R. M. Lala

Jamsetji Tata had two sons. The elder, Sir Dorabji, was very different from the younger, Sir Ratan. Their respective trusts reflect their personalities. Sir Dorabji was a hard-driving industrialist who once explored the jungles of Madhya Pradesh in a bullock cart with a geologist, searching for iron ore and other minerals for a future steel plant. Sir Ratan was a lover of art and culture, with a perception for the great emerging social issues of the day. He was one of the first to back Mahatma Gandhi’s campaign in South Africa, with a grant that was gratefully acknowledged.

Sir Ratan asked the London School of Economics to research the causes of poverty and how to alleviate it. This led, in 1912, to the establishment of the Sir Ratan Tata Department (later called the Department of Social Sciences) at the School. In 1913 the School advertised for a lecturer for the Sir Ratan Tata Department. Only two people applied; one was a young man named Clement Attlee and the other was Hugh Dalton. The authorities, "after careful consideration", selected Attlee for the post. Many years later, when India became independent, Attlee was the British prime minister and Dalton his chancellor of the exchequer.

The grant lapsed after a few years, but recently the Sir Ratan Tata Trust has established, with a handsome endowment, the Sir Ratan Tata Fellowship at the London School of Economics. Sir Ratan died at the early age of 47 in 1918. A few years before he passed away he funded the first archaeological excavation at Pataliputra, which resulted in the discovery of the 100-pillar Maurya throne room of Ashoka’s palace.

Sir Ratan left a substantial portion of his wealth to the Sir Ratan Tata Trust. It is a measure of the man’s foresight that in his times, when almost all trusts were communal in nature, he established a trust that would benefit all Indians. Moreover, the trust bearing his name was one of the first multi-purpose trusts of its kind.

Sir Ratan considered how others could encourage the cause of philanthropy in India, and enjoined upon his trustees to advance its cause in the country. In his will he mentions the need for a proper study of the promotion and advancement of charity. He also cautioned against work on the social, economic and political welfare of Indian communities being undertaken from stereotypical points of view.

Apart from starting its own institutes, such as the Tata Memorial Centre at Navsari in Gujarat, the Ratan Tata Trust has contributed to the growth of institutes such as the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, the International Institute for Population Studies, the National Centre for the Performing Arts, the Tata Energy Research Institute and the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research.

In keeping with Sir Ratan’s request to back the advancement of philanthropy, the Trust has substantially supported the Centre for Advancement of Philanthropy in Mumbai, and gave a grant to the Indian Centre for Philanthropy, New Delhi. It has also continued to support the Prince of Wales Museum in Mumbai.

An early Trust venture was the Sir Ratan Tata Institute in Mumbai, set up in 1930 to, primarily, help poor women find an occupation. The Trust also made major contributions to start the National Metallurgical Laboratory, and the Lady Ratan Tata National Centre for Research, Early Diagnosis and Treatment of Cancer at Cooperage in downtown Mumbai.

In recent years the trust has focused its attention on five thematic areas:

• basic and post-graduate education
• primary and preventive health
• rural livelihoods and communities
• arts and culture
• public initiatives

Private wealth, public cause
At the heart of Tata philanthropy is the conviction that the purpose of private wealth is to further the public cause. The Greek origin of the word fil anthra-pi stands for ‘love of mankind’. This generosity of spirit would not have been possible but for the founder of the house, who gave his own vision, preparing India, as Dr Zakir Husain said, for economic freedom while others were striving for political freedom.

Jamsetji Tata envisaged an India that would stand in the community of nations as equal to any other. This at a time when the country was primarily an agricultural land under foreign domination. To usher India into this new age he put his energy and his resources into giving the country steel, hydroelectric power, and an advanced "university of science", as he called it, at the turn of the century.

The moment the Imperial Civil Service (ICS), the forerunner to the Indian Administrative Service, was opened to Indians, Jamsetji Tata gave loans to Indian scholars to study abroad. Interestingly, his first grants were to two women doctors (since women were shy of going to male gynaecologists). The first was to Dr Freney Cama, after whom a hospital is named in Mumbai. Of the 37 beneficiaries in the first batch, as many as 15 joined the ICS, fulfilling Jamsetji’s objective that Indians should learn how to govern themselves.

Among later recipients of the J. N. Tata Award have been Indian president Dr K. R. Narayanan, Dr Raja Ramanna, Dr Jayant Narlikar (and his father, both of whom studied at Cambridge), Dr J. J. Irani, winner of the Chancellor’s Gold Medal in Metallurgy at Sheffield University, Britain, and now a director at Tata Sons, and Mr Xerxes Desai, the man who has put Titan on the world map.

The J. N. Tata Loan Scholarship Scheme, established in 1892, started by funding one scholar. For several years it could sponsor no more than five or six, but over the years the numbers grew. The endowment currently finances more than 100 scholars a year, and the loans are supplemented by free grants, thanks to donations by Tata companies and a massive input from the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust.

On the centenary of the endowment, its former beneficiaries contributed to raise the corpus for free grants. The individual donors were headed by the late Rohinton Aga, the former chairman and managing director of Thermax, Pune, with a personal donation of Rs 3 lakh. Even so, the grants can only be termed as ‘starters’, which enable scholars to unlock the doors of other trusts and grants from universities abroad. A rigorous selection procedure has contributed to the scheme’s high repute. Since 1996, thanks to two major corpus donations totalling Rs 7 crore from the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust, students have been able to get loans up to Rs 1 lakh and free grants of the same amount.

Jamsetji's science university dream
While Jamsetji Tata’s contribution to the steel and power industries is widely recognised, comparatively little is known about his greatest desire: to start a university of science. For this he sent a representative to Europe and America to find a model that would suit India. The model was found in Baltimore, US, but Jamsetji received little encouragement from the then British viceroy, Lord Curzon.

Jamsetji persisted in his determination to bequeath half of his entire wealth and set aside 14 buildings and five landed properties for his dream university. To the day he died in 1904, he did not know whether Lord Curzon would agree to the proposal.

The Indian Institute of Science (IIS) was finally established in Bangalore in 1911, seven years after Jamsetji’s passing, and became, over the next 50 years, the fountainhead of India’s quest for technological manpower. When the national laboratories were established in the late 1940s and 1950s, be they aeronautical, metallurgical, chemical or pharmaceutical, IIS staff provided the manpower backbone.

In 100 Great Modern Lives, edited by John Canning (Souvenir Press, London), only two Indians feature among the galaxy of personalities: Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and Jamsetji Tata. The chapter on Jamsetji Tata concludes with the paragraph: "Probably no other family has ever contributed as much in the way of wise guidance, industrial development and advancing philanthropy to any country as the Tatas have to India, both before and since independence."

When Jamsetji Tata died, The Times of India wrote of him: "He was not a man who cared to bask in the public eye. He disliked public gatherings and he did not care for making speeches. His sturdy strength of character prevented him from fawning on any man, however great, for he himself was great in his own way, greater than most people realised. He sought no honour and he claimed no privilege. But the advancement of India and her myriad peoples was with him an abiding passion."

From the performance of these trusts over many decades, that passion still abides — and flamingly so.

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