Our story begins in the early 1940s. If you went to an Indian household around this time, you wouldn’t have found Amul Butter. There was another company whose butter was very popular in India. Polson. The Polson butter was so popular, that people used the words ‘butter’ and ‘Polson’ interchangeably. The Polson company was founded by Pestonji Eduiji when he was only 13 years old.
In his small shop, he started the business of coffee grinding in 1888. 12 years later, in 1900, he founded his company. Since Eduiji’s nickname was Poly, and it was the era of the British Raj, a British twist was added to the name, and it was named Polson. Because most of the customers back then were British or the elite Indians. Initially, Polson was very famous for its coffee. Their coffee was said to have been blended according to a French recipe.
In 1910, someone told Eduiji, that the British army was facing some troubles in their butter supply. That they had very little butter. Eduiji saw an opportunity in this crisis and set up a dairy farm in Gujarat’s Kaira district. This place is also known as Kheda. The name Kheda might bring back school memories of when you read about the Kheda Satyagraha.
Gandhi and Sardar Patel launched the Kheda Satyagraha in March 1918. Back then Polson made a lot of money by selling Polson Butter, to the British Indian forces, during World War I. But the farmers in Gujarat were facing dire circumstances. There was a famine and plague, and the British government increased the taxes. People who were unable to pay the taxes, had their property confiscated by the British. These reasons led Gandhi and Sardar Patel to launch the Satyagraha. It was successful after 3 months of protests.
