Dwarkanath Tagore

Dwarkanath Tagore was the first Indian to run European-style businesses on his own account at scale, and he financed the reform movement his grandson Rabindranath grew up inside. He was born in Calcutta into a landholding Brahmin family, trained in law and English under a British tutor, and made his first money as an estate agent and in the salt and indigo trades before becoming dewan of the East India Company's customs and opium departments. In 1834 he founded Carr, Tagore and Company, the first equal partnership between Indian and British capital, and moved into coal at Raniganj, shipping, insurance, tea and river steamers; the coal company he assembled is an ancestor of the modern Indian coal industry. He was a founder of the Union Bank. He backed Rammohan Roy in the campaign against sati and in the Brahmo Sabha, funded the Calcutta Medical College and paid for Indian students to study medicine in London, and financed newspapers that criticised the Company's administration. He travelled to Europe twice, was received by Queen Victoria and by Louis Philippe, and was known in the London press as Prince Dwarkanath, a title he did not hold. His enterprises depended on credit and on the indigo trade, and after his death in Surrey in 1846 the Union Bank failed and the estate was found to be deeply indebted; his son Debendranath spent years paying creditors and turned away from business toward religion. He is the point at which an Indian merchant class first tried to meet European capital as an equal, and the failure was as instructive as the attempt. He entertained on a scale that scandalised orthodox Brahmins, and was excluded from some caste functions for eating with Europeans. He was buried at Kensal Green in London. His grandson Rabindranath was born fifteen years after his death and grew up in the house his money had built.

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