Wacha’s documents

I am a PhD candidate in the Department of History at Harvard University and the grand-nephew of Dastur Hormazdyar Mirza. I have been studying the history of the Parsis and Zoroastrianism for the past three years and I am currently beginning my dissertation research which will be on Dada-bhai Naoroji, the "Grand Old Man of India.”

I am trying to locate an extremely important collection of personal papers which appear to have gone missing: the papers of Sir Dinshaw Wacha who was a prominent early nationalist and a close ally of both Naoroji and Sir Pherozeshah Mehta. During the first decades of the Indian National Congress he served as the Congress’ general secretary. Wacha had regular correspondence with both Mehta and Naoroji. Due to the paucity of surviving material that we have on both great Parsi leaders, Wacha’s personal papers can provide extremely valuable material.

Wacha’s personal papers seem to have been last located in the 1970s, when they were researched by two scholars, Eckehard Kulke and John Hinnells. According to Hinnells the papers were kept in the collection of the Western Indian National Liberal Federation, an organization which Wacha led after he left the Congress. Several other prominent Par­sis, such as J. R. B. Jeejeebhoy, Cowasjee Jehangir, Phiroze Sethna and A. D. Shroff were members of the Federation.

The papers of the Federation, Hinnells tells me, were kept in a cabinet in the office of a Parsi law firm located in Fort in Bombay. Hinnells learned about their whereabouts through the assistance of D. N. Marshall, then librarian of Bombay University.

I would greatly appreciate any assistance in locating these papers. These papers are not only important for my dissertation but they also constitute an extremely important collection of historical material for the Parsi community as well as the Indian nation. I sincerely hope that these papers have not been destroyed or misplaced, and thereby lost to us forever.

In addition, please let me know if you or your family have any old letters, papers or artifacts relating to Naoroji, Mehta, Wacha, or other early Parsi nationalists and political figures. With your permission, I would be extremely interested in seeing this material for my research.

DINYAR PATEL

Cambridge, USA

dpatel@fas.harvard.edu