Background

Behramji Malabari was born on May 18, 1853, at Baroda (present-day Vadodara). His father died when he was onlysix years old. Later his mother returned to her parents’ home in Surat and subsequently remarried. The stepfather adopted the young boy and gave him the new family name.

Education

After gaining a basic education in a local school, Malabari studied at the Irish Presbyterian Mission School in Surat. He passed matriculation exam in 1872.

Career

Moving to Bombay, Malabari initially served as a teacher at the Fort Proprietary School in 1876.

Malabari began his journalistic and editorial career after Sir Cowasji Jehangir, an eminent Parsi businessman, introduced him to Martin Woods, then the editor of the Times of India. Malabari also began writing a serial column for the Indian Spectator, an English language weekly magazine. He eventually served as editor of the Indian Spectator from 1880 until its merger in 1900 with the Voice of India, a monthly magazine he had edited from 1883 onward with Sir William Wedderburn and the Honorable Dadabhai Naoroji. Malabari also edited another monthly magazine, East and West, from 1901 to 1912. To introduce Western scholarship on the history of religions to Indian scholars and clergy, Malabari worked with Max Müller in editing and translating the latter’s Hibbert Lectures of 1878 into Gujarati and other Indian languages during 1881.

Even before moving to Bombay, Malabari had authored a collection of Gujarati poems titled Nītivinoda "Pleasures of Morality" or "Pleasures of the Right Path. " Those verses about social reform were influenced by the Anglican preacher, missionary, and educator John Wilson, who arranged for the collection’s publication in 1875. His friendships with Europeans in India helped Malabari comprehend the importance of understanding between the colonial masters and the Indian subjects. So his next publication of poetry, The Indian Muse in English Garb (1876), was well received in the West—especially by the English poet Alfred Tennyson. Then, seeking to facilitate a better understanding of Indians among the British, Malabari focused his sartorial talents upon conveying semi-fictitious descriptions of the residents of Gujarat. Undertaken at the request of Martin Woods, his editor at the Times of India, the resulting study was published as Gujarat and the Gujaratis (1882) and was intended to be a window into the lives of some of the British Raj’s Indian subjects (Siganporia 2010). Nine years later, and after three stays in Britain, Malabari published The Indian Eye on English Life, in which he as a colonial subject sought to examine and better understand the colonizer, while demanding "the same equal treatment in the case of the nation as in the case of individuals. "

Like many Parsi Zoroastrian intellectuals of the nineteenth century, Malabari’s worldview had been fundamentally changed by the secular British education he had received. Examining Indian society through the lenses of Western education and mores, Malabari concluded that his main calling had to be social reform within India. He chose to focus on women’s rights, particularly on prohibiting underage or child marriages and on permitting widows to remarry. So, in 1884, he collected and published Notes on Infant Marriage and Enforced Widowhood, distributing it to prominent Indians and Britishers. He led a public demand that legislation be enacted to prohibit both practices. Malabari viewed both Hindu traditions and the Brahmins who upheld them as the perpetuators of centuries-long social injustice. Through his writings and public speeches Malabari advocated that the State was morally obliged to initiate reforms. Two other widely-read publications were issued by Malabari to strengthen his cause—Social Reform in India: Its Scope and Importance (1886) and An Appeal from the Daughters of India (1890). Malabari also traveled to London to meet with British politicians and social activists to further champion the enacting reform in British India (Hunter, 1887). His activism resulted in the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885 and the Age of Consent Act in 1891.

Malabari’s endeavors within India and in Britain to rectify the lowly situation of Hindu women by transforming Indian attitudes toward child marriages and widows made him a most prominent social reformer (Karkaria, 1896).

Behramji Merwanji Malabari died on July 12, 1912, at the age of 59.

Achievements

• Behramji Merwanji Malabari was a prominent poet, publicist, author, and social reformer best known for his ardent advocacy for the protection of the rights of women and for his activities against child marriage.
  
  Behramji Malabari was awarded Kaisar-i-Hind Medal for his public services.
  
  In 1887 he was made a Fellow of Bombay University and a Justice of Peace.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Indian problem

    (This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)

  • The Indian Eye on English Life: Rambles of a pilgrim reformer. Third Edition

    (The Indian Eye on English Life - Rambles of a pilgrim ref...)

  • Gujarat and the Gujaratis

    (personal account of Gujarat culture, politics.)

Membership

In 1887 Behramji Malabari became a Fellow of Bombay University and a Justice of Peace.

Personality

Behramji Malabari was a bilingual poet and author fluent in both English and Gujarati.

Connections

Behramji Malabari married in 1874, and his wife Dhanbaiji and he had three sons and two daughters.

Father:

Dhanjibhai Mehta

Dhanjibhai Mehta was a Parsi clerk employed by the Baroda State.

Mother:

Bhikaibai Malabari

Wife:

Dhanbaiji Malabari

stepfather:

Mehrwanji Malabari

Mehrwanji Malabari was a merchant who traded in spices and sandalwood from the Malabar coast.

References

• B.M. Malabari: Rambles with the pilgrim reformer
• Behramji Malabari: A Biographical Sketch. With Introduction by Florence Nightingale.