March 2025 | 532 words | 2-minute read
This year marks a century since Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata: A Chronicle of His Life was published. Frank Harris’ meticulous and exhaustive retelling of the life of the Founder of the Tata group, first published in 1925, continues to be — as JRD Tata wrote in his foreword for the reprint in 1958 — “the only reasonably full and connected story of his life”.
Initially undertaken by Lovat Fraser, who personally knew Mr Tata, the task of completing the chronicle (the author refers to the account thus, and not as a biography since he never met Mr Tata), was entrusted to Mr Harris in 1920. By then, Mr Fraser had completed the chapters on Iron and Steel, which were published in 1919. “To one who never saw him, the material by which his own thoughts and opinions might be gauged is but scanty: a fragment of diary, a single letter-book, and a few loose letters are all that can be found,” wrote Mr Harris in his author’s note.
Instead, to complete the chronicle, Mr Harris relied on “members of the family and firm, some of whom were in constant touch with Mr Jamsetji.” Sir Dorabji Tata, Mr Tata’s son, furnished the author with valuable particulars of his father’s life. Other associates, like Sir Bezonji Dadabhai, who worked side by side with Mr Tata for 25 years, and Sir Dinshaw Wacha, another old associate of Mr Tata’s, have been specially cited for their contributions to the work.
Mr Harris hoped, that “inadequate as the chronicle may seem”, it would serve to paint a picture of the Founder and all he did for India, for Bombay, for education and for the industrial welfare of his country. Indeed, Sir Stanley Reed, who wrote the preface for the original print in 1925, and had originally met Mr Tata around 1895, called the book a "lucid and complete narrative of the life and work of Mr JN Tata.” Sir Reed went on to add that Mr Tata, while keenly interested in politics, was fully alive to the value of the work of the social reformers, and chose for his own field the broadening and strengthening of the economic foundations of Indian society by lending to them his whole energies, his forceful character, and vigorous mind.
The book captures much of Mr Tata’s zeal in pursuing his endeavours for India’s economic and social development, and has informed much of what we know now of the Founder. From chapters that encapsulate his revolutionising the profitability and welfare of the mills (including his Svadeshi push), to his work in developing the city he loved — Bombay, his many experiments to further the interests of his country, and his great dreams of building an iron and steel company, generating hydroelectric power, and establishing a world-class institute of scientific education.
As Mr Harris says in his author’s note, citing yet another writer, “There can be no better use for money, than to spend it in spreading the knowledge of a noble life.”
