V.J. Madressa Boys School
V.J. Madressa Boys School — officially registered as V.J. Madressa Boys School (School Code: 24110107727) and known locally as part of the Victoria Jubilee (V.J.) Madressa Boys’ & Girls’ High School — is a private, Madarsa-recognised institution on M.G. Road, near Sudama Mandir, in the historic old town of Porbandar, offering education from Primary through Higher Secondary level.
The school is managed by the Porbandar Madressa Trust, Durban (South Africa) — a cross-continental link that traces back to the trading and philanthropic ties between Porbandar’s Memon community and the Indian diaspora in South Africa in the late 19th century. It provides free education up to Std. 12 to Muslim boys and girls of the community, without government aid.
The school runs alongside a companion V.J. Madressa Girls School (School Code: 24110107726) nearby, and both are historically part of the same Victoria Jubilee Madressa institution founded in the old town of Porbandar, near Sudama Chowk.
History & Heritage
V.J. Madressa Boys School was founded in 1887 by Sheth Haji Abdullah Zaveri (also recorded as Sheth Haji Abdullaha Jhaveri), a prominent Memon businessman of Porbandar. The school has provided free education to the community for well over a century, reflecting Porbandar’s long tradition of merchant-funded, community-run institutions.
Sheth Haji Abdullah Zaveri is remembered locally as the person who encouraged Mahatma Gandhi to travel to South Africa — the journey that began Gandhi’s 21 years there and his first experiments with nonviolent resistance. Gandhi himself was born in Porbandar in 1869, and it was a Kathiawari Muslim merchant, Dada Abdullah, whose shipping business brought Gandhi to Natal in 1893 to act as legal counsel for a related case. Zaveri is credited in Porbandar’s community history, and in the school’s own records, with that same role connecting the two men.
Porbandar’s Memon trading community was active well beyond the city itself, including across the Indian trading diaspora of South Africa, where Memon merchants funded mosques, madressas and welfare institutions in cities like Durban — the same pattern of philanthropy that founded this school back home in Porbandar, and that still connects it to the Porbandar Madressa Trust in Durban today.