By:Aliyeh Rizvi
I was standing outside the swank automobile showrooms in India Garage the other day, watching excited owners roll out onto St Marks Road in their ribbon wrapped cars. Ironically, the petrol bunk area inside this graceful building was where around 1920, Hajee Osman Sait, an eminent Cutchi Memon businessman, struck a match and deliberately set fire to all the imported goods sold in the Cash Bazaar as it was called back then.
This brazen act of arson must have seemed incomprehensible to gentile customers in the Cantonment. The Cash Bazaar opposite Bowring Institute (1868) was where they bought everything from pins and provisions to ‘English vegetables’, fruits and flowers. Setting fire to goods was something a flourishing trader just did not do. The popular shopping arcade was also a family legacy. It had been built by his grandfather Yousuf Pir Mohammed who had moved to Bangalore from Kutch. Each of his seven sons received ‘three doors’ from where they managed their business. The building, therefore, had 21 doors that opened onto a wide verandah with cast iron grills.
But while the Cantonment speculated, the Non-cooperation Movement (1920) led by Gandhiji escalated into public meetings and protests across the country. Amongst other things, it also advocated a boycott of British goods. This civil disobedience ran in parallel with the pan-Islamic Khilafat movement (1919-1924) whose leaders, including the brothers Maulana Mohammad and Shaukat Ali, were allied with the Indian National Congress at that time.
Hajee Osman Sait, President, Madras and Bangalore Khilafat Committee, was deeply inspired by India’s freedom struggle. He played host to Gandhiji, Pandit Nehru and the Ali brothers at his home on St Mark’s Road (around present day Hotel Nandhini). He sold his property, donated money and apparently even publicly auctioned off his eldest son to raise funds. Ebrahim was returned respectfully and the money, donated. He opened an Indian National School (1921) on his property, Stafford House (now Bishop Cottons Girls School) and sent his own children to local schools. The Cash Bazaar bonfire was yet another contribution to the movement.
Masood Ali, Yousuf Sait’s son, says his grandfather was an unbelievably wealthy businessman who owned over 20 acres in the area, including several large bungalows of which four were named after his sons — Yakhoob, Ebrahim, Khader and Yousuf Villas. Four white horses drew his famous buggy. They were housed on Residency Road before the Imperial Talkies was built and then moved to stables at the Cash Bazaar which also sold hackney carriages.
The stables were later occupied by Sir Mark Cubbon’s horses and used by the Bangalore Riders Club (1934). Later on, Addison & Co. sold bicycles, cars (Peugeots and Buicks among them) and motorcycles next door. India Garage’s history of hot wheels began here long before shiny automobiles arrived in India.
Haji Osman Sait’s dedication to the freedom movement cost him dearly. He passed away in 1928, in a rented home around the age of fifty-six. Masood Ali says his funeral procession was over 5 kms long and extended from the Jumma Masjid off Commercial Street to the Jayamahal Palace burial ground.
India Garage was subsequently sold in an auction in the 1930s and then became the first showroom of the pioneering VST Group founded by V S Thiruvengadaswamy Mudaliar in1911.The building retains the original structure and some trees he planted. But its doors now open out to a free, liberalised India.
The writer is a cultural documentarian and blogs at aturquoisecloud.wordpress.com
source: http://www.bangaloremirror.com / Bangalore Mirror / Home> Bangalore> Others / by Aliyeh Rizvi, Bangalore Mirror Bureau / May 12th, 2014