# Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Tata, Jamsetji Nasarwanji

​TATA, JAMSETJI NASARWANJI (1839–1904), pioneer of Indian industries, born on 3 March 1839 at Naosari, in Gujerat, was only son of five children of Nasarwanji Ratanji Tata, a Parsi of priestly family, by his wife (and cousin) Jiverbal Cowasjee Tata. When he was thirteen his father started business in Bombay, and after sending him to the Elphinstone College from 1855 to 1858, put him in his office. In 1859 the youth visited China and laid the foundations of the large export business in which, after some vicissitudes, the firm of Tata & Co. (later Tata & Sons) successfully engaged on an immense scale, forming branches in Japan, China, Paris, and New York, and agencies in London and elsewhere. Returning from China in 1863, Tata paid the first of many visits to England, mainly with a view, to the establishment of an Indian bank in London. That scheme was frustrated by the financial crisis following the 'share mania' in Bombay. Tata's firm, which was brought to bankruptcy, was rehabilitated by contracts for army supplies in the Abyssinian war.
Turning his attention to the nascent cotton manufacturing industry in Bombay, Tata returned to England in 1872 to study the work and conditions of the Lancashire mills. Subsequently he fixed upon Nagpur as a site for a model mill, and his Empress mills were opened there on 1 Jan. 1877, the day of Queen Victoria's proclamation as Empress. He afterwards founded at Coorla, near Bombay, the Swadeshi ('own country') mills. These concerns were soon recognised to be the best managed of Indian-owned factories. Improvements were adopted to protect and advance the interests of operatives and to reduce the cost of production. At first Indian mills confined themselves almost entirely to coarse goods which the deteriorated country staple was alone capable of producing. Tata, resolved to spin finer 'counts,' not only initiated the importation of longer-stapled cotton, but perseveringly sought to acclimatise Egyptian cotton in spite of the discouragement of agricultural advisers of government. In 1896 Tata published a convincing pamphlet on 'Growth of Egyptian Cotton in India,' which was republished in 1903. Another pamphlet (1893) discussed methods of increasing the supply of skilled labour. In order to reduce the heavy freight charges between Bombay and the Far East, Tata helped to promote in 1893 the Nippon Yusen Kaisha (Japanese Steam Navigation Company) so as to break down ​the monopoly of three allied steamship companies — the P. and O., the Austrian-Lloyd, and the Rubattino. The three companies met the new service with a war of freights. In a widely circulated pamphlet Tata protested against the employment by the P. and O. Company of its mail subsidy from Indian revenues in maintaining a monopoly injurious to Indian trade. After spending more than two lakhs of rupees in the fight, he in June 1896 aided in reaching an agreement for a permanent reduction of freights on a reasonable competitive basis. He vigorously opposed the imposition of excise duty on the products of Indian mills to countervail the cotton import duties in 1894 and 1896, and directed an elaborate statistical inquiry into the hampering effects of the duty on the industry (V. Chibol's Indian Unrest, p. 277).
Tata's greatest service to the cause of Indian economic development was the inauguration of a scheme whereby Indian iron ore, after numerous unsuccessful efforts from 1825 onwards, might be manufactured on a large capitalistic basis. Apart from the comparatively small works of the Bengal Iron and Steel Company at Barrakur [see Martin, Sir Thomas Acquin, Suppl. II]. iron had been manufactured only on a very small scale by peasant families of smelters. In 1901 Tata thoroughly investigated the problem; his expert English and American advisers prospected large tracts of country and made exhaustive experiments, a preliminary outlay of some 36,000l. being incurred. Good progress was made at the time of his death, and under the control of his two sons the Tata Iron and Steel Company was registered in Bombay on 26 Aug. 1907 with a rupee capital equivalent to 1,545,000l., by far the largest amount raised by Indians for a commercial undertaking. The works since constructed have created a large industrial centre at Sakchi, in the Singhbum district, 153 miles west of Calcutta, 45 miles from the principal ore supplies in the Mhorbunj State, Orissa, and 130 miles from the collieries on the Jherria field. Connecting railways have been built, and there are two blast furnaces for an annual production of about 120,000 tons of pig-iron, and steel furnaces for an output of 70,000 tons. This great enterprise, which marks a new era in Indian economic development,= will support 60,000 workers and dependants (see Quinquennial Review of Mineral Production in India. 1904-8 in Recds. of Geol. Surv., vol. 39, 1910). The manufacture was commenced at the end of 1911.
Another of Tata's great schemes was the utilisation of the heavy monsoon rainfall of the Western Ghauts for electric power in Bombay factories. On 8 Feb. 1911 the Governor of Bombay laid the foundation stone of the works at Lanouli in the hills, 43 miles from Bombay, and the completion of the project is expected in 1913. Whole valleys are being dammed up to hold the water, creating lakes 2521 acres in extent. The capital of about 1¼ millions sterling was subscribed by Indians.
Tata rendered many other services to Bombay. He built the fine Taj Mahal hotel, the best appointed hotel in Asia, at a cost of a quarter of a million. He did much to improve the architectural amenities of Bombay, and to provide healthy suburban homes. In these and other enterprises, such as the introduction of Japanese silk culture into Mysore, he showed 'first, broad imagination and keen insight, next a scientific and calculating study of the project and all that it involved, and finally a high capacity for organisation.' His personal tastes were of the simplest kind, and he scorned publicity or self-advertisement (L. Fraser's India under Curzon and After, p. 322).
He endowed scholarships, originally confined to Parsis, but thrown open in 1894, to enable promising young Indians to study in Europe. He was a fellow of the Bombay University. His offer to government on 28 Sept. 1898 of real property worth 200,000l. (since increased in value) to found a post-graduate institute for scientific research, resulted in the establishment by Tata's sons, in accordance with his plans, of the Indian Institute of Science at Bangalore, which teaches, examines, and confers diplomas. Its aims include the fuller application of science to Indian arts and industries.
Taken seriously ill while in Germany in the spring of 1904, he died at Nauheim on 19 May 1904, and was buried in the Parsi cemetery, Brookwood, Woking. He married in 1855 a girl of ten — early marriages then being general among the Parsis — named Berabai (d. March 1904), daughter of Kharsetji Daboo, and they had issue a daughter who died at the age of twelve and two sons. Sir Dorabji Jamsetji (knighted 1910) and Ratan Jamsetji, of York House, Twickenham, and Bombay, upon whom the business of the firm has devolved. A three-quarter length painting by M. F. Pithawalla, a Bombay artist (1902), is in the Parsi ​Gymkhana, Bombay; three copies are in the Elphinstone club there, in the Empress mills and the Parsi fire-temple, Nagpur, and a fourth belongs to R. J. Tata. An earlier portrait by E. Ward belongs to Sir Dorabji. A bronze statue by W. R. Colton, A.R.A., publicly subscribed, was unveiled on 11 April 1912 near the mimicipal office, Bombay.
[The character sketch in India under Curzon and After (1911), by Lovat Fraser, who is preparing a biography; Ind. Textile Journ., 15 Aug. 1901; Tata's pamphlets; personal knowledge; personal correspondence with Tata; Sir T. Raleigh's Lord Curzon in India, 1906; lect. by Sir Thos. Holland, F.R.S., Soc. of Arts, 27 April 1911; Quin. Rept. Eden, in India, 1902–7; Times of India, 21 May 1904, 1 Oct. 1907, 2 and 10 Feb. and 11 Oct. 1911; ditto Illus. Weekly, 28 April 1909; Bombay Gaz., weekly summary, 21 and 28 May 1904; Pioneer Mail, 22 Aug. 1902; The Times, 24 May 1904 and 28 Oct. 1907.]
F. H. B.