INSTEAD OF..................SIR MEHTA 219
unremittingly exerted themselves in our behalf than about meeting the problems that confront us to-day.
The Indian papers so far to hand indicate that the memorial of Mr. Gokhale is to take the form of establishing branches of the Servants of India Society at various places, while that of Sir P. M. Mehta is to stand in the form of a statue before the Bombay Municipal Office.
Permit me to say that individually I regard this particular form of Sir P. M. Mehta memorial to be very trivial and unbecoming to say the least.
I have been at pains to understand why his memorial cannot be in a form which will not only be a true memorial of him, but will be of permanent use to posterity.
As combining these two purposes, I would suggest that in my humble opinion the memorial of Sir P. M. Mehta should be in the form of a public library in Bombay to be called “Sir Pherozshah Mehta Library.”
It is unfortunate that we have not as yet realized the value of the library as an institution in the growth and advancement of a society. But this is not the place to dilate upon its virtues. That an enlightened public as that of Bombay should have suffered so long to be without an up-to-date public library is nothing short of disgrace and the earlier we make amends for it the better.
There are some private libraries in Bombay operating independently by themselves. If these ill-managed concerns be mobilized into one building, built out of the Sir P. M. Mehta memorial fund and called after him, the city of Bombay shall have achieved both these purposes. As to the funds for the purchase of books and management of the library on modern lines, I trust there will be many generous souls to endow it.
As a student in one of the biggest universities of the U.S.A. I am thoroughly convinced of the place a library has in the intellectual and social development of a people and being painfully conscious of its lack in the city of Bombay, I take this opportunity of urging on the Bombay public of what I think can be the fittest and, most lasting memorial of the greatest hero of modern Indian history.