Reuben David

Origins and early life

Reuben David was born at Ahmedabad in 1912 into a Bene Israel family, the son of Joseph David — the Bene Israel are the ancient Jewish community of western India, who by their own tradition arrived on the Konkan coast in antiquity, kept the Sabbath, circumcision and the Shema through centuries of isolation, and served in large numbers in the Indian army.

Work and career

He was a Jew all his life and is buried in the Jewish cemetery of Ahmedabad. Trained as nobody: he had no degree in veterinary medicine and learned the care of animals by keeping them, treating them and observing them, and became the veterinary surgeon of the city and one of the most respected animal men in India. In 1951 the municipality of Ahmedabad gave him a patch of ground beside Kankaria lake and almost no money, and he built there over two decades the Kankaria zoo, now the Kamla Nehru Zoological Garden: he collected the animals himself, designed the enclosures, and made it one of the best-run zoos in the country, celebrated for the health of its animals and for breeding species that had not bred in captivity in India.

He was the first to breed the Indian white-backed vulture and the chinkara gazelle in an Indian zoo. He also created the Balvatika children's park and the city's natural history museum, which now bears his name, and he opened them to schoolchildren without charge so that the poor of Ahmedabad could see a living animal. In 1974 the Government of India awarded him the Padma Shri. He died at Ahmedabad on 24 March 1989, and the city has kept his name on the museum and on a road.