By private cable, news has keen received of the death in Bombay of Feb, 18 of Sir Dinsha Wadia, at the age of 92. A. prominent merchant and millowner—he was for 45 years a member of the Bombay' Millowners Assoeiation—Dinsha Edulji Waeha was the doyen of the Parsee community in India, highly respected in commerce and polities in which he} took notable and active. leadership throughout his long career. For 31 years he was a 'Member of the Bombay Municipal Corporation, 116) was one of the acsoclates of Gokhale in the moderate days of the Indian National Congress, of which bods. he was President at Calcutta in 1901, the seventeenth year of its existence,' He had been a Governor of the Imperial Sir Dh ha Waehs Bank of India since 1921 and was at tone time President of the Western India National Liberal Association, He Was born on August 2, 1844, educated at Elphinstone College, Bombay, and centered his father's frm of Moradji Goculdas asd Ca, in 1874 to play a rear part in the development of the Bombay cotton industry. He was a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society. of London. He wielded a pen as vigorous as his tongue and nis con {ributions to the press were volumin= ous on polities, currency, temperance reform, agrieiture ant municipal government.
'That paid recital of Sir Dinsha's achievements docs insuMeient justice {to the man himself, Spare in frame, short in stature, of abounding one. ho was a figure to be singled out wherever he went, "He was, of course, most at home In' Bombay "where, spartan simplicity, he rose early the moming to write his own letters to various friends in exposition of his views, But he was known, too, further afield, "He was elected to the Council of State—the Upper House of the Indian Logisiature—on its creation im 1021, 'There, already an. elder Matesman in reality, 77 years of aye, hho showed a vigour' and keenness in debate which would have done credit a man of half his years, He was a strong Liberal and therefore generally on the side of the Government, "but is. independence made him no slavish henchman and successive Finance Ministers found him a tough nut to crack on currency: matters. In particular hedelighied 10 ross swords with the Commander-In-Chief on military policy. To hear him felling the late Lord Rawlinson that the Government should revert to the Fecruitment of ils own European soldiers as—within his own reecllec: tion—the East Thdia Company did in the days before Lord Rawlinson was born, was on abiding joy to his cole leagues. On one occasion, vehemently upholding his point of view for twenty minutes, ne broke off to tell the Touse that his doctor and his daughter had warned him not to speak for mere than a quarter of a proposed to be disobey! for another twenty mit cly cheers, and approving' laughter. Long a widower, he was. immensely devoted to his three daughters and his grandchildren, He inspired saffection a8 well as esteem, wherever he went. If he could not permit his logic cal commonsense to be carried away into the camp of the modern Con-ress, he always retained the respect of the younger politicians who never forgot that he was a pioneer in the constitutional progress in which they, despite their avowed pessimism, were privileged to share. Of the numerlcally smalt but important Parsee com= munity he was a splendid ornament. Tie served it well but he was never so narrow in his outlook as to forget the greater claims of India and, beyond India, the British: Empire which, by his death, ix deprived of a worthy and public-spirited citizen and is the richer by the memory of his precept and example,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.