History News Desk !!! Sir Ratanji Jamsetji Tata (English: Sir Ratanji Jamsetji Tata, born- 20 January 1871, Mumbai; died- 5 September 1918, England) was a famous Indian industrialist who is considered one of the four great people who built the ‘Tata Group’. He was a philanthropist who was among the pioneers of studying poverty in India. The legacy of philanthropy that exists in the Tata Group today was started by Sir Ratanji Tata.
Sir Ratanji Tata was born on 20 January 1871 in the then Bombay (present Mumbai, Maharashtra). He can be called the Ratna of philanthropy in the Tata Group. He was the younger son of Jamsetji Tata and the father of Naval Tata, i.e. the grandfather of Ratan Naval Tata, the current chairman of the Tata Group. Sir Ratanji Tata left the world at a young age. He did great philanthropic work in his short life and left a legacy of it in the Tata Group. Sir Ratanji Tata is considered one of the four great people who built the ‘Tata Group’, the other three being Jamsetji Tata, Dorabji Tata and Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata. Sir Ratan Tata was popularly known as ‘Ratanji’. He was a philanthropist and was one of the pioneers of the study on poverty in India. He had no children of his own. After the death of Ratanji Tata, his wife Navajbai Tata adopted Naval, an orphan child of her relative. Ratan Tata, the current chairman of the Tata Group, is the son of this Naval Tata.
Sir Ratanji Tata studied at St. Xavier’s College in Bombay. He was 12 years younger than his elder brother Sir Dorabji Tata. He joined Tata & Sons as a partner in 1896. After the death of his father in 1904, he started looking after the business of the French company ‘Le Union Fire Insurance Company’, for which Tata & Sons was the agent in India. He was also given charge of the trading firm Tata & Company, which traded in cotton, yarn, silk, pearls, rice etc. During the tenure of Sir Ratanji Tata, the work of Tata Iron & Steel Company started in Sanchi in 1912. During his tenure, a huge hydroelectric project was started near Mumbai in 1915, which later helped the industries of Mumbai in getting electricity and their production expanded. He established a trust fund for philanthropic works, which is today the second largest fund of Tata Trust.
But Sir Ratanji Tata had a special interest in social and philanthropic work. He gave moral and financial support to Mahatma Gandhi’s anti-racism movement in South Africa. At that time, he donated Rs 1.25 lakh for this. He was a friend of freedom fighter and social reformer Gopal Krishna Gokhale. He helped Gokhale in his social work by donating Rs 10,000 annually for 10 years. Not only this, Sir Ratanji Tata helped establish a chair for the study of poverty at the London School of Economics with 400 pounds annually. Now this chair is established as ‘Sir Ratan Tata Foundation’. In the year 1912, the Department of Social Studies was established at LSE with the help of Sir Ratan.
Sir Ratanji Tata funded the first archaeological excavation in Pataliputra (Patna) between 1913 and 1917. A Mauryan court with 100 pillars was found in this excavation. With the support of Sir Ratanji Tata, the ‘Indian Institute of Scientific and Medical Research’ was established in Mysore in 1905. He donated Rs 10,000 annually for ten years to the ‘King George V Anti Tuberculosis League’ started by the Bombay Municipal Corporation. In view of his social service, the British government gave him the title of ‘Knighthood’ i.e. ‘Sir’ in 1916.
Sir Ratanji Tata lived in this world for only 47 years. He died on 5 September 1918 in St. Ives, England. According to his will, most of his wealth was donated for charitable works. In the year 1919, ‘Sir Ratan Tata Trust’ was established in his name with a fund of Rs 80 lakh.