I have read the item "Honoring teachers” (Events and Personalities, Parsiana, November 21-December 6, 2020) in which it is mentioned that Marazban Patrawala, who has been teaching at Sir Cowasji Jehangir Navsari Zarthoshti Madressa High School in Navsari for 25 years, was awarded, along with six other teachers, the title of Best Teacher in Gujarat state in September 2020.
I wish to place on record the facts about three distinguished alumni of the same School, from the family of the late Naoroji Dastur of Navsari (who is said to have performed 225 nirangdins, an unbeaten record). Leading them was Manekji Naoroji, believed to have been the first Indian paper-setter and examiner at the Bombay University for the MA (Master of Arts) papers in English. His counterpart was Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee of Calcutta University who rose to become its vice chancellor.
Jamshedji Naoroji, another son, was among the first batch of solicitors who appeared for the examination after the Incorporated Law Society was founded in Bombay. In that first batch was also Nusserwanji Sethna who founded his own firm of solicitors in Bombay’s Fort area.
Tehmurasp Naoroji was a gold medalist in English and in Avesta-Pahlavi, from matric to MA. He was a Sir Cowasji Jehangir scholar in English, and a Sir Hormusji Cowasji Dinshaw scholar in Avesta-Pahlavi. He was also an outstanding authority on playwright William Shakespeare, philosopher and statesman Francis Bacon and poet John Milton, and on the Zoroastrian books, Dinkard and Bundèhishn. B. T. DASTUR