth was an Indian philanthropist and educationalist. He was born in 1803 in the wealthy Murkute family of the Daivadnya Brahmin caste in Mumbai. Unlike his forefathers, he engaged in commerce and soon developed a reputation as a very reliable businessman. So high was his credit that Arabs, Afghans and other foreign merchants chose to place their treasures in his custody rather than with banks. He soon acquired a large fortune, much of which he donated to the public.
Foreseeing the need for improvements in education, he became one of the founders of the School Society and the Native School of Bombay, the first of its kind in Western India. The school went through a series of name changes: in 1824, it became the Bombay Native Institution, in 1840, the Board of Education, and in 1856 the name which continues to this day, the Elphinstone Educational Institution. It is the same institution where , the well known, Balshashtri Jambhekar , Dadabhai Nauroji , Mahadev Govind Ranade , Ramakrishna Gopal Bhandarkar were the students during Nana's period. Later, even Gopal Krishna Gokhale , Lokmanya Tilak had attended the Elphinstone college for studies .
When the Students' Literary and Scientific Society first opened their girls' schools, Jagannath Shankarsheth contributed much of the necessary funds, despite strong opposition of some members of the Hindu community. Other educational projects he began include the English School, the Sanskrit Seminary, and the Sanskrit Library, all of which are located in Girgaum, South Mumbai.
In 1845, along with Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy, he formed the Indian Railway Association to bring railways in India. It was his idea and efforts to start Railways in India according to which he had discussed the proposals with British Govt of that time . Eventually, the association was incorporated into the Great Indian Peninsula Railway, and Jeejeebhoy and Shankarsheth became the only two Indians among the ten directors of the GIP railways. As a director, Nana Shankarsheth participated in the very first train journey in India between Bombay and Thane, which took approximately 45 minutes.
During the First War of Independence of 1857, the British suspected his involvement, but acquitted him due to lack of evidence. He died in Mumbai on 31 July 1865. A year after his death a marble statue was erected at the Asiatic Society of Bombay. Erstwhile Girgaum Road and chowk (Nana Chowk) at Grant Road are named after him in South Mumbai.
A Tribute To Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy On His 237th Birth Anniversary
One of the greatest sons of India, and certainly the greatest son of Bombay, Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy was born 237 years ago, on 15th July, 1783, in Mumbai. He lived a rich life, filled with adventure and accomplishments and he passed away on 14th April, 1859 at the age of 75. He was born to Merwanjee Mackjee Jejeebhoy and Jeevibai Cowasjee Jejeebhoy. His father was a textile merchant from Olpad, Gujarat, who migrated to Bombay in the 1770s. Both his parents died in 1799, leaving the 16-year-old Jamsetjee under the tutelage of his maternal uncle, Framjee Nasserwanjee Battliwala.
Even at this tender age, with little formal education, the entrepreneur in Jamsetjee had him take his first visit to Calcutta from where he took his first voyage to China to trade in cotton and opium. Young Jamsetjee’s first trip to Calcutta, and then the five trips to China, make for fascinating reading – by the end of his fifth trip, he had made a huge fortune.
He had no need to go abroad to carry on his now flourishing business. He opened offices in several cities in the East and the West too; he had managers and agents to transect business. The more he earned, the more he gave. He was generous and charitable and probably the first philanthropist of India in the real sense of the word. His was an organized charity. He gave by way of endowments to institutions of learning, social and cultural welfare, for the indigent members of his community and for the welfare of the humanity at large.
The world today is afflicted with a virus that has gone pandemic, right from the frozen deserts of Russia to the burning deserts of Arabia, irrespective of the geographical boundaries, threatening our very existence if stringent care is not taken by way of social isolation, resulting in exiles within the walls of one’s home. And to add to the misery, the loss of work and income! How would it have touched this man whose heart always bled for all human afflictions?
Nearly 175 years ago, the then governor of Bombay, Sir Robert Grant, proposed, in 1838, to have a hospital built, wherein medical education could also be promoted. Sir Jamsetjee immediately offered a (then) very princely sum of Rs. 1,00,000/- for establishing it. Later he donated another Rs.1,00,000/- in addition to the huge tract of land that forms the Sir J J Hospital complex. This was at the time when gold was priced at Rs.18.93 per tola (11’33 gms). With such massive involvement, it is no wonder that the hospital was named after him! The building was completed and opened to receive the patients on 15th May, 1845. In the same year, admittance to the college was also opened as a ‘School of Practice’.
For his matchless charities, generosity, philanthropy and concern for humanity, beyond the boundaries of nations, caste, colour or creed, Jamsetjee was conferred Knighthood in 1842, and in 1857, he was conferred the dignity and the honour of baronetcy. It was the first that time such honours were conferred upon a subject of British India.
Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy was a philanthropist, a humanist, an apostle of peace and nom-violence. He was compassionate, kind and loving and devoid of any form of cruelty to man or animal. This is reflected in his speech on the occasion of the launch of the Patriot Fund, which was created to help the wounded soldiers and the war widows who suffered or died in the Russo-Turkish war to which Sir Jamsetjee donated Rs.5000/- in 1855, “Of none of the great evils which afflict our race do we form such inadequate conceptions as of the evils of war. War is exhibited to us in the dazzling dress of poetry, fiction, and history, where its horrors are carefully concealed beneath its gaudy trappings; or we see, perhaps, its plumes and epaulettes, and harlequin finery, we hear of the magnificence of the apparatus, the bravery of the troops, the glory of the victors, but the story of the wholesale miseries and wretchedness and wrongs which follow in its train is untold…What nation is not groaning under war-debts, the greatest of national burdens! Had the inconceivable sum wasted in the work of human butchery been applied to promote individual comfort and national prosperity, the world would not now be so far behind as it is in its career of progress…Our duty to relieve the sufferers in this great war would have remained the same whether the war had been a just one or not; but, considering the nature and objects of this war, we extend this relief now more as a privilege than as a duty…To the call of our gracious Sovereign, and to the call of humanity, the Parsis, my lord, will cordially respond”.
Hospitals, schools, homes of charity and pension funds throughout India (particularly in Bombay, Navsari, Surat, and Poona) were created or endowed by Jeejeebhoy, and he financed the construction of many public works including wells, reservoirs, bridges and causeways. Through his life, he was estimated to have donated over £2,30,000 to charity! His philanthropic endeavours began in earnest in 1822, when he personally remitted the debts of all the poor in Bombay’s civil jail. Some of his other notable works of charity include:
- The Mahim Causeway: The British Government had refused to build a causeway to connect the island of Mahim to Bandra. Jeejeebhoy’s wife, Avabai spent Rs.1,55,800 to finance its construction, in 1841, and is believed to have been completed four years later.
- Jejeebhoy donated to at least 126 notable public charities, including the Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy School of Art; the Sir JJ College of Architecture, the Sir JJ Institute of Applied Art and the Seth RJJ High School. He also endowed charities dedicated to helping his fellow Parsis and created the ‘Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy Parsi Benevolent Fund’, in 1849.
- He paid two-thirds of the entire cost of the Poona (now Pune) waterworks, with the remainder coming from the government.
- He gave a substantial donation to Bombay Samachar, founded by Fardunjee Marzban, in July 1822. The Bombay Times was launched in 1838 by a syndicate of persons, which included Sir Jamsetjee. In 1861, it was renamed The Times of India. Jamsetjee also donated handsomely to the Jam-e-Jamshed Press when it was founded in 1859.
- He was also a generous patron of the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, formerly The Victoria and Albert Museum, which was designed by a London architect.
- Between 1822 and 1838, cattle from the congested Fort area (in South Bombay) used to graze freely at the Camp Maidan (now called Azad Maidan), an open ground opposite the Victoria Terminus. In 1838, the British introduced a ‘Grazing Fee’ which several cattle-owners could not afford. Sir Jeejeebhoy personally donated Rs.20,000/- for purchasing some grasslands near the seafront at Thakurdwar and saw that the starving cattle grazed without a fee in that area. In time, the area became to be known as ‘Charni (meaning grazing). When a railway station on the BB&CI railway was constructed there, it was called Charni Road.
- He spent Rs. 1,45,000/- to set up the Sir J J Dharamshala at Bellasis Road, and till date, innumerable old and destitute people receive free food, clothing, shelter and medicine. All their needs for the past 150 years, irrespective of caste, creed or religion, have been looked after by the Dharamshala, the first free home for the elderly in Asia.
- Whether it was the famine of Ireland (1822), the floods in France (1856) or the fire, which ravaged both Bombay (1803) and Surat (1837), our community’s great beacon of altruism gave graciously to one and all without discrimination.
His non-violent attitude and loving kindness extended also to the animal kingdom. His benign and compassionate nature would not allow any form of cruelty towards animals. The East India Company introduced a rule “for the annual destruction of dogs in Bombay island”, and a considerable number were from time to time destroyed, in spite of frequent petitions from the public”. This mass dog killing led to a serious riot. To alleviate this suffering, Jamsetjee, with others, founded Panjrapole on 18 October 1834 – a Trust for the keep of stray cattle and other animals with a view to protect their lives.
Jeejeebhoy’s philanthropy, institution-building and public works improved countless lives and continues to serve as the unparalleled precedent for all philanthropists and entrepreneurs.
