Mahatma Tata

With the opening lines of her play, Mahatma J. N. Tata, it became evident that playwright Dina Mehta’s concern was to discover Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata, the man, behind his awesome achievements. What made him tick? Was the upliftment of the poor a passion with him, as with Mahatma M. K. Gandhi? Was nation-building this busi­ness­man’s great business?

In the MRA Hall on the first floor of Kumaram building on Worli Sea Face, about 30 people met on the evening of September 3, 2005 to read and discuss Mehta’s short play based on R. M. Lala’s meticulously researched book on Tata entitled For the love of India, according to a write-up forwarded to Parsiana.

Mehta’s simple strategy was to portray Tata through the eyes of the people he drew to himself like a magnet to help with his audacious enterprises. He initiated, financed and nurtured India’s first steel plant; he pioneered her hydroelectric project; her institute of advanced learning; and her first world-class hotel. Of all his brave ventures, he lived to see only the Taj hotel in completion, a fact that lends a touch of poignancy to all human striving, a whisper of mortality.

At the end of the reading, Lala observed that Tata had the gift of listening. His patient hearing dignified the skilled professional as well as the humble factory hand. Others spoke of the seed of caring he and his heirs planted in their workmen, of the trees and verdant parks that blossomed in the Tata work environs; of the overwhelming response to a call for blood donation in Jamshedpur, such was the unity forged in the steel city.

Before the informal meeting broke up, the guiding spirit behind the gathering, Dr Rajkumar Anand, medical director of Jaslok Hospital and president of Moral Rearmament for the past 35 years, expressed the hope that enthusiasts from the theater world would stage Mahatma J. N. Tata before varied audiences, at different venues.