Piloo Mody (14 November 1926 – 29 January 1983) was an Indian

architect An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...

and politician and one of the founding members of the

Swatantra Party The Swatantra Party was an Indian classical liberal political party, that existed from 1959 to 1974. It was founded by C. Rajagopalachari in reaction to what he felt was the Jawaharlal Nehru-dominated Indian National Congress's increasingly soci ...

. Elected to the 4th and

5th Fifth is the ordinal form of the number five. Fifth or The Fifth may refer to: * Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, as in the expression "pleading the Fifth" * Fifth column, a political term * Fifth disease, a contagious rash tha ...

Lok Sabha The Lok Sabha, constitutionally the House of the People, is the lower house of India's bicameral Parliament, with the upper house being the Rajya Sabha. Members of the Lok Sabha are elected by an adult universal suffrage and a first-p ...

s, he served in the

Rajya Sabha The Rajya Sabha, constitutionally the Council of States, is the upper house of the bicameral Parliament of India. , it has a maximum membership of 245, of which 233 are elected by the legislatures of the states and union territories using si ...

from 1978 until his death.

Personal life

A member of the

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 ...

community Piloo Mody was one of the sons of Sir Homi Mody. He was educated at

The Doon School The Doon School (informally Doon School or Doon) is a selective all-boys boarding school in Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India, which was established in 1935. It was envisioned by Satish Ranjan Das, a lawyer from Calcutta, who prevised a school mod ...

, Dehradun. After School he attended

Sir J. J. College of Architecture Sir J. J. College of Architecture is an architecture school located in downtown Mumbai (Bombay), affiliated to University of Mumbai in the state of Maharashtra, India. Sharing its premises with Sir J. J. School of Art and Sir J.J. School o ...

and the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

, from where he graduated with a master's degree in

architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing building ...

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Zulfikar (or Zulfiqar) Ali Bhutto ( ur, , sd, ذوالفقار علي ڀٽو; 5 January 1928 – 4 April 1979), also known as Quaid-e-Awam ("the People's Leader"), was a Pakistani barrister, politician and statesman who served as the fourt ...

, who went on to become

Prime Minister of Pakistan The prime minister of Pakistan ( ur, , romanized: Wazīr ē Aʿẓam , ) is the head of government of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Executive authority is vested in the prime minister and his chosen cabinet, despite the president of Pa ...

in the 1970s, was his college roommate and the two were close friends. He was married to an American, Lavina Colgan Mody, who was a fellow architect student at Berkeley on 3 January 1953. He had 2 brothers, Kali Mody, a pioneer of credit card operations in India and Russi Mody, a former chairman of the Tata Iron and Steel company Limited.

Work as architect

After his stint at Berkeley he returned to India. He worked for two years spent on the Chandigarh Capital Project. He also designed the Chennai headquarters of Engineering Construction Corporation, a former subsidiary of Larsen & Toubro Ltd. It won the ''Federation Internationale de la Precontrainte'' prize for excellence in pre-stressed concrete from India. Piloo and Vina set up an architecture firm Mody and Colgan in 1953 at Stadium House, Churchgate.Their first project was a residential apartment at Marine Lines for senior officials of TISCO. They also designed the front casing of one model of Voltas Air conditioner. Piloo's other projects include residential project Olympus, three TELCO offices, the headquarters of Bharat Bijlee, Mukand Iron and Steel, Sandoz, Voltas and Diners Club and Business Service centres.

Political life

Piloo Mody College of Architecture (January 2019) 3

In political life Mody was an advocate of

liberalism Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality and equality before the law."political rationalism, hostility to autocracy, cultural distaste for c ...

and freedom. He was associated with Swatantra Party at its founding. According to his wife Vina, So he became a founding member of Swatantra Party. At the 1967 general election he was elected to the

4th Lok Sabha List of Members of the 4th Lok Sabha (4 March 1967 – 27 December 1970), elected February–March 1967. The Lok Sabha (House of the People) is the lower house in the Parliament of India.13 sitting members from Rajya Sabha were elected to 4th ...

, representing the Godhra constituency in

Gujarat Gujarat (, ) is a state along the western coast of India. Its coastline of about is the longest in the country, most of which lies on the Kathiawar peninsula. Gujarat is the fifth-largest Indian state by area, covering some ; and the ninth ...

. In 1971 he was re-elected and served in the

5th Lok Sabha List of Members of the 5th Lok Sabha, ( 15 March 1971 — 18 January 1977) elected February–March 1971.The term of the House was extended two times by one year at a time. However, the House was dissolved after having been in existence for a ...

until March 1977. In 1972 he was instrumental in promoting the Architects' Act. In 1975, at the time of the

Emergency in India 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 be ...

, Mody was arrested on the orders of the Indira Gandhi government, using the controversial powers granted by the

Maintenance of Internal Security Act The Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA) was a controversial law passed by the Indian parliament in 1971 giving the administration of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and Indian law enforcement agencies very broad powers – indefinite p ...

.Modi was arrested
/ref> After an absence of a year from parliament, on 10 April 1978 Mody joined the

and served there until his death in 1983. The Piloo Mody College of Architecture, at Cuttack, Orissa, and a FIDE chess tournament are named in his honour.

Works

* ''Zulfi, My Friend'' (1973) * ''Democracy Means Bread and Freedom'' (1979)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mody, Piloo Parsi people University of California, Berkeley alumni India MPs 1967–1970 India MPs 1971–1977 1926 births 1983 deaths Rajya Sabha members from Gujarat The Doon School alumni English-language writers from India Swatantra Party politicians Indians imprisoned during the Emergency (India) 20th-century Indian architects Artists from Gujarat Indian political writers 20th-century Indian writers Writers from Gujarat Lok Sabha members from Gujarat Indian expatriates in the United States