Pherozeshah Mehta
Indian politician (1845-1915)
Sir Pherozeshah Merwanjee Mehta (4 August 1845 – 5 November 1915) was an Indian politician and lawyer from Bombay. He was knighted by the British Government in India for his service to law. He became the Municipal commissioner of Bombay Municipality in 1873 and its president four times – 1884, 1885, 1905 and 1911. Mehta was one of the founding members and President of the Indian National Congress in 1890 held at Calcutta.
Early life
Pherozeshah Merwanjee Mehta was born on 4 August 1845 in Bombay City, Bombay Presidency, British India into a Gujarati-speaking Parsi Zoroastrian family. His father, a Bombay-based businessman who also spent plenty of time in Calcutta, was not highly educated, but he did translate a Chemistry textbook into Gujarati and wrote a Geography textbook. Graduating from the Elphinstone College in 1864, Pherozeshah obtained his Master of Arts degree with honors six months later, becoming the first such Parsi, from the University of Bombay (later re-established as University of Mumbai). Sir Alexander Grant, principal of the university, nominated him a Fellow of the university and tried to procure him a scholarship founded by Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy to study in Europe. However, Mehta did not avail himself of the scholarship.
Mehta went to England from India to study law at Lincoln's Inn in London.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3634940. VIAF identifies the subject as 54994733. The Library of Congress control number is n89283282. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1845, 1915, 1873 and 1884.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pherozeshah Mehta” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.