Edulji Dinshaw

Seth Edulji Dinshaw (18 May 1842 – 8 May 1914) was a Karachi-based Parsi philanthropist of the British colonial era. He rose from poverty to become the largest landowner in the city, and his giving — to hospitals, dispensaries and schools used by all of Karachi's communities — made him the defining civic benefactor of the colonial port. The museum holds him, a Zoroastrian, under its precedent for non-Muslim benefactors whose public works shaped a Muslim-majority city. ^{1 2}

He was born in Karachi on 18 May 1842, the year before Sindh was annexed into the Bombay Presidency. A member of the Parsi community, he made his first fortune as a contractor for the British Army during the Second Afghan War (1878–1881), then invested in land and factories — among them a factory for pressing cotton and wool for export and an ice factory. By the late nineteenth century he owned around half of the city of Karachi, and the local government is believed to have placed an informal ban on his acquiring any more. He was a director of the Land and Shipping Company, a delegate of the Parsi Matrimonial Court, a trustee of the Karachi Port Trust and a member of the Karachi Municipal Corporation. ^{1 3}

His donations served his own community and the general public alike. When the Vicereine, Lady Dufferin, collected funds in 1884 to build a women's hospital in Karachi, she raised Rs 10,000 from the whole population of the city; Dinshaw personally gave Rs 85,000, and the Dawn account adds that his 1894 gift of Rs 50,000 is what made the Lady Dufferin Hospital's initiation possible. In 1882 he commissioned the architect James Strachan to build the Italianate charitable dispensary in Saddar that still bears his name and still functions; a second dispensary carries his son Nadirshaw's name. He gave to the Sind Art College fund in 1885 and 1887, donated the bust of King Edward VII and a marble fountain of 1890 that stand at Frere Hall, and in the 1910s gave Rs 75,000 to the Mama Parsi Girls' School and founded its hostel. Two charitable funds, the Bachubai Edulji Dinshaw Nirashrit Fund and the Soonabai Edulji Dinshaw Charitable Fund, carried the family's giving forward. ^{1 2}

For his services to the public he was the first person in Karachi appointed a Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire: the award was announced in the 1899 New Year Honours on 2 January 1899, and he was invested by Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle on 1 March 1900. On 8 May 1914, on his way to England, he died at sea near Port Said, Egypt. ¹

In the 1930s statues of Dinshaw and of his first son Nadirshaw were placed at the intersection of Karachi's main roads; unveiling his statue, Sir Frederick Sykes, Governor of Bombay, said the city had chosen a fitting subject, for Dinshaw "had the vision to recognize fully the possibilities of greatness that the city held and also contributed very largely himself to developing it". After Partition the statues were removed, and they now stand in the grounds of the Karachi Parsi Institute. His sons Nadirshaw and Framroze (known as FE Dinshaw) continued the family businesses, his grandson Hoshang NE Dinshaw became a president of the Central Board of Directors of the National Bank of Pakistan, and the family remains noted for charitable donations especially to non-Parsis. ^{1 2}