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Respected throughout India as a "great Indian", in the words of
Jawaharlal Nehru, Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata ranks among the greatest
pioneers of industrial enterprise of all time.
Gifted with the most extraordinary prescience and imagination, he laid
the foundations of Indian industry and contributed to its consolidation.
To that extent he was one of the key figures in India's renaissance.
Born on 3 March 1839 in Navsari, a small town in Gujarat which had been
a centre for Zoroastrian culture for more than 800 years, Jamsetji came
from a long line of Parsi priests. When he was 13 years old, his father
Nusserwanji called him to Bombay for his education.
Jamsetji was 14 years old when he joined the Elphinstone Institution.
In 1856 he became a student of the Elphinstone College and passed out
from this institution two years later as a "Green Scholar" which was
then the equivalent of a degree.
At the age of 20, he entered his father's firm of general merchants
where he learnt trade and commerce. He was sent to Hong Kong and later
to Shanghai to establish branches there. Jamsetji also helped in
expanding the family business to markets in the Far East and in England.
In 1868, at the age of 29, he set up a private trading company and, from
the profits that he made on this venture, he launched himself into a
career in textiles.
After studying the business thoroughly, he established the Central
Spinning, Weaving and Manufacturing Company in Bombay in 1874, the
Empress Mills in Nagpur in 1877 and the Swadeshi Mills in Bombay in
1886.
He realised that India would not be able to realise its full potential
until it was self - sufficient in at least three respects - knowledge,
power and steel. As a result he lavished a lot of his time, energy and
wealth on the three great enterprises - the Indian Institute of Science
in Bangalore, the Hydro - electric schemes in Bombay and the Iron and
Steel Works at Jamshedpur - which are now part of the far - flung
organisation that bears his name and character.
"Let the Indian learn to do things for himself," Jamsetji had once
declared. This oftquoted maxim enunciates the pride that he took in
every achievement of his country and his belief that there was nothing
an Indian could not achieve.
Many years before his death, he was obsessed with the idea of an iron
and steel works which would ultimately be run by Indians themselves.
He did not live to see his grandest dream fulfilled but it was he who
initiated the project, explored the field, chose the first technical
experts, handed over to his sons and their associates the task of
direction and contributed a large part of his fortune to its success.
He participated in the early prospecting work, studied the subject
extensively and even succeeded in winning the support of the government
of the time.
Since he was determined to use the best expertise and technology in his
proposed plant, Jamsetji paid a visit to many major steel cities of
America.
His search ended at Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania at the firm of Kennedy,
Sahlin and Company, the best in the field of Metallurgical engineering.
There he found the help he was seeking in the person of Julian Kennedy,
who promised to build him a plant provided a through and scientific
investigation of the local conditions, the raw materials and the Indian
markets justified it. On Kennedy's suggestion, Jamsetji met Charles
Page Perin and persuaded him to undertake preliminary investigations.
Driven by Jamsetji's spirit of adventure, the first Tata explorers
ventured into the forests and hills of Central India and Bihar in the
summer of 1904 in search of mineral deposits for the steel plant. The
saga, which had begun 25 years earlier with the Lohara ore deposits in
Chanda district, culminated at Sakchi at the confluence of the rivers
Suvernarekha and Kharkai in December 1907.
The first stake for the steel plant was driven on a forest - covered
plateau in Sakchi on 27 February 1908. The dream had come alive but the
dreamer himself was no more for Jamsetji had died at Bad Nauheim in
Germany in 1904 after exhorting his successors to preserve the family
name. His spirit continued to inspire his sons to carry their father's
dreams to fruition well after his death.
A pioneer in schemes of town planning. Jamsetji erected model cottages
and houses for his people in Bombay and it was he who had conceived,
right down to the smallest detail, the steel town of Jamshedpur.
He was one of the most widely travelled Indians of his time, said to
possess a knowledge that was encyclopedic. Not only did he have a great
love for it, he had a passion to impart it to others for, as early as
1892, he established the J N Tata Endowment for the higher education
abroad of outstanding Indian students.
Jamsetji won himself an enduring place in India's history. What he
meant to the country was perhaps best summed up by Jawaharlal Nehru in
the tribute that he paid to the Founder: "When you have to give the
lead in action, in ideas - a lead which does not fit in with the very
climate of opinion, that is true courage, physical or mental and
spiritual, call it what you like, and it is this type of courage and
vision that Jamsetji Tata showed."
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