Once he was the biggest name of Mumbai, who went ahead to contribute immensely towards the development of Mumbai and also showered his love for and Kutch in the big way.
Many don’t know who was Keshavji Naik aka Keshvji Nayak. This story is base on people from kutch Abdasa. Their might be points which might not look real but one thing with article you will know is Keshavji Naik was one of the prominent personality of Kutch Abdasa and then Mumbai.
The eminent personality named Keshavji Nayak was born in Samvat 1857 in Lakhaniya village of Abdasa around 200 years back and spent his growing up years in Kothara village. When he was 10, his widowed mother Hirbai fed up of living in misery due to poverty took off to Mumbai along with her brother Nenashi Savani, who set up his own cotton firm in the island city within no time.
Keshavji, along with studying, started assisting his uncle in his business and started earning on his own.
Once impressed by his uncle’s son’s clothing style, he asked his mother for money to buy him the same clothes which she refused as she could barely attend for basic necessities financially. He went back to his workplace and committed mistakes in his work, for which his uncle reprimanded him. In a fit of rage he dashed out of the premises, thinking about committing suicide, he landed on the beach and sat down for the tidal waves to take him deep down, drowning him. Fortunately, he fell asleep only to be woken up by a businessman named Devji Zaveri, who believed that he would prosper if he runs the business in the name of the first person he gets to meet in the morning, which was Keshavji.
To try his luck he sent Keshavji the next morning to do a deal on his behalf which clicked earning him a profit of Rs.8,000, out of which he handed Rs. 4,000 to Keshavji, which was a huge sum at that time. In charge of a huge amount, he started on his own and even got married. At the age of 25, he became a partner in his uncle’s cotton business and took over its operations. At 28, he established his firm in the Chinese port of Hong Kong and some countries in Africa. At that time, William Nickel’s company was the largest in cotton trading. Young Keshavji partnered up with John Flamingo and expanded his business further.
At 40, he ended his partnership with his uncle and started his own company named Narasimha Keshavji on his son’s name.
During the war in 1962 in the United States, cotton prices skyrocketed, which spelled a golden period for Keshavji’s business as he expanded his business manifold and made loads of money. Keshavji Nayak had become Keshavji Seth by then and when the going was good, he along with his friends came up with the idea of setting up a banking system, and that’s how Bank of India Limited, Bombay Trading and Banking Association, East India Bank Limited, Elphinstone Land and Press Company etc., laid the foundation of banking in India and created an environment for starting businesses throughout the country.
He did a lot for the city which have him life and then went ahead to transform his homeland by constructing the Keshavji Nayak and Narsingh Keshavji temple on the tunk of Palitana Mountain. He also constructed a temple and a Dharmashala in Palitana city to facilitate comfort of the pilgrims. Furthermore, he teamed up with two other merchants and built the highest temple in Kothara, which is considered in the Kutch Pancha-Tirthi. Apart from this, he has done renovation work in the temples of Mahajanwadi of Suthari Tirth and SammetShikharji. Likewise, he also constructed a Gaushala in Palitana along with library and many more things which are on record. He breathed his last at the age of 66 in Palitana.
Humans with such great stature as Keshavji Nayak are rare to find. The idea behind the story was to make people aware of this great human who has done a lot for the land he was born in and the land which gave him his life.
