The Hindu Business Line : A tradition to cherish

When you approach south Mumbai from the sea you see two landmarks you can’t forget. One is the Gateway of India, built to commemorate the visit of King George V and Queen Mary to Bombay, prior to the Delhi Durbar, in December 1911.

The other was built not to honour any colonial ruler but to assert the spirit of nationalism. It is the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower hotel, which opened its doors to guests eight years earlier, in 1903.

Stand against colonialism

Legend has it that the Tata group founder, Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata, decided to build the luxurious hotel after he was refused entry into Watson’s Hotel because it was restricted to ‘whites only’. This was around the same time that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi took a stand against colonialism after he was thrown out of the first-class compartment of a train because he was not a white.

The original Indian architects of the hotel were Sitaram Khanderao Vaidya and D. N. Mirza; Vaidya died of malaria, and the project was completed by F. W. Stevens, an English engineer. During the First World War, the hotel, conceived, designed and built by people of such diverse faiths, was converted into a 600-bed hospital.

Today, building a hotel makes eminent sense. But that was not the wisdom of the day then. In his book For the Love of India – the Life and Times of Jamsetji Tata, R. M. Lala narrates this anecdote that shows how Jamsetji went against tradition to build a hotel.

When Tata told his sisters of his plans, one of them burst out in Gujarati, “What? You want to build a science institute in Bangalore, a great iron and steel factory, a hydroelectric plant and now a bhattarkhana (an eating place)!”

Setting benchmarks

What Tata created was leagues ahead of the old Watson’s; the Taj soon became the best hotel in the city and, today, even after the erection of many other hotels, many patrons still consider the Taj the best. The Times, London, billed it as the finest hotel in the East, and it became one of the few places in the world where a British viceroy could rub shoulders with an Indian maharajah, where Indian National Congress freedom leaders could debate with the apologists of colonialism.

The hotel set new benchmarks for India’s hospitality industry. It introduced the tango, built the first air-conditioned ballroom, the first cold storage, the first licensed bar … It has built a tradition of being modern and contemporary while offering the old tradition of Indian warmth. That is why the rich and the famous love it.

Spirit behind the venture

But what should never be forgotten is the spirit that drove a daring entrepreneur whose venture to build a steel plant in India met derisive comments from Englishmen, one of whom (Frederick Upcott, chief commissioner of the Indian Railways) said he would eat an ingot of steel if an Indian could ever build a steel plant. The Indian, Jamsetji Tata, built the steel plant. The Englishman, of course, never ate any steel.

It is easy today to forget how difficult it was a century ago — or even in the middle of the last century — for an Indian businessman to dare to create a business in competition with the best in the world. Indians did not have the tradition, the technology or the money.

And if they overcome all these things, they had to have the imagination to dream and to dare. Jamsetji Tata dreamt and he dared. And he inspired thousands of Indians to become entrepreneurs and to overcome the most difficult odds.

The Taj Mahal Palace has, thus, become a part of India’s rich modern heritage, much like the Taj Mahal built in Agra by Shah Jahan is a symbol of India’s past.

Those who attack these symbols attack our traditions. It is ironic that many of them boast of their faith in tradition when they set out to destroy it.

(The author is Managing Director of The Information Company Pvt Ltd and Group Editor of www.domain-b.com. blfeedback@thehindu.co.in.)