"There is no encroachment… The rumors are totally untrue… Évu kai thaiyu nathi (nothing of the sort has happened),” stated Jeru Contractor, trustee of the Baroda’s Maiyat Khansaheb Seth Framji Cawasji Adarian ané Dharamshala Nibhav Fund since 1986, to Parsiana on September 12, 2024. The trustee was responding to our questions pertaining to an anonymous WhatsApp message on community groups alleging encroachment on the trust’s grounds. The mischievous Islamophobic message alleged: "Vadodara has a Parsi agiary ground which is used for parking by the people of the surrounding hotels…Security staff are kept there for proper parking… There were two Muslims in this staff… One started praying by placing four bricks in the field, and did not allow people to park there. After some time someone spread a green sheet there. And this was given the name Hazrat Syed Mehndi Hussain Mastan Bawa Dargah… Now the Sunni Wakh (sic) Board has shown its ownership of the entire Parsi agiary land.”
The 75-year-old Contractor debunked the rumors that started a year-and-a-half ago, then died down and have now resurfaced. "Vested interests are spreading these rumors… Probably some anti-social elements want to discredit the persons named in the WhatsApp forwards,” she stated. "We have a compound wall and security. The grave has been on the premises for many, many years. No one visits it,” she stated.
Seth Cawasji Framji Contractor Adarian: "There is no encroachment”
Photo: Dinku Mistry and Rayomand Vimadalal
A lawyer by training, Contractor narrated: "My great-grandfather Framji established his brick making business on this property. He was a contractor to the Gaekwads (royal family of Baroda) and constructed the building of the arts faculty of the Maharaja Sayaji Rao University and a bridge over a rivulet leading to the Doongerwadi… It was Framji’s wish to build a fire temple on the land that gave him his livelihood…After he passed away in 1921 my grandfather Pestonji decided to construct the fire temple… (which) was inaugurated in 1924.” Marzban Giara writes in his Global Directory of Fire Temples that the fire temple was built at a cost of Rs 1,78,000 and the dharamshala opened in 1926 for which "Framji had earmarked Rs 90,000 in his will.” Ruhshad Cama, trustee of Parsi Panchayat Charitable Fund, Vadodara, told us that the Contractors were one of the largest landowners after the Gaekwads.
The fire temple sees two to four footfalls a day and has about 16 or 17 muktad tables, stated Jeru. Lone priest Ervad Kersi Bhesania tends the consecrated fire. His brother Ervad Homi serves the other agiary in Baroda, the Bai Dhunbaiji Dadabhai Bhimji Umrigar Agiary. "Ék bijanu sambhali lai [They help each other out (in case of need)],” she noted.
The fire temple complex includes the Cooverbai Hall used for community functions, named after Framji’s wife, a house for the mobed and a bungli. Jeru’s brother Pesi and another relative, Nikitin Contractor, serve as co-trustees.
Jeru was felicitated by the Parsi Panchayat with a silver salver and a shawl for outstanding services to the community in 2008 (see "Well deserved honors,” Events and Personalities, Parsiana, June 21, 2008).