Textile mills pioneers

The pioneer of the cotton textile industry in Ahmedabad, Gujarat was Rao Bahadur Ranchhodlal Chhotalal, CIE, who established the first textile mill, The Ahmedabad Spinning Mills Company Limited in Ahmedabad, in 1859. Despite insurmountable obstacles and tremendous difficulties he managed to transport shipments of textile machinery by bullock cart from the port of Khambat to Ahmedabad, a distance of about 90 kms (less than 60 miles), resulting in him being popularly and fondly known as Ranchhod Rentia (spinning wheel).

Some of the following information has been gleaned and quoted from the book, The Ahmedabad Cotton Textile Industry by Makrand Mehta.

Sheth Dhanjibhai Jamshedji Medora had promoted The Commercial Ahme­dabad Mills Company Limited in 1896, two or three years before his death, in collaboration with Sheth Trikamlal Bhogilal and others (page 164). The managing agents of the mills company were M/s Dhanjibhai and Trikamlal and Company. Sheth Trikamlal Bhogilal and his family managed the mills. The mills closed down, like many others, due to recession and government policies.

Here are excerpts from the same source about Karaka’s Textile Mill (1898): "Ranchhodlal, the father of the cotton textile industry of Ahmedabad, died on October 26, 1898. By this time Ahmedabad’s position as an important textile manufacturing centre had been well established. The city then had 25 cotton textile mills… Sorabji D. Karaka had one mill. Karaka was a Parsi who had established his mill company just a few months before the death of the naagar (a caste) entrepreneur (Ran­chhodlal Chhotalal). Karaka had worked as a spinning and weaving master in Ahmedabad before he formed the company, The Ahmedabad Fine Spinning and Weaving Company, with 125 looms” (page100). "It was geared exclusively to the production of cloth from high count imported yarn. In the 1890s the textile mill industry of Ahmedabad was reckoned superior to its Bombay counterpart in this respect” (page 107). Unfortunately, Karaka’s mills as also The Hitwardhak Cotton Company promoted by him (presumably, both single-handedly), went into liquidation in the early part of the 20th century.

The Ahmedabad Advance Mills Company Limited, also known as Tata Mills, was established in Ahmedabad in 1901 when the Tatas acquired an existing spinning mill along with its vast lands on Shahibaug Road and started various departments up to the printing stage, thus giving employment to hundreds of laborers. Experienced technical officers were summoned from Tata’s Empress Mills in Nagpur, many of them Parsis. The management provided laborers’ and staff quarters, bachelor’s quarters, a hospital, a decent club, a school for the laborers’ children besides officers’ quarters and director’s bungalow. Naval Tata, who looked after the textile section of the Tatas, kept close control over the working and maintained very cordial relations with the laborers as a result of which there was no labor strike. At the time of the mill’s Golden Jubilee in 1951, the laborers donated a marble bust of Sir Jamsetji Tata out of their own resources and J. R. D. Tata who had come down for the occasion had a modern canteen designed by a French architect built for the staff. During 1965, the mill was modernized by installing automatic looms and introducing screen printing, thus creating a demand for their cloth in the market as well as for export. When textile mills throughout the country were facing bad times, Naval Tata thought it prudent to sell the mills company in 1991 to a Bombay businessman.

Rustomji Jehangirji Vakil (1878-1933), who was later knighted, entered the scene (with Navroji Ratanji Divecha) in 1905. However, no one, not even Rustomji’s descendants seem to know about the latter. He promoted four mills along with non-Parsi partners, two in Ahmedabad, one in Bhavnagar and one in Kalol.

RASHID S. MEDORA

Ahmedabad

rashid@medoraindia.com