Mumbai Under Siege-the Taj Palace Hotel Legacy.

Pictures: Jamsetji Tata, bearded patriarch in the center with his family (around 1900);
R D Tata (Jamsetji's cousin) center, and father of JRD, (JRD Tata, founder of Air India) pictured as as a child;
room in Tata Esplanade House, the Tata home for several decades;
Tata Steel;
Tata Hydro -Electric, power generation for Mumbai;
Tata Institute of Sciences;
JRD Tata, (fourth from the right) piloting first air mail from Karachi to Bombay-precursor to AirIndia (Air India later nationalised-and standards down!!!);
image of Guggenheim Award medal to JRD for Outstanding Achievement; he was also awarded Bharat Ratna (gem of India) India's highest civilian award!

(all pictures courtesy Tatacentralarchives.com - I wish to bring the Tata legacy to wider attention through Blogger.---what the Taj legacy means, one of the world's great legacy.)




This is not ironic that the recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai takes people around the world to ask why the Taj Palace Hotel an institution Indians are very proud to call an icon of their city.

Far more than its immense stately presence, the Taj Palace Hotel is one of the flagship symbols of the otherwise globally little known Tata family, with Jamsetji Tata and his descendants making huge contribution to modern India.

Jamsetji Tata comes from an illustrious line of Zoroastrian priests of Navsari, his distant ancestor first High Priest of Navsari, Dastur Meherji Rana, so impressed the Great Mogul emperor Akbar, made this great king incorporate tenets of Zoroastrianism in his syncretic faith Din I Illahi. The significance here is that at the time of Akbar, the Zoroastrian Parsi immigrants from Iran numbered roughly not more than 50,000 and to draw the attention of the great Akbar far away in Delhi (Navsari is on the Gujrat coast some 600 miles south) speaks how even then Zoroastrian Parsis had begun to make their presence.

Very very briefly, (I prefer the images here will better illustrate this Taj legacy) Jamsetji, born in Navsari in 1839, preferred (like his father Nasserwanji) to try his hand in business than his priestly calling, has by 1874, at the age of 35, floated a textile mill, then went on a highly ambitious plan with such driving force and vision, and although he died in 1904, his goals to modernise India were and are pursued by his descendants even today :

in his lifetime he laid the foundations of an industrial India, and after he passed away, his sons Sir Dorab Tata and Sir Ratan Tata, his cousin R.D. Tata, the latter's son JRD Tata, Naval Tata, now Naval's son Ratan Tata who presently heads the Tata Group, went on to establish an industrial empire -steel, hydro-electric power, locomotives and cars, airlines (Air India), chemicals, now computer software (TCS), branded wear, department stores, and more, to rival this, Institutes for scientific research, scholarships for higher studies abroad, and rural upliftment schemes in India, hospitals, housing; the Tatas were the first, in the world, to introduce an 8 hour shift!

This is what the Taj Palace Hotel stands for..................AND THE TATA SHARE OF OWNERSHIP OF THE TAJ GROUP OF HOTELS IS HELD FULLY BY THE TATA GROUP OF TRUSTS FOR CHARITIES AND SCHOLARSHIPS.