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Shipowner and active participant in the China trade, Framji Cowasji Banaji "was able to build roads, a house for himself, 23 wells and had started his first experimentation with the plantation of Mauritian sugarcane, within nine months of acquiring seven villages on Salsette Island, north of Bombay,” according to Prof Mariam Dossal, ex head of the department of history, Bombay University. The terms of the 1829 lease required this pioneering agriculturist to "erect buildings, embankments and extend cultivation,” and included a clause that if the land was not developed to the satisfaction of the British administration within 10 years, the......