A PIONEER'S LEGACY

Perhaps “unique” is the word to describe such a man.
Ardeshir Burjorji Godrej was certainly unique in many ways.
And he did unique things ...

What would you say of a man who, lacking any means of his own, yet refuses to touch the money left him by his parents?

Or, of a man who, trained in law and fighting a case in Zanzibar, refuses to twist the truth, as lawyers are wont to do, even if it means losing the case--and his job?

Or, of a man who, taking up a job in a well known chemist’s shop, fashioned so fine a set of surgical instruments that his employers wished to market them under a foreign brand name and he refused to allow them to do so even if it meant losing a fortune?

That he was a crank? That he had no regard for money--nor for his future career? But you’d be wrong. The man was so highly principled that he believed that an individual should live by what he himself earns. Money as such meant little or nothing to him--unless it be put to productive use. He believed in self-reliance for his country to become self-respecting and free. He set the example by being self-reliant himself, to win respect in his own eyes.

Perhaps "unique" is the word to describe such a man. Ardeshir Burjorji Godrej was certainly unique in many ways. And he did unique things. Beginning with the manufacture of locks he was the first to put on the market a lever lock without springs, which were found to rust in other locks. This was the first of his 36 patented inventions.

He went on to make safes. He observed that in foreign safes, which were monopolising the market in India, the backs were attached to the bodies by means of angle bars which made it possible for the back to be removed by forcing the rivets. He came up with other patented inventions like the 16-corner bend, bending the back edges of the body into flanges and placing the back in position from the front and riveting it to the flanges so that it could not be detached by forcing the rivets. He was successful in this and many other patented inventions like the patent door frame, the double plate doors and the lock case. And, above all, an efficient fire-proof compound.

So successful was he that a foreign manufacturer who enjoyed the monopoly of Safes in India had to shift his operations to Australia.

Was Ardeshir content to sit back on his laurels? Not Ardeshir. A dedicated pioneer, he was restless unless trying out new things, exploring yet newer avenues to self-reliance. He turned to soap manufacture. He began to experiment with the unheard of idea of making stable toilet soaps from vegetable oils instead of animal fats as was the then accepted practice. Soap experts expressed doubts whether this could be done. But Ardeshir’s inventive genius proved them wrong by producing in 1920 the first toilet soap to be made purely from vegetable oils and sold commercially.

Economically, it was a sound proposition because plentiful supplies of vegetable oils were then available within the country. Socially, too, the experiment was blessed because it respected religious sentiments by replacing animal fats from which foreign soaps were made. To drive his point home, Ardeshir displayed horrifying pictures of animals--the fat of which was being used in a cleansing agent like soap.

Nothing enraged Ardeshir so much at the apathy of his countrymen at a time when India was being steadily denuded of its wealth by the then British rulers. He was not the sort of man to keep quiet about this sort of thing. In an interview he gave to The Indian National Herald, which was front-paged by it on April 27, 1927, he used such strong language that goes to show how bitterly he resented the British presence in India. This is how he began his interview: “Ye asses and donkeys, ye foolish children of India, what have you done for the Motherland, what have you done for the Swadeshi industries? If you see your mother bleeding in so many parts of her body, will you leave her alone and continue enjoying your lives at her cost? Do you realise Mother India has been bled white by foreign exploiters who have made us slaves of their tastes and goods?” He went on to narrate his disillusionment regarding a safe deposit scheme he was the first to formulate. Several Indian managers he went to with his scheme pooh-poohed the idea: none of them offered moral support, let alone financial. Some time later the British firm Forbes, Forbes and Campbell mooted a similar scheme, which was brought into existence with the support of some of these very same Indian financiers!

There used to be a well known Bombay solicitor and philanthropist who used to send poor, deserving young Parsi boys to Ardeshir for employment. Accosting this gentleman on the street one day, Ardeshir asked him whether he used Godrej soaps. The philanthropist confessed that he didn’t. This roused Ardeshir’s ire: “Are you not ashamed,” he berated his friend, “to recommend people to me for employment? When will foolish people like you begin to understand that support to my industries will alone enable me to employ more and more men?” Contrite, this friend promised that he would use Godrej soaps in future and, by way of compensation, offered to display a Swadeshi soap poster in his office.

Ardeshir’s uniqueness was a matter of constant puzzlement to associates and family members. Not content with the two industries he had launched, he turned to new enterprises. Ideas, with the excitement of wings, stirred in his capacious mind. He started experimenting with ink-making, the results of which he gave away instead of exploiting. He made toffees from papaya and tried his hand at perfume manufacture. He experimented with vegetable dyes and even published a booklet which, alas, is out of print. His nephew Sohrab, former Chairman of the Godrej enterprise, recalls how on one occasion in his childhood, when they were about to eat biscuits, of course British-made and most attractively packaged--Ardeshir threw the box out of the window to the great disappointment of the children. He admonished them that they should think of eating biscuits only after they were made in India adding that, anyway, home-made chapatis were healthier. But again, uniquely, Ardeshir’s approach was positive. He took the initiative to launch a modest baking and confectionery concern which, had he lived longer, would have expanded into a pioneering industry in India.

His associates and family members just failed to comprehend why he was trying so many new enterprises instead of consolidating and developing the already successful ones. But he left all this to his younger brother Pirojsha. Instead he next set out to do something, which is proof of his foresight and clarity of thinking. He saw way back then the basic need and a great future for the processing and canning industry in India. Straight away he bought a large tract of land in Nasik for vineyards. It was a matter of regret for him that youth, particularly of his community, weren’t at all interested in the countryside. He agreed wholeheartedly with his friend, Mahatma Gandhi, about the importance of village uplift and developing the rural areas.

Let’s pause a moment to try and discover what prompted Ardeshir to try his hand at promoting the processing and canning industries. India was then the largest producer of fruit after Brazil and America and of vegetables after China. India had an enormous livestock population, a long coastline of 7,500 kms., a rapidly expanding zone, 28,000 kms. of rivers and 3 million hectares of reservoirs of fresh water lakes. In addition to 1.4 million hectares of potential water area, which meant a huge potential of fish and marine catch even half of which was not exploited.

Even today, a hundred years after Ardeshir visualized the immense possibilities, India is able to process only a small percentage of the fruit and vegetables that are produced, as against Brazil which processes 70 per cent, Malaysia 93 per cent and the Philippines 7.8 per cent. We are the biggest producers in the world of alphonso mangoes, yet till very recently Brazil beat us in mango exports to Europe.

Being obsessed as was his wont and emerging as a leader in several fields, Ardeshir could have realised the potential had he lived longer. But it was not to be. Even in his lifetime he was hindered by dishonest middlemen and others who took advantage of his gullibility to cheat him. Great men have their weaknesses. This was Ardeshir’s.

Fate dealt the cards evenly. Fortune in business, misfortune in life. Tragedy struck Ardeshir immediately after his marriage when on April 21, 1891, his young wife Bachubai, still in her teens, accompanied by her cousin Pirojbai Sorabjee Kamdin, went up the Rajabai Tower for a bird’s-eye view of the city. They were followed up the stairs by a ruffian whose threatening demeanour so alarmed the girls that, panic-stricken, with no way to escape, they jumped off the railing to their death in the University gardens 200 feet below. This tragic happening made Ardeshir even more of a recluse than he had been earlier. He never spoke about his loss. It was almost as if he didn’t want anybody to share his burden. Here again his uniqueness came into play in that the seductive surrender to self-pity was not a part of his being. He didn’t seem interested in bringing the miscreant to justice. Nor did he appear disappointed when he got off scot-free. His reaction or, rather, the lack of it appeared strange as if, in his deepest being, he believed as the saints do, that beyond sin is the forgiveness of sin.

Another feature of his character was that he wasted no time in railing against the British. Rather he utilized the time to prove that what the British could do, Indians could do as well if not better. “We are being fooled,” is all he would mumble. Never was there any rancour in his dealings with the British. Rather, they were enlivened by a puckish sense of humour carefully hidden behind his serious demeanour, and his austere ways. A British friend remarked in the course of conversation: "You know, Mr. Godrej, we British are today on top of the world." Quick came Ardeshir’s retort: "Well, I’m glad to hear that because, as you know, the world goes round, and what’s up has got to come down."

Ardeshir was religious. Every morning he spent a few moments at the Vatcha Gandhi Agiary at Hughes Road. But he was truly religious in the sense that he lived his religion particularly in the practice of philanthropy. In 1921 he donated Rs. 3 lakhs (now perhaps over Rs. 3 crores) to the Tilak Swaraj Fund incurring in the process the wrath of the British rulers, who even issued a secret circular prohibiting government departments from purchasing Godrej products.

Ardeshir couldn’t have cared less.

However, his gesture received the warm applause of Mahatma Gandhi who was equally outraged by the secret circular: "Because Mr. Godrej contributed to the Tilak Swaraj Fund, the 'just' Government has boycotted his safes. How should the people deal with such a malicious and vindictive Government, if not by resorting to non-cooperation with it?"

For Ardeshir, Swadeshi was the breath of Swaraj. His claim to greatness lies in that in his relentless quest for self-reliance he gave a brave new dimension to the Swadeshi concept. His mission was his life. The mission became the man who, before passing on, lent a certain greatness to the name he bore, which those coming after him would have to live up to. This was his great legacy.