Juma Premji Rupani

Children

At the age of 14 years, Juma Premji Rupani, with one-and-a-half-year basic education of Gujarati language, left Kodinar (India) in 1895, to sail to Mozambique (then Portuguese East Africa), landing at the port of Inhambane. The voyage across Indian Ocean took a month-and-half to complete.

An ardent believer of the importance of education for his children, twenty-eight years later, in 1923, Late Juma Premji Rupani (by then a wealthy merchant who had invested heavily in sugarcane plantations in anticipation of reaping benefits from sugar factories that Portuguese colonial government of the time had intended to set up in Mozambique) undertook a return voyage of 21 days (by ship) to India with his children and children (some orphans) from other families. The objective of the journey was to avail the children the opportunity to receive good education.

By 'a stroke of the pen' - so to speak - Late Juma Premji Rupani lost all his sugarcane investment and other wealth when the colonial government changed its mind and cancelled the sugar factory projects; the persons he assigned responsibility to run his affairs, while he was away in India, just did not know how to handle the critical situation and he could not get back to Mozambique in time to take control (there were no commercial airlines at that time). The changed economic situation brought about imense hardship to the family.

Author of:

1. "Hind ane Africa no Vepaar" (India and the African Trade)

Afrikano Vepar Ane Hindio (Trade in Africa and the Indians)

Gujarati

(Bombay, 1937)