Astad Dinshaw (A.D.) Gorwala CIE, ICS (1900–1989) was an officer of the

Indian Civil Service The Indian Civil Service (ICS), officially known as the Imperial Civil Service, was the higher civil service of the British Empire in India during British rule in the period between 1858 and 1947. Its members ruled over more than 300 million ...

, and then publisher of ''Opinion'', a

newsletter A newsletter is a printed or electronic report containing news concerning the activities of a business or an organization that is sent to its members, customers, employees or other subscribers. Newsletters generally contain one main topic of int ...

through which he doggedly opposed the

Indian Emergency The Emergency in India was a 21-month period from 1975 to 1977 when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had a state of emergency declared across the country. Officially issued by President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed under Article 352 of the Constitution beca ...

, which lasted from 25 June 1975 to 21 March 1977. A

Parsi Parsis () or Parsees are an ethnoreligious group of the Indian subcontinent adhering to Zoroastrianism. They are descended from Persians who migrated to Medieval India during and after the Arab conquest of Iran (part of the early Muslim conq ...

born in 1900, Gorwala entered the Indian Civil Service in 1924, sitting the exams in India. He was posted to several places during his service, including Sindh. As a Secretary to the Government of Bombay and its Director of Civil Supplies and Supply Commissioner, he was appointed a Companion of the

Order of the Indian Empire The Most Eminent Order of the Indian Empire is an order of chivalry founded by Queen Victoria on 1 January 1878. The Order includes members of three classes: #Knight Grand Commander (GCIE) #Knight Commander ( KCIE) #Companion ( CIE) No appoi ...

(CIE) in the 1944 imperial New Year Honours list. Gorwala focused his writing on attacks on the individual by the agencies of the

state State may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''State Magazine'', a monthly magazine published by the U.S. Department of State * ''The State'' (newspaper), a daily newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, United States * ''Our S ...

. He also fought a long battle against corruption. A year into the Indian Emergency, ''Opinion'' was ordered shut down, but Gorwala was able to print one last issue, in which he observed that, Gorwala was also critical of

Jawaharlal Nehru Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru (; ; ; 14 November 1889 – 27 May 1964) was an Indian anti-colonial nationalist, secular humanist, social democrat— * * * * and author who was a central figure in India during the middle of the 20t ...

's apparent naiveté in matters relating to the Soviet Union. Just before Nehru (at that time the Prime Minister of India) left for Moscow in 1955 (his first visit to the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

since independence), Gorwala wrote, Gorwala also established Bombay's

food rationing Rationing is the controlled distribution of scarce resources, goods, services, or an artificial restriction of demand. Rationing controls the size of the ration, which is one's allowed portion of the resources being distributed on a particular ...

system during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, a system that still operates, though with reduced efficiency.

References

The Emergency (India) Indian Civil Service (British India) officers Companions of the Order of the Indian Empire 1900 births Year of death missing Parsi people Indian civil servants Indian government officials Indian diplomats {{India-diplomat-stub