PEOPLE
IDEAS
PLACES
CULTURE
CREATE
STORIES
GAMES
Khurshed Nariman
खुर्शीद नरीमन
Veer Nariman — the Bombay lawyer who led a city into resistance
Years
1883 – 1948
Known as
Lawyer, Congressman and briefly Mayor of Bombay
Birthplace
Mumbai (then Bombay)
Field
Freedom Fighters
“Corruption in high places is the subtlest of the ropes that bind a nation.”
— Khurshed Nariman's campaign against the Back Bay scandal
The Story
Born in 1883, Nariman trained as a lawyer and entered the Bombay Municipal Corporation, where he earned the title Veer — the brave one — for attacking the enormous Back Bay land scandal, a swindle in which public land was quietly handed to speculators. He fought it with affidavits, questions and fearless journalism when many preferred silence.
When the freedom movement reached Bombay, Nariman translated his courtroom courage into street courage. In 1930 he led the city's civil disobedience, was arrested, and spent years in jail at different points of the struggle. He was also a pioneer of the Bombay Youth League, training young Indians in the habits of public life.
He served briefly as Mayor of Bombay and remained a leading Congressman until Partition and Independence. He died in 1948, having spent the last years of his life in the service of a country newly free and badly fractured.
Mumbai remembers him every day without meaning to: Nariman Point, the business district at the tip of Marine Drive, carries his name. Few citizens there know that it honours a lawyer who went to jail for the city's honesty.
Core Ideas
Veer in Court
He used affidavits and cross-examination as weapons of public interest.
The Back Bay Fighter
He exposed one of colonial Bombay's biggest land scandals.
Leader of 1930
He commanded Bombay's civil disobedience and earned repeated jail terms.
Youth and Public Life
He helped train a generation of young Bombay citizens.
A City's Name
Nariman Point keeps the memory of a fearless local patriot.
Why it matters today
Nariman shows how local government and national freedom are the same fight. A corporator who refused to be silent, a lawyer who accepted jail, and a mayor who stayed a servant — Bombay's resilience as a public-spirited city has a strong thread of him running through it.