“Mr. Tata strove to serve his country in a manner that few other Indians have done; and what is more remarkable is that his efforts were directed towards developing the best intellects of the country for the industrial regeneration of India… He perceived that India possessed intellect which could be made to achieve great things, and his scholarships to send young men to Europe and his Research Institute scheme were the direct results of this perception”.
MAY, 21, 1904
The late Mr. J. N. Tata
THE NEWS OF THE DEATH OF JAMSETJI NUSERWANJI TATA WILL be received with the most profound regret in all parts of India and among all classes of people. The sad event took place on Thursday, the 19th instant, at Mannheim in Germany, where he had been for a change. He left Bombay in January last owing to indifferent health and after staying for a time at Cairo he visited Naples and other cities on the continent of Europe. The benefit which was expected from the foreign trip was not realised; and his health showed no improvement. Beyond the circle of his friends in Bombay, it was little suspected that his trip to Europe was undertaken for reasons of health; and the suddenness of the melancholy announcement will cause a shock to most people in India who have been expecting to see him back to resume his beneficent and patriotic activity in this country.
Mr. Tata was barely 65 years old at the time of his death; and it was the expectation of all his countrymen that he would live many years longer. But death has suddenly deprived of the Indian community of one of their most patriotic and far-sighted countrymen. Mr. Tata strove to serve his country in a manner that few other Indians have done; and what is more remarkable is that his efforts were directed towards developing the best intellects of the country for the industrial regeneration of India. It would have been little surprising if he had merely contented himself with opening new industries, establishing new business, and opening commercial relations with foreign countries. But his insight led him into quite other parts. He perceived that India possessed intellect which could be made to achieve great things, and his scholarships to send young men to Europe and his Research Institute Scheme were the direct results of this perception. He had himself shown what an Indian could achieve in the world of commerce and industry and as a matter of course in any other fields where one could exercise his intellect free from depressing restraints and limitations. In whatever sphere Indians are permitted unrestricted play to their faculties, there men like Mr. Tata have come upto the front. Mr. Tata having illustrated the fact in himself, could not rest content until he had done something to open out opportunities to the best youths of the country to study science and carry on scientific research; and thus arose from his mind the idea of a Research University which, under a more sympathetic Government than that of Lord Curzon, would have before now been brought into existence.
Mr. Tata was admitted into the Elphinstone College, Bombay, when he was sixteen years old, and left it when nineteen to enter his father’s office. Since then his career was entirely connected with commerce and industry. Soon after leaving his career he went to China and the visit resulted in the establishment of the firm which has been known as Messrs. Tata & Co., with branches in Japan, Hong Kong and Shanghai, Paris and New York. Returning from China in 1863, he went to England two years later with a view to establish an Indian bank in London with Mr. Premchand Roychand as his partner. But owing to a financial crash in Bombay, in which the fortunes of his family suffered, he had to give up the project and return to Bombay. Owing to their financial misfortune, Mr. Tata and his father turned contractors and the contracts they obtained in connection with the Abyssinian war revived his family fortune once more; and from that time forward, Mr. Tata’s career was one of uninterrupted success and prosperity. He then applied his hand to the mill industry. He first purchased an oil mill which he subsequently converted into a spinning and weaving concern and then sold it at a profit. In 1872, he again visited England to study the conditions of the cotton mill industry in Lancashire and after returning to India he established the Nagpur Empress Mills, in commemoration of the assumption of the title of Empress by Queen Victoria on the 1st of January, 1877. Encouraged by the success of this enterprise, he purchased the Dharamsy Mill at Coorla and converted it into the Swadesi Mill. An even greater achievement recorded to his credit is his success against P. and O. Steam Navigation Company. It appears that ever since Bombay’s yarn exports began to assume colossal proportions the P. and O. Company first alone, and then, with two other Companies, monopolised the freight for the staple product so much so that while freights between London and Bombay had, during the same period, undergone considerable reduction, no such reduction had been made in the freights to China and Japan. A new line of the Japanese Navigation Company, started by enterprising Japanese under the guidance of Messrs. Tata and Sons now entered the field as a formidable competitor. Thereupon the P. and O. company reduced the freight from Rs. 17 a ton to the nominal sum of Rs. 2 and again to one rupee per ton. The war of freight was carried on for some time; and finally the P. and O. company applied political pressure upon their rivals through the Japanese Government. Mr. Tata firmly stood to his guns and with the assistance of the Japanese Press resisted the influence. He protested in a pamphlet against the iniquity of the P. and O. Company, subsidised heavily from the Indian revenues, using that very subsidy to make up the loss involved in the ruinous competitive way in which they had reduced their charges. In the end the P. &0. Company yielded.
Though Mr. Tata’s mind and energies were entirely occupied by commerce and industry, he had always a due appreciation of the advantages of higher education to India. He knew that the highest development of Indian intellect was possible only through higher education: and it was for this reason he endowed a fund for sending youths to England which, though originally intended for Parsis, was in 1894 thrown open to all. Having seen the successful operation of this fund, he started his scheme of a Research University which, if accomplished even to some extent in the manner designed by this great philanthropist, is bound to have a very great influence on the industrial regeneration of India. Mr. Tata, it is true, hardly figured in the public life of the country; and he was not a politician in the ordinary sense of the word. But so far as devotion to the interests of his country and his people were concerned, he had not many equals. Not only did he strive to raise the status of his country – albeit industrially – but made sacrifices towards that end such as few other men have made. Few men of wealth would think of devoting so many as thirty lakhs of rupees for the establishment of a Research Institute from which neither he nor his family can get anything. It is a pity that he did not live to see the completion of his scheme owing to the distrust, suspicion and dilatory procedure of Lord Curzon’s Government. But his countrymen will deeply appreciate and feel grateful for his noble benefaction; and we have no doubt that this appreciation and gratitude will not be merely of this or the next generation, but of successive generations to come. India has truly lost one of her greatest and noblest sons.
Reference:
The First 100
A Selection of Editorials, 1878-1978, THE HINDU, VOLUME I