Ratanji Tata

This article is about Sir Ratanji Tata, the philanthropist and son of Jamsetji Tata. For the late Chairman Emeritus of Tata Sons, see Ratan Tata. For the father of J. R. D. Tata, see Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata.

Sir Ratanji Jamsetji Tata JP (20 January 1871 – 5 September 1918) was an Indian industrialist and philanthropist during the British Raj. He was the younger son of Jamsetji Tata, the founder of the Tata Group.

Sir Ratanji Tata JP
Born	(1871-01-20)20 January 1871 Bombay, British India
Died	5 September 1918(1918-09-05) (aged 47)
Alma mater	University of Bombay
Occupation(s)	Industrialist, philanthropist
Spouse	Navajbai Sett ​ (m. 1893)​
Children	Naval Tata (adopted)
Father	Jamsetji Tata
Relatives	Dorabji Tata (brother) Ratan Tata (grandson)

Biography

Ratanji Tata was born in Bombay in British India as the son of the noted Parsi merchant Jamsetji Tata. Ratan Tata was educated at St. Xavier's College in Bombay and afterwards entered his father's firm. On the death of the elder Tata in 1904, Ratanji Tata and his brother Dorabji Tata inherited a very large fortune, much of which they devoted to philanthropic works of a practical nature and to the establishment of various industrial enterprises for developing the resources of India.

An Indian institute of scientific and medical research (Indian Institute of Science, IISc) was founded at Bangalore in 1905, and in 1912 the Tata Steel began work at Sakchi, in the Central Provinces, with marked success. The most important of the Tata enterprises, however, was the storing of the water power of the Western Ghats (1915), which provided Bombay with an enormous amount of electrical power, and hence vastly increased the productive capacity of its industries.

Navajbai Tata in 1899

Sir Ratan Tata, who was knighted in 1916, did not confine his benefactions to India. In England, where he had a permanent residence at York House, Twickenham, he founded in 1912 the Ratan Tata department of social science and administration at the London School of Economics, and also established a Ratan Tata Fund at the University of London for studying the conditions of the poorer classes. In 1909, he donated a sum of Rs. 50,000 (equivalent to approximately Rs. 40 million in 2022) to Mahatma Gandhi to aid the struggle of Indians' right to work in the Transvaal. This donation helped in securing the finances of Gandhi's protests against the Anglo-Boer rulers.

He was a great connoisseur of arts. The Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (formerly Prince of Wales Museum) has a section displaying the collections of Sir Ratanji Tata (acquired in 1923) along with two other sections that of Sir Dorab Tata (acquired in 1933) and Sir Purushottam Mavji (acquired in 1915).

Personal life

Further information: Tata family

Mausoleum of Ratanji Tata in Brookwood Cemetery

He married Navajbai Sett in 1893 and left for England the final time in 1915. They adopted Naval Tata from the family of a distant relative. Naval's father, Hormusji, was Ratanji's third-cousin's son, making Naval his distant grandnephew. Naval was also the son of Ratanji's first-cousin Ratanbai Rao (daughter of his mother Hirabai's sister Cooverbai). He died on 6 September 1918 at St Ives in Cornwall, England and was buried at Brookwood Cemetery, Woking, near London, by the side of his father (Jamsetji Tata).

Through an aunt, Jerbai Tata, who married a Bombay merchant, Dorabji Saklatvala, he was cousin of Shapurji Saklatvala who later became a Communist Member of the British Parliament.

Legacy

After his death the Sir Ratan Tata Trust was founded in 1919, with a corpus of Rs. 8 million.

References

• Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1922). "Tata, Sir Ratan" . Encyclopædia Britannica (12th ed.). London & New York: The Encyclopædia Britannica Company.

External links

• Sir Ratan Tata Trust – official website