An associate of Dadabhai Naoroji, M. G. Ranade, Dinshaw Wacha and other contemporary political leaders and social reformers, Behramji Merwanji Malabari was a Parsi social reformer who vigorously championed the cause of women. He was against casteism and child marriage, advocated widow remarriage. He was in favour of equality of sexes and uplift of the status of the women, particularly the widows.
Born in Vadodara in 1853, Behramji Malabari had participated in the first session of the Indian National Congress held in Mumbai in 1885.
In 1908 he founded a social service organization Seva Sadan Society for the education and empowerment of women. The branches of Seva Sadan Society, which he founded with another social reformer Dayaram Gidumal, were also set up in Ahmedabad and Surat.
In 1875, he published a collection of Gujarati poems, Nitivinod (Pleasure of Morality) in which he ruminates on the ill effects of child marriage and the widowhood forced on women due to the practice of child marriage. Fluent both in Gujarati and English, in 1877 he wrote English poetry ‘Indian Muse in English Garb’ which enlisted recognition from famous English poet Alfred Tennyson.
The widespread agitation by Behramji Malabari during the period 1884–1891 forced the British colonial government to pass the Age of Consent Act in 1891.
In 1893, Behramji Malabari published travel memoir The Indian Eye on English Life or Rambles of a Pilgrim Reformer which describes his three voyages to England and gives an account of the British way of life.
Behramji had translated the speeches of the German orientalist Max Müller.
Behramji Malabari died in 1912 in Simla.
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Wonderful! Thank you for posting the biographies of these lesser known people. At what email id can i connect with you please?
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