Oddities, Eccentricities, etc.
|
Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata |
|
|
|
|
|
of his own wealth, his possessions even exceeding those of the late Li Hung Chang, who was reckoned the richest man in the world"… The Birmingham Ledger is quoted as stating that "he enjoys the distinction of having refused to be knighted by Queen Victoria at the sacrifice of his religion" and asserted that "he wore a large diamond in his shirt"… The Birmingham News was much more sedate and on the whole more accurate also, but insisted on christening him "John N. Tata". |
|
n his
visit to the United States in September 1902, Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata
excited the insatiable curiosity of American newspaper reporters, wrote
Frank Harris in the first (published in 1925) and thoroughly researched
biography of the great industrialist. Jamsetji also fired the imagination
of these journalists, for quite often they made him out to be other than
he was. "A jolly good fellow," one Cleveland writer is quoted as saying,
"the J.P. Morgan of the East Indies," whose partner was "the Nizam of
Hyderabad"… "So rich that he has little idea Frank Harris maintains, however, that some sketches were admirably done and did justice to the great Indian industrialist. The Washington Post, for example, described him as "a merchant prince, manufacturer and importer and likewise philanthropist, scholar and philosopher". On the other hand, in New York, an interviewer one day followed him into a shop where he was buying some boots. Jamsetji refused to be interviewed by him. But the next day a New York newspaper gravely announced that "the Pierpont Morgan of the East was trying to acquire a monopoly of the American boot trade"!
Among the many achievements to Jamsetji's credit, the most widely known and appreciated is the Taj Mahal Hotel, opened in 1903, which has come to be ranked over the years as one of the world's finest hotels in the five-star company of Shepherds in Cairo, Raffles in Singapore and the Peninsula in Hong Kong (see box below).
It was in Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, however, that Jamsetji found precisely the advice and help he had been seeking to fulfil his long-cherished dream of establishing a steel industry in India. Writes Harris: "Pittsburgh ranks first among the cities of the U.S.A. in the manufacture of iron and steel products, of which it sends forth more than 50 per cent of the output of the whole country. It stands in the midst of productive coal-fields, and absorbs a large proportion of the iron ore produced in the Lake Superior region. Its neighbourhood contains the chief plants of the immense United States Steel Corporation. It is the home of the Westinghouse Company, the famous organisation which manufactures electrical apparatus, air brakes, railway signals, and other devices." Impressed by the Indian visitor, Mr. Westinghouse entertained him privately at his residence, Solitude.
Above all, it was at Pittsburgh that Jamsetji encountered the man he had been seeking — Julian Kennedy, of the firm of Julian Kennedy, Sahlin and Co. Ltd., Engineers, one of the foremost metallurgical engineers in the world. It was his life's most fruitful encounter. "He told Mr. Tata that he must first institute a far more thorough and scientific investigation of the local conditions, the raw materials, and the markets of India, than he had hitherto done." Kennedy also recommended Charles Page Perin and his associate C.M. Weld to undertake the geological work. Jamsetji employed both the experts. Weld, in fact, started for Bombay immediately.
On his return to India, the aging Jamsetji entrusted
the responsibility of concentrating upon the steel scheme to his son
Dorabji who was one day to bring it to successful fruition. As Sir Stanley
Reed, then Editor of The Times of India, wrote in his Introduction to
Harris's biography, "It was Jamsetji's cherished belief that no country
could become industrially great, which did not manufacture iron and steel,
had no provision for first-class Science education and for hydro-electric
schemes to provide cheap, clean power." Jamsetji died, however, before any
of these three projects — the Iron and Steel Works at Jamshedpur, the Tata
Hydro-electric Scheme and the Indian Institute at Bangalore — were
established: "By the time Mr. Tata's own life was spent, the foundation
work had been so well and truly accomplished, his sons and lieutenants
were so firmly imbued with his own ideals, that the momentum he had given
to these great ideas drove them irresistibly forward … Others reaped, but
he sowed; the harvest is as assuredly his as if he had actually garnered
the fruits of his careful, courageous, and imaginative
sowing."
B.K.
Courtesy: Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata: A Chronicle of His Life by Frank Harris. Published by Blackie & Son (India) Limited.
|
hen
Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata's grand creation, the Taj Mahal Palace
Hotel, opened in Bombay on 16 December, 1903, it stood in solitary
splendour — on the all-quiet eastern waterfront. Each dawn, starbursts
of the golden orb of day touched its magnificent onion-shaped cupolas,
cusped arches and carved cornices; the moon over the midnight blue
waters of the Arabian Sea sent in its silver through the 125.5 ft
central cupola which stood vastly taller than the surrounding
structures.