A.K Srivastava
Sir Dorabji Tata an Indian industrialist, philanthropist and key figure in history and development of Tata group was born 27th August 1859.Dorab was the elder son of Parsi Zoroastrian Hirabai and Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata.
Dorabji received his primary education at the Proprietary High School in Bombay (now Mumbai) before travelling to England in 1875, where he was privately tutored. He entered Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, in 1877,[2] where he remained for two years before returning to Bombay in 1879. He continued his studies at St. Xavier’s College, Bombay, where he obtained a degree in 1882.
Upon graduating, Dorab worked for two years as a journalist at the Bombay Gazette. In 1884. He joined the cotton business division of his father’s firm. He was first sent to Pondicherry, then a French colony, to determine whether a cotton mill might be profitable there. Thereafter, he was sent to Nagpur, to learn the cotton trade at the Empress Mills which had been founded by his father in 1877.
Dorabji’s father, Jamshetji, had visited Mysore State in south India on business, and had met Dr. Hormusji Bhabha, a Parsi and the first Indian Inspector-General of Education of that state. While visiting the Bhabha home, he had met and approved of young Meherbai, Bhabha’s only daughter for marriage to his son Dorabji. Returning to Bombay, Jamshetji sent Dorab to Mysore State, specifically to call on the Bhabha family. Dorab did so, and duly married Meherbai in 1897. The couple had no children.
Meherbai’s grandfather was the industrialist Dinshaw Maneckji Petit and her brother, Jehangir Bhabha, was a reputed lawyer. He was the father of great scientist Homi J. Bhabha. Thus Dorabji was Homi Bhabha’s uncle by marriage. The Tata Group funded Bhabha’s research and his research institutions, including the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research.
Founder of New India Assurance Co Ltd. in 1919, the largest General Insurance company in India, Dorabji Tata was knighted in January 1910 by Edward VII, becoming Sir Dorabji Tata.
Meherbai Tata died of leukaemia in 1931 at the age of 52. Shortly after her death, Dorabji established the Lady Tata Memorial Trust to advance study of diseases of the blood and also established a trust fund which was to be used without any distinction of place nationality or creed for advancement of learning and research, disaster relief, and other philanthropic purposes. The trust is known as the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust. Dorabji died in Bad Kissingen, Germany, on 3 June 1932, at the age of 73. He is buried alongside his wife Meherbai in Brookwood Cemetery, Woking, England.
(Author is President of Jamshedpur Citizen Forum)
