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Brief History - Ninety Years of The Mama Parsi Girls’ School

The foundation of our life and the foundation of our School is well laid and cemented by the blood sacrifices and sweat of our Founders, Administrators, Principals, Teachers and the Student Community. Their loyalty, dedication and devotion has carried us through all these Eighty-five Years of storms and struggles. Our Homage to Ahuramazda and profound gratitude to all the workers of the school. May His ‘Meher’ ever remain on us !

The Zoroastrians came to Sindh in the middle of the last century and most of them settled in the city of Karachi. The three things they thought of doing the earliest were :-

i) The establishment of the Tower of Silence – 1847
ii) The establishment of the Atash Kadeh – 1848
iii) The establishment of the ‘Balak Shala’ – 1858

The Zoroastrian residents of Karachi, through donations and subscriptions opened, on 23rd May 1859 ‘The Parsi Balak Shala’. Seth Nanabhai Framji Spencer was its Secretary for the first three years. From 1862, it was managed by two great souls Seth Shapurji Hormusji Soparivala and Seth Pestonji Byramji Kotwal. They both nurtured and watered this sapling for decades and grew it into a mighty tree which today stands on the Haji Abdullah Haroon Road as the ‘Bai Virbaijee Soparivala Parsi High School’.

Parsi girls had been receiving elementary education, in the ‘Balak Shala’ and Bai Virbaijee Soparivala Parsi High School since 1859. Gradually more and more Parsi families felt the need of educating their daughters and the number of girl students increased. The necessity of a separate school for Parsi girls became a matter of great importance to the elders of the community.
In 1903 Mr. Eduljee Dinshaw sent the first proposal to establish a High School for Parsi girls. Unfortunately, the proposal fell through on account of the sharing of donations with the Boys’ School. Again in 1911 Seth Eduljee Dinshaw sent a generous offer of Rs.50,000/- to establish a separate Girls’ School and once again the project did not materialize on account of legal and practical difficulties. Finally it was Jamshed Nusserwanjee Mehta, the greatest humanitarian of this sub-continent who, through his acumen, foresight and his powers of persuasion collected three munificent donations which brought about the establishment of The Mama Parsi Girls’ High School in 1918.

At first the new Parsi girls’ school functioned in a portion of the Bai Virbaijee School, from where it was shifted in June 1919 to a large building which still stands today at the corner of Haji Abdullah Haroon and Inverarity Roads. This building was known as Mama Mansion.

With the princely donations of those days from :
Khan Bahadur Ardeshir H. Mama – Rs. 3,00,000/-
The Trustee of Late Seth N N Pochaji – Rs. 1,35,000/- and
The Eduljee Dinshaw Family – Rs. 75,000/-

in hand, the construction of the present magnificent edifice called The Mama Parsi Girls’ High School was started on 17th January 1920 and completed on 26th January 1925. The young Mamaians had their first academic lessons in their new stately alma mater on the 1st of April 1925.