Behramji Merwanji Malabari JP

Born: 18 May 1853

Died: 12 July 1912

• He 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.
• As early as 1875 he 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.
•  He 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, he relocated to the city of Bombay (now Mumbai), then the 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.
• His 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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