Cashmera’s contribution

Dr Cashmera Bhaya (née Bharucha), a resident of Muscat, Oman, has sponsored two schemes at the Sardar Patel University in Gujarat. The University is named after freedom fighter Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel who was instrumental in integrating over 500 feudal states into the Indian union, peacefully and in record time, after independence. These schemes are part of the University’s Golden Jubilee Fund’s attempt to encourage its students and teachers to improve their academic performance by rewarding them with handsome prizes for meritorious work. Bhaya, who taught medical sociology at the College of Medicine, Sultan Qaboos University of Oman, was supported by family and friends in her endeavors, as per an e-mail received from her.

Dr Cashmera Bhaya: sponsoring scholarship

Instituted from the donations collected through Bhaya’s efforts, the Rs 8,000 cash Shri Dadabhai Naoroji Prize will be awarded annually to any social science teacher of the University for publishing research papers of high quality in reputed academic journals in India or elsewhere in the field of social sciences. The money for this prize was donated by members of the Zoroastrian community in Oman, United Arab Emirates, New Zealand, the US and India to honor the man who laid the foundation of the freedom movement in modern India. Some non-Zoroastrian admirers of Naoroji have also given huge sums toward this end. The MoU for instituting this prize, the first of its kind in any Indian university as per the e-mail, was signed between the University and Bhaya.

The Dr (Mrs) Cashmera Bhaya Gold Medal, instituted out of Bhaya’s personal contributions, is awarded every year at the convocation ceremony to a student of sociology at the University who obtains the highest aggregate marks in the subject in the MA Part I and II examinations. Herself a sociologist, Bhaya had received the National Merit Scholarship from the Government of India and gold medal from the Baroda Parsee Panchayat for securing first rank in the MA examination of Maharaja Sayajirao University there. Later, she helped establish the Professor I. P. Desai Scholarship in Sociology at the undergraduate level in the Department of Sociology, Faculty of Arts, at her alma mater where she spent 10 years first as a student and then as teacher of the subject, notes the e-mail.

Many years ago Bhaya had offered her services as honorary director of the "Socio-Economic Survey of Rural South Gujarat Parsis” under the auspices of the World Zoroastrian Organisation (WZO), the Bombay Parsi Punchayet and the Surat Parsi Panchayat. The stupendous challenge of ameliorating the condition of needy Parsis in the villages of Gujarat was taken up by the WZO based on the Bhaya Report, presented in 1988. The WZO’s good work in Gujarat continues to this day, as does Bhaya’s contribution to the welfare of the community through active participation in local socio-cultural activities and charity drives in Muscat, the e-mail concludes.