Behramji Malabari
| Behramji Malabari | |
|---|---|
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| Born | Behramji Merwanji Malabari 18 May 1853 Baroda |
| Died | 12 July 1912 (aged 59) Simla |
| Occupation | poet, publicist, author, and social reformer |
| Language | Gujarati, English |
| Nationality | Indian |
Behramji Merwanji Malabari (1853–1912) was an Indian 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 Merwanji Malabari was born on 18 May 1853 at Baroda (present-day Vadodara, Gujarat). He was a son of Dhanjibhai Mehta, a Parsi clerk employed by the Baroda State, and Bhikhibai. His father of whom nothing more is known "than that he was a mild, peace-loving man, with a somewhat feeble constitution and not overmuch force of character" died when the boy was six or seven. His mother then took him to Surat (on the coast, 140 km from Baroda), where Behramji was then educated in an Irish Presbyterian mission school. He was subsequently adopted by Merwanji Nanabhai Malabari, the childless owner of a drugstore who traded in sandalwood and spices from the Malabar Coast hence the name 'Malabari'. Merwanji had previously lost two wives before he married Behramji's mother.
As early as 1875 Malabari published a volume of poems in Gujarati, followed in 1877 by The Indian Muse in English Garb, which attracted attention in England, notably from Alfred Tennyson, Max Müller, and Florence Nightingale. Müller and Nightingale would also play a role in his campaign for social reform, and the latter would also write the preface to an 1888/1892 biography of Malabari. At some point, Malabari relocated to the city of Bombay (now Mumbai), then center of commerce and administration of the British possessions in Western India. In 1882 he published his Gujarat and the Gujaratis: pictures of men and manners taken from life (London: W.H. Allen, 1882, OCLC= 27113274), a book "of a somewhat satirical nature," that went through five editions.
Malabari's life work began in 1880 when he acquired the Indian Spectator, an English language daily, which he edited for twenty years until it was merged into the Voice of India, which Malabari had already been editing together with Dadabhai Naoroji and William Wedderburn since 1883. In 1901 he became editor of the monthly East and West, a position he would hold until shortly before his death on 12 July 1912 at Simla.
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