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November 1926 was a month of great joy in the
Joshi family, in Bombay. Framroze and Dinbai had been blessed with their
first son. They named him Dinshaw. But not in their wildest imagination
did they dream that someday he would become the first Zarathushti
recognized as a world authority in the field of telecommunications, or a
towering community figure in far-away North America. By the time their son
died in November 2003, he had fulfilled that tryst with destiny!
The young Dinshaw became a man determined to
be an engineer. He preparing himself for that at Elphinstone College's
Royal Institute of Science, and then won admission for mechanical and
electrical engineering studies at India's premier engineering faculty at
the time, Poona Engineering College. As always, Dinshaw topped all
candidates while earning his Bachelor of Engineering from Bombay
University as well as in the all-India public service exams which led to
his selection to India's vast Post & Telegraph Authority (P&T). He began
as a Divisional Engineer, in its Telegraph Engineering Department. He thus
launched a professional career of national and international eminence in
the-then nascent field of telecommunications.
Its evolving technology fascinated Dinshaw. He
absorbed it like a proverbial sponge. Recognizing his brilliance, P&T
first sent him under a UN Technical Assistance Fellowship to Germany,
Switzerland and UK to hone his expertise in advanced telecommunications
and later, to other courses abroad. He was also sent to others to enhance
his managerial talents, including to the National Academy of
Administration and the National Defense College in India. As Dinshaw began
proposing far-reaching changes to modernize India's archaic
telecommunications system and ways to realize them, his rise in P&T was
spectacular. He pioneered technical improvements en route, including in
multi-exchange telephone systems for which he held a Joint Patent in India
& the UK.
While he occupied positions of increasing
responsibility, P&T assigned Dinshaw at the same time to visiting foreign
dignitaries such as Eisenhower, Khruschev, Queen Elizabeth, the Shah of
Iran and Jacqueline Kennedy. At a young age, it appointed him the General
Manager of Bombay Telephones - India's largest telecommunications system
that cried for technological and managerial modernization. His success
there, led to the pinnacle of Dinshaw's P&T career when he was named its
Deputy Director-General. He thus became the first Zarathushti to reach
that level in the field of telecommunications, anywhere in the world. By
then, Dinshaw was also recognized world-wide as an authority on "switchgearing"
which, in the early 70s, was at the cutting edge of telecommunications
technology. A Zarathushti has still to achieve world pre-eminence in this
field.
Dinshaw's professional successes went hand in
hand with his marriage in 1956 to his beloved life partner, Goolcher
Kotwal, and the birth of their adored daughter Shehernaz. Motivated
perhaps as much by his desire to open better opportunities in life for
them as to place his world-acknowledged telecommunications expertise on a
broader international canvas, he accepted the invitation to join the World
Bank in 1973.
In his 20 years in this pristine world
development institution, Dinshaw master-minded technological and
institutional improvements in the telecommunications systems of many
countries, including Egypt, Kenya, Nepal, Tanzania and Thailand. In turn,
that spurred the growth of their economies and improved the quality of
life for their millions. Even through his profession, he lived by the
Zarathushti precept of giving of oneself to improve the lives of others.
Unlike some who achieve pre-eminence and toot
their horns all the time, Dinshaw refrained from doing so. He remained
modest and self-effacing, wearing his world honors lightly on his
shoulders. Indeed, a hallmark of true greatness. His professional
pre-eminence was matched by fierce devotion to living according to the
principles of his faith, whose navar he had became when 12. Despite the
demands of his career, he always had time to help those who sought it, and
to serve the community wherever he lived - India or North America.
After resolving a long-festering dispute
between community groups in Delhi, Dinshaw was among those at the
forefront who shaped the Delhi Anjuman's constitution on a forward-looking
basis and later, built its agiary. Soon after coming to Washington DC, he
was drawn into the creation of the Zoroastrian Association of Metropolitan
Washington (ZAMWI). Its far-sighted constitution and practices, which
welcomed a person of any ethnicity who believed in the faith into the
Association, owe as much to Dinshaw's broad vision as to those of its
other founders. Elected Founder-Vice President in 1978, he served as
ZAMWI's President from 1982-84.
He then turned his focus on the wider canvas,
the North America's Zarathusti community. Drawn into its bi-national body,
FEZANA, Dinshaw served it with great devotion and fervour from 1987 until
he died. Besides participating in many of its committees, he chaired its
Welfare Committee from its inception until recently, and its Awards
Committee from 1995 until his demise. The community acclaimed him for
setting transparent standards and rigorous selection processes for Awards
given at FEZANA's bi-annual North American Congresses. In tribute, he was
asked to head the Awards Committee of the 2000 World Zoroastrian Congress.
What is less publicly known is, that Dinshaw's
sagacity and ability to give sound advice based on true Zarathushti
values, made him a valued counselor to successive FEZANA Presidents. They
frequently turned to him for counsel on most North American community
matters. He got no public recognition for his imprint on them. Yet, it is
a measure of his greatness, that this mattered not one bit to him. What
fulfilled Dinshaw was, that he could give of himself for the benefit of
the community he loved. That was his true passion. Unknown to them, North
American Zarathushtis are better-off because he silently played this
beneficial role for years.
The North American and the global Zarathushti
community became poorer when this great - yet modest - Zarathushti died in
November 2003. By then, he had fulfilled his destiny of professional and
community greatness which Framroze and Dinbai had never dared to dream
for their eldest son, Dinshaw Framroze Joshi. |
