Badruddin Tyabji

THIS ADVENTUROUS and intrepid freedom fighter, the scion of an emigrant Arab family, was born in Bombay on October 10, 1844. A tremendously self-reliant person, he passed the London matriculation exams. By 1867, he was a full-fledged barrister. But deteriorating eyesight compelled him to return to India.
In 1895 Tyabji accepted the Judgeship of Bombay High Court. He then went down in Indian legal history as the first Chief Justice of Bombay in 1902. Not only that, he was also the first Indian barrister in Bombay to reach the top of his profession within a decade.
As a Judge, he was particularly known for the spirit of courage and impartially, which was revealed when he not only granted bail to Tilak after it had been rejected thrice but also admonished the British for denigrating Indians. He entered Bombay politics when he was involved in the agitation for an elective Bombay Municipal Corporation and topped the list of those subsequently elected to that body. From that point in time, Tyabji, Pherozeshah Mehta and Telang came to be known as “The Triumvirate” of Bombay’s public life.
However, Tyabji’s popularity peaked when he was unanimously elected President of the third Congress session in 1887. This despite the fact that Tyabji, who was unable to attend the first and second Congress session due to pressing business and ill-health respectively, was accused of boycotting the party because he was a Muslim. But he declared that he had “denounced all communal and sectarian prejudices.”
A religious reformer and an enlightened Muslim, he was responsible for setting up the Anjuman-i-Islam school in Bombay for the upliftment of coreligionists. He campaigned against purdah and was the first prominent Muslim to discard it in his own household.
Being the first Muslim to create a secular political consciousness, naturally the burden of counter-acting the two-nation theory fell on Tyabji. This duty he performed with zeal and dedication.
Tyabji, a product of both Western and Eastern education, was aware of the backwardness of the Muslims. A farsighted thinker, he felt that an advanced representative Government was useless if the masses remained ignorant.
It was Tyabji’s intellectual charisma that enabled him to exert considerable influence on the British. Of him, Gandhiji once wrote: ”Badruddin was for years a decisive factor in the deliberations of the Congress”. In fact, the Congress gained a national character largly because of Tyabji’s influence on the Muslims.
In his Presidential address at the Indian National Congress in 1887 Tyabji said: “Be moderate in your demands, be just in your criticism, be accurate in your facts, be logical in your conclusions, and you may rest assured that any propositions you may rest make to our rulers will be received with that consideration which is characteristic of a strong and enlightened Government.” Tyabji died in London on September 19, 1906 after having led a heroic and patriotic life.