JRD Tata and the Politics of Private Dissent

The private correspondence of business leaders with political elites in South Asia has rarely entered the public domain. This absence has left historians with an uneven, often frustrating archival record of how economic power interacted with political authority.

Unlike in parts of Europe or the United States, where corporate archives, private papers, and elite correspondence have long been central to historical inquiry, most businessmen in the region have shown little inclination to preserve their records or open them to independent scholarly scrutiny. Even where large industrial houses have established archives, access is often conditional and carefully managed, limiting the scope for critical research.

This archival silence has profoundly shaped how the history of Indian capitalism is written. The result is a literature rich in policy analysis and institutional narratives but thin on the everyday exchanges, disagreements, and anxieties through which business leaders engaged the state. Economic power appears abstract and depersonalised, while political authority seems to operate in isolation from elite negotiation. The reality, of course, was far messier.

There are a few notable exceptions. The relationship between Mohandas Gandhi and industrial families such as the Birlas and Bajajs is relatively well documented, largely because Gandhi’s letters and writings were meticulously preserved and published.

Similarly, the Tata group has attracted sustained scholarly attention. In addition, several institutional histories and Medha Kudaisya’s biography of GD Birla shed light on business-state relations in the late colonial period. Yet these examples remain outliers.

For most industrialists, their political thinking and behind-the-scenes influence must be reconstructed indirectly – from scattered private collections, government files, or fleeting newspaper references.

It is in this context that surviving correspondence assumes particular importance. Two letters written by industrialist JRD Tata – one addressed to freedom fighter and writer KM Munshi in 1939 and another to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi nearly three decades later – offer a rare window into elite dialogue across two distinct political eras.

Spanning late colonial rule and the post-Independence developmental state, these letters, found in the National Archives of India, reveal how candid exchanges between business leaders and policymakers shaped, and sometimes unsettled, national debates.

Politics of dissent

In 1937, following the first provincial elections under the Government of India Act of 1935, the Indian National Congress formed a ministry in the Bombay Presidency. Led by BG Kher, the cabinet included prominent figures such as Morarji Desai, KM Munshi, and Yasin Nurie. One of the ministry’s earliest and most ideologically charged initiatives was the introduction of Prohibition – a policy deeply associated with Gandhi and explicitly promised in the Congress manifesto.

Prohibition, however, was never merely a moral project. As I have argued elsewhere, its implementation had significant fiscal implications. The policy entailed the introduction of an urban property tax designed to compensate for the loss of excise revenue from alcohol. This immediately provoked resistance from trading communities and urban landlords. Hindu, Muslim, and Parsi property owners alike opposed the measure, not on moral grounds but because it threatened their economic interests.

The Congress ministry, convinced of the moral righteousness of Prohibition, interpreted such opposition as obstructionist, even reactionary.

Newspaper reports and administrative records provide ample evidence of widespread resistance to Prohibition. What they reveal less clearly is how major industrial houses responded – and how the political leadership reacted when dissent came from the commanding heights of Indian capital.

That silence was broken by a remarkable letter written by Tata on September 8, 1939, to Munshi, the home minister of the Bombay government. The letter is striking not only for its content but also for its tone. Tata dispensed with formal courtesies and plunged straight into the issue at hand: a rumour, allegedly circulated by Munshi, that the Tata group intended “gradually to get rid of their Hindu employees”.

“If this is correct,” JRD wrote, “I feel grieved that you should have given credence to such a fantastic rumour and also that, if you did believe it, you should have discussed the matter with third parties in preference to asking me or any of my colleagues directly.”

The bluntness of the opening is telling. It suggests a relationship in which a leading industrialist felt sufficiently secure – and sufficiently aggrieved – to challenge a senior Congress minister directly. Tata went on to remind Munshi that no Indian firm, regardless of community, could match his business group’s record on employment practices. The accusation, he implied, was not merely false but malicious.

Why had such a rumour gained currency? Tata made the connection explicit. Munshi, he suggested, was aggrieved by the Tata group’s refusal to support the Congress government’s Prohibition policy and had chosen to interpret this disagreement as evidence of an “anti-national outlook”.

This charge cut to the heart of the matter. Tata forcefully rejected the idea that dissent on an economic policy could be equated with disloyalty to the nation. “It is surely wrong,” he argued, “for a responsible minister to hold the opinion that for anyone to hold views different from those of the Government, particularly on an economic question such as this, is to be anti-national.”

The language is revealing for another reason. The term “anti-national” is often treated as a product of post-Independence political culture, yet here it appears firmly embedded in late colonial discourse. The letter demonstrates how easily the political elite could deploy nationalist rhetoric to delegitimise economic opposition – even when that opposition came from one of India’s most prominent industrial houses.

JRD Tata was careful to clarify that the Tata group’s objections to Prohibition were not motivated by narrow self-interest. The policy was flawed, he argued, not because it “touches our pockets” but because of the unsound procedures adopted by the government and the economic hardship inflicted on large sections of the population.

Whether or not one accepts this claim at face value, the letter underscores a crucial point: business opposition was framed, by the business leader himself, as a matter of public interest rather than private profit.

Munshi’s reply was polite and conciliatory, affirming his high regard for the Tata group. Yet it also conceded more than it denied. He expressed an “earnest desire” to dissipate the negative impression of the firm that was circulating in “high political and business circles”.

This acknowledgment suggests that JRD Tata’s complaint was not unfounded. Rumour, suspicion, and ideological policing were already part of the Congress government’s repertoire when dealing with elite dissent.

What stands out most is the confidence with which Tata addressed the political executive. The head of a major industrial house did not hesitate to challenge a minister, to accuse him of irresponsibility, and to defend the legitimacy of disagreement. This was not the posture of a timid capitalist seeking favour, but of an actor who saw himself as a stakeholder in national governance.

Speaking truth to power

Nearly three decades later, JRD Tata was still writing to those at the helm of political power. In 1968, with Indira Gandhi firmly ensconced as prime minister, he sent her a copy of his speech delivered at the 60th Annual General meeting of the Indian Merchants’ Chamber. “I hope,” he wrote, “that you may find at least parts of it of some interest.”

The understatement masked the boldness of what followed. In the speech, Tata ventured into one of the most sensitive areas of public policy: defence expenditure. Six years after India’s traumatic defeat in the war with China, defence was widely regarded as beyond criticism. Yet Tata deliberately challenged this consensus.

“If I may now rush in where angels fear to tread,” he remarked, “I believe that one avenue of considerable saving in expenditure lies in the realm of Defence expenditure.” He advocated more sophisticated procurement methods and the computerisation of inventory control – technocratic solutions that reflected his faith in managerial efficiency.

More provocatively, he questioned the culture of silence surrounding defence budgets. “While there can be no question that the military security of the country must be assured whatever the cost,” he argued, “I see no justification for the touching unanimity with which up to now any discussion of defence expenditure has been treated virtually as taboo.”

For Tata, defence spending – approaching Rs 1,000 crores annually – was one of the principal reasons why what was promised as a “decade of development” had turned into a “decade of disillusionment”. This was a damning assessment, delivered not from the margins but from the leadership of organised industry.

Even more striking was his foray into political analysis. In language that would be unthinkable for a corporate leader today, JRD Tata described India’s system as a “benevolent one-party autocracy” whose “façade of political stability and democracy in action” had long been sustained by the dominating personality of Jawaharlal Nehru.

“With Nehru gone,” he observed bluntly, “the façade has begun to crack.”

This was not casual criticism. It reflected deep unease with the concentration of political power at the Centre and the absence of meaningful opposition. JRD Tata felt that the voice of the industry was treated with suspicion and mistrust and that the government’s crushing majority in Parliament meant it could follow economic policies from which it could not be moved.

Yet Tata’s critique was not nihilistic. He acknowledged the government’s achievements in education, health, electrification, science, technology, and heavy industry. Even in their “most misguided policies”, he conceded, political rulers were motivated by “the best of intentions and the belief that such policies would help the country forward”.

Indira Gandhi replied to JRD Tata, addressing him as “Dear Jeh”, saying that she would “read it with interest”. Indira Gandhi acknowledged receipt of the speech, a fact that is significant in itself. At a time when access to the prime minister was increasingly mediated by bureaucratic and political filters, the acknowledgment signals that Tata’s views were taken seriously, even if they were uncomfortable.

In fact Tata’s letter to Indira Gandhi (dated February 21, 1968) is annotated in thick black ink possibly by a staff at her office with the remark, “To be acknowledged.”

While there is no evidence that his recommendations on defence expenditure or political concentration translated directly into policy change, the exchange confirms that elite industrial opinion still had an audience at the highest levels of government.

This acknowledgment also highlights an important feature of post-Independence state-business relations: criticism from leading business figures was not automatically dismissed as illegitimate or self-serving. Instead, it was absorbed – selectively and cautiously – into the broader policy conversation.

The correspondence reflects a mode of engagement in which dissenting views could be expressed privately, acknowledged formally, and yet neutralised politically. In this sense, the exchange reveals both the confidence of a business leader willing to speak candidly and the resilience of a political system adept at listening without necessarily yielding.

Letters as historical evidence

Taken together, these two letters complicate any simple narrative of collusion or subservience between Indian big business and the state. They reveal a relationship marked by negotiation, tension, and mutual suspicion, but also by a shared sense of responsibility for national outcomes. JRD Tata emerges not as a silent beneficiary of political favour, but as an articulate, sometimes combative participant in public debate.

More broadly, the letters underscore the importance of private correspondence as historical evidence. In their absence, historians are left with official statements, policy documents, and retrospective memoirs – all of which flatten the texture of elite interaction. Where such letters survive, they restore contingency, conflict, and candour to the story of Indian capitalism.

That so few such documents are available is itself a political fact. The reluctance of business houses to preserve or open their papers has narrowed the archive and, with it, the range of questions historians can ask. Recovering and analysing these rare exchanges is therefore not merely an academic exercise.

It is essential to understanding how power has actually operated in modern India – and how dissent, even from the elite, has been managed, marginalised, or, at times, reluctantly accommodated.

Danish Khan is a historian and journalist based in London. His DPhil thesis titled Muslim Capitalism is under contract to be published by Cambridge University Press.

This article was first published at Scroll.in