Shapurji Edalji (1841/1842 – 23 May 1918) was an Indian-born convert to Anglicanism who was likely the first person from South Asia to be made the vicar of an English parish.
His achievements have however been overshadowed by the worldwide fascination with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s campaign to prove his son George innocent of wounding a pony in 1903.
[1] In 1876, George Selwyn, the Bishop of Lichfield, appointed Edalji as Vicar of St Mark's church, and the parish of Great Wyrley, Staffordshire, where he served until his death forty-two years later.
A devoted clergyman, though unflinching and sometimes controversial when it came to defending his fundamental principles, he published his Lectures on St Paul's Epistles to the Galatians in 1879.
He was on the one hand a fine preacher but on the other sometimes a cause of tension in the parish, for example when he engaged in bitter battles over the future of the local Church of England schools.