Dhirajlal Hirachand Ambani — the founder of Reliance — was, quite literally, born to be a businessman. Born on 28 December, 1932 in a small town in India, Dhirajlal, or “Dhirubhai” as he became popularly known, belonged to the Vaisya caste, traditionally ordained by ancient Hindu scriptures to be merchants and bankers. Modern society holds these roles more loosely but there remains a widespread belief that people from this caste possess an innate aptitude for business.
In The Polyester Prince, an unauthorized biography of Dhirubhai, author Hamish McDonald noted that Dhirubhai’s subcaste — the Modh Bania — were “fiercely competitive and canny traders in the marketplace, with no qualms about taking advantage of opportunities for profit. A saying in Gujarat [the state in India that Dhirubhai was born in] goes: ‘Apale hojo kadh, pan angane na hojo Modh’s,’ meaning, ‘It is better to have leucoderma [a disfiguring skin pigment disorder] on your forehead than a Modh as a guest in your house.’” The implication being that a Modh Bania would find some way to profit off you, even as your guest.
Dhirubhai’s father, however, did not fit this mould. Hirachand Ambani tried his hand at trading, but was better remembered as being the village schoolmaster. McDonald wrote that acquaintances spoke of him as a “man of principles … perhaps … he was too good-willed to be good at making money.” In other words, the Ambanis didn’t have a lot of money. The family of eight lived in a modest two-roomed stone dwelling. Hirachand had one son with his first wife, and after being widowed, had five children from his second marriage. Dhirubhai was one of the five, a middle child.
The Ambanis still had wealthy friends though, mostly because Gujarati families of the same caste mingled at social events. The Shahs — a family which prospered from starting a factory making aluminum cooking pots, the first of its kind in India — were one of them. The patriarch of the Shah family took an interest in village children: welcoming them into his spacious home, lending them books, and occasionally giving them odd jobs. Jayan Shah, a member of this family, remembers a young Dhirubhai visiting the Shah household. Dhirubhai owed his high school education to this community support. In 1945, he was admitted to Bahadur Kanju High School as a free student and lived in a boarding house funded by the Modh Bania.
Dhirubhai was influenced by India’s shifting political climate in high school. After eight decades under British colonial rule, the Indian freedom movement was gaining speed. Dhirubhai was the secretary of a student-led organization that agitated for Indian independence — a risky endeavor because expressing nationalist sentiment was prosecuted by the local administration who were in cahoots with the British. The students were often embroiled in hairy situations, and on more than one occasion, Dhirubhai helped them out.
The group wanted to invite a freedom fighter named Kaniala Munsi to address the members of their boarding house. The police got wind of this and threatened them with arrest and expulsion, unless they gave an undertaking that no political speech would be made. McDonald wrote:
It is here that Dhirubhai shows a spark of his later genius at bringing apparently irreconcilable demands into an accommodation, if through a dubious intellectualism … Dhirubhai whispered that there was nothing wrong in giving this undertaking. ‘We are not going to give the speech. If there is any breach in the undertaking, it’s a problem between Munsi and the police.’ Munsi came and delivered a rousing speech in favour of early independence.
Dhirubhai was also among a group that spent hours arguing with the police commissioner for the release of a fellow activist. He was remembered as “show[ing] a lot of courage,” not budging even when threatened with arrest for obstruction of justice. The police let the student go at midnight.
Even as the prospect of a free India drew closer, factions emerged within the freedom movement. Inside the Indian National Congress — the main secular vehicle of the Indian freedom movement — socialist and communist ideals had taken hold. Jawaharlal Nehru, a Congress leader who would be independent India’s first prime minister, was also inclined toward these philosophies. Others like Mahatma Gandhi, best known for his philosophy of nonviolent resistance, didn’t agree. McDonald wrote: “Gandhi’s ideas of industrial devolution to the villages were intrinsically opposed to the proposals for state capitalism and central planning of investment then being promoted by the Left in India as elsewhere in the world.” While this nuance probably didn’t hold importance to a teenage Dhirubhai, it would, in the later years of his life.
India won independence from the British in August of 1947. Dhirubhai graduated from high school in 1949 and started looking for work to support his family. In The Polyester Prince, McDonald speculated that Dhirubhai’s questionable business ethics in later years were attributable to his difficult upbringing. He wrote, “The answer lies probably in the deep poverty that his family endured as the cost of his father’s devotion to a teaching career. While he also learned that life is a web of relationships and obligations, Dhirubhai was fired with an ambition never to become dependent on anyone or to stay long in somebody else’s service.”
For young men of the Modh Ban ...
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