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Navsari, 1856. In a nondescript house, a midwife had to work hard to save a premature child who was christened Ratan, a popular name those days. At the time of his birth, his family name, Tata, in Gujarati literally derived from tikha tamtamta or short tempered, was just emerging from ordinariness. His uncle, Nusserwanji, had broken with the family tradition of practicing priests, and begun a trading firm in Bombay to sell among other things, opium to the Chinese. Nusserwanji’s son, Jamsetji, born in 1839 in Navsari, would become India’s first industrialist, the legendary founder of the Tata Group.
Young Ratan was the first Tata to study at the Cathedral and John Connon School and, like his paternal cousin, later joined the Elphinstone College. He also did a brief stint at an agricultural college in Madras. An arranged marriage followed with a girl of 17 who soon died childless, leaving Ratan a widower in his late twenties. Heartbroken, Ratan became Jamsetji’s right-hand man, and played a pivotal role in the founding of Tata Iron and Steel Company (now named Tata Steel), more so, when Jamsetji died at 65, in 1904.

 

 

 

 

 

 

1902. When Ratan was 46, at a café in Paris, he fell in love with a 22-year-old sizzling French beauty with aquiline features called Suzanne Briere. Ratan remarried in Paris and his bride soon arrived on a ship to Bombay. She was rebranded Soonoo or Soonu. Parsi eyebrows were already hitting the ceiling. The scion of an orthodox priestly family from Navsari had married a Christian woman. But Ratan was no ordinary Parsi; he was a Tata. Hence the usual fundamentalist angst and uproar was a trifle subdued. Perhaps matters would have ended there; however, Ratan had other ideas. He wanted Suzanne’s navjote done.
Step back to 1897, when the eighth atash behram, the Anjuman na Atash Behram, was consecrated after a bitter controversy (see "The eighth atash behram — I and II,” Parsiana, December 7-20, 2021 and December 21-January 6, 2022). After the Sanjana family priests became persona non grata with the Navsari establishment, the Jamasp Asha priests were the new appointees. Ratan convinced Ervad Kaikhooshroo Jamaspji to perform his young bride’s navjote. Suzanne was invested with the sudreh kusti and was converted to Zoroastrianism. All hell broke loose. Ratan had ignited the greatest community controversy which continues to rock the courts even today nearly 120 years later.
Despite the goodwill which the Tatas enjoyed, stormy public meetings agitated the issue; committees to protect the religion were formed and condemnatory resolutions passed; the priest who had performed the navjote had to be confined for a few days to the fire temple. An impolite limerick about Tata importing a mudum (foreign lady) became popular. And Suzanne would later write to her mother in Paris that until the last moment they were not sure whether the navjote would be performed. Sir Jamsetji Jejeebhoy, the chairman of the Bombay Parsi Punchayet (BPP), was finally compelled to take note of the growing anger within his community, which culminated in a boisterous general meeting to deny Suzanne any Zoroastrian rights.
The BPP claimed that Suzanne was not a Parsi Zoroastrian and hence not entitled to any of the privileges or rights of one. Jejeebhoy may not have had very orthodox views; but not much love was lost between him and Ratan who was a close friend of Sir Dinshaw Petit, Jejeebhoy’s bête noire. The episode further split the emerging Parsi aristocracy. The Jejeebhoys controlled the Punchayet, the Petits did not. Petit was furious. What authority did the BPP trustees have, appointed as they were by their predecessors, to consider the Punchayet their hereditary fiefdom? The BPP trustees must be appointed by the entire Parsi community and not behind closed doors by the outgoing trustees, averred Petit.
Finally, Petit and six other Parsis, including Ratan, filed a suit in the Bombay High Court in 1906 against Jejeebhoy and the other BPP trustees. It was no longer a matter concerning the conversion of one lady; it had sparked off the process to democratize the BPP. Hold that the Punchayet trustees were not validly appointed, frame a scheme for election of the trustees, urged the plaintiffs. The conversion issue had become secondary.
Eminent English barristers were engaged. The Bench comprised an English judge, Frank Beaman, who was visually impaired and a Parsi judge of orthodox hues, Dinshaw Davar. Petit v Jeejeebhoy was decided within two years in 1908. In the meanwhile, the lady at the center of the controversy became the first woman in India to drive a motorcar. Later, she was also one of the first to travel by an aeroplane in 1913.
Justices Beaman and Davar perhaps could not be counted among the most illustrious of the Bombay High Court benches but were most respected for their no nonsense approach. The plaintiffs were displeased when the suit first appeared on the board of Davar as a single judge, due to his known orthodox views. Hence they thought of a stratagem to apply to him to ask the Chief Justice to appoint another judge alongside him so that it would become a division bench and then an appeal if any would lie directly to the Privy Council. Davar sportingly agreed and that is how Beaman came to be appointed on the bench. As is evident from Beaman’s observations, had Davar alone been the judge, the outcome could have been very different. 
To be continued