We live in an age where greatness in historical personalities is as easily exaggerated as it is inequitably scrutinised. To rise above this paradox of hyperbolic inanity, on the one hand, and cynical revisionism, on the other, is difficult even for those whom posterity has vindicated. One person who does soar beyond such judgmental trivialities is Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata, industrialist, nationalist, humanist and the founder of the House of Tata.

The industrialist in Jamsetji Tata was a pioneer and a visionary, possessed of a spirit of entrepreneurial adventure and acumen never seen before or since in a native of colonial India. The nationalist in him believed unwaveringly that the fruits of his business success would enrich a country he cared deeply about. These attributes, by themselves, would have been enough to mark him as an extraordinary figure. But what made Jamsetji Tata truly unique, the quality that places him in the pantheon of modern India's greatest sons, was his humaneness.

It is this characteristic from which stemmed Jamsetji Tata's generosity of heart and his compassion for a citizenry labouring under the twin realities of oppressive foreign occupation and overwhelming poverty. The distinctive structure the Tata Group came to adopt after his passing, with a huge part of its assets being held by trusts devoted to ploughing money into social-development initiatives, can be traced to the empathy embedded in the founder's philosophy of business.

Nothing of Jamsetji Tata's childhood suggested he would create his own destiny. Born on March 3, 1839, in the sleepy town of Navsari in Gujarat, he was the first child and only son of Nusserwanji Tata, the scion of a family of Parsee priests. Raised in Navsari, Jamsetji Tata joined his father in Bombay when he was 14. The liberal education he received would fuel in him a lifelong admiration for academics and a love of reading. Those passions would, though, soon take a backseat to what Jamsetji Tata quickly understood was the true calling of his life: business. 

In 1868, aged 29 and wiser for the experience garnered by nine years of working with his father, Jamsetji Tata started a trading company with a capital of Rs 21,000. A year later, he made his move into textiles. He acquired a dilapidated and bankrupt oil mill in Chinchpokli in the industrial heart of Bombay, renamed the property Alexandra Mill and converted it into a cotton mill. 

In 1874, Jamsetji Tata floated a fresh enterprise, the Central India Spinning, Weaving and Manufacturing Company, with a seed capital of Rs 1.5 lakh. Three years later his venture was ready to realise its destiny. On January 1, 1877, the day Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India, the Empress Mills came into existence in Nagpur. At the age of 37, Jamsetji Tata had embarked on the first of his fantastic odysseys. 
The period following the establishment of Empress Mills was the most significant of Jamsetji Tata's busy life. From about 1880 to his death in 1904, he was consumed by the three great ideas of his life: setting up an iron and steel company, generating hydroelectric power, and creating a world-class educational institution that would tutor Indians in the sciences. None of these would materialise while Jamsetji Tata lived, but the seeds he laid, the work he did, and the force of will he displayed in fulfilling this triumvirate of his dreams ensured they would find glorious expression.
The brick-and-mortar endeavours that Jamsetji Tata planned and executed were but one part of a grander idea. How much of a man of the future he was can be gauged from his views about his workers and their welfare. He was clear about how an industrial township ought to be. It was only fair that the city born of his sterling vision came to be called Jamshedpur. 

Jamsetji Tata's philanthropic principles were rooted in the belief that for India to climb out of poverty its finest minds would have to be harnessed. Charity and handouts were not his way, so he established the JN Tata Endowment in 1892. This enabled Indian students, regardless of caste or creed, to pursue higher studies in England. This beginning flowered into the Tata scholarships, which flourished to the extent that, by 1924, two out of every five Indians coming into the elite Indian Civil Service were Tata scholars. 

Of the ventures that did bear fruit while Jamsetji Tata was alive, the Taj Mahal Hotel in Bombay has to rank highest. Legend has it that he set his mind on building it after being denied entry into one of the city's hotels for being an Indian. His friends and business associates were sceptical. His sisters chided him by asking, “Are you really going to build a bhatarkhana [eating house]?” The Taj turned out to be a bit fancier than that. By the time of its completion in 1903, it had cost Rs 4.21 crore. 

Jamsetji Tata's business successes shrouded the assortment of passions and commitments that he carried and nurtured across a fascinating life. He had an abiding love for Bombay, for travel and, most of all, for new ideas. His was a mind constantly seeking knowledge and daring to push the frontiers of achievement, right up to his demise in Germany in 1904. “Money is like fire, an element as little troubled by moralising as earth, air and water,” said the essayist Lewis H Lapham. “Men can employ it as a tool, or they can dance around it as if it were an incarnation of God.” Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata employed the wealth he created to enrich India and her people.

Jamsetji Tata conceived business ideas and plans that seemed impossible of accomplishment to his contemporaries. The moving force behind his projects was the desire to advance the industrial frontiers of India, not to earn mere profits. 
Dwijendra Tripathi, business historian and ex-professor of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.

For 135 years the Tata 'river' has flowed on, exhibiting the qualities of the great rivers of the world: long traction, turbulence, growing might, the ability to overcome obstacles, and the tendency to share its power for the happiness and prosperity of those on its banks.


R Gopalakrishnan: Executive Director, Tata Sons.