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India today owes its success to few gem of persons. These great men found Indian Industry and were pillars of the education system. One such great visionary was Karumuthu Thiagarajar Chettiar. We are fortunate and consider ourselves truly blessed to have him as our Founder.
Way back in the 1920's, when the dream of most of Indian’s was to have a decent job, "Karumuttu" as he was reverently called, had vision of creating thousands of jobs. He established a textile empire, which went on to become one of the biggest in the world. Martin Henry, the former Chairman of Madura Coats says, "Karumuttu was a great man, I had the privilege of meeting him a couple of times. He used to call me for a cup of tea. One day, in 1972, he called me to his house and said my lifetime ambition was to be bigger than your mill. Today I achieved it. Little did he realize that we were the biggest in the world; if he was bigger than us, he was the biggest in the world.”
Our chairman was instrumental in getting Texas Instruments to Sona Towers in 1994 and created a milestone in the history of IT in India. In fact, Sona Towers is the birth place of IT in India and an important landmark in Bangalore, India.
His single-minded dedication helped him achieve this. His zest for quality made him look towards Japan way back in 1960s to recruit Japanese quality gurus and then employ them specifically to create systems, quality, procedures and processes. This in itself was the path breaking in many ways.
A man of many facets knew that if India had to be built, it should have strong financial foundations. It was this foresight that made him establish the Bank of Madura, which grew to become one of the biggest private banks in India. He also established Madurai Insurance Company.
Being a visionary he felt the best way to develop India is to create educational Institutions of higher learning. Embarking on the industrial journey himself, he thought he could absorb /use the educated class of people coming out of these Institutions. Towards this he setup various educational institutions like Thiagarajar Polytechnic, Thiagarajar Engineering College. Thiagarajar College of Arts, Thiagarajar Preceptor College etc.
This led to the citizens of India conferring a fitting title of Kalaithanthai (Father of education) for his astounding work in creating great Institutions of higher learning. Stemming from his beliefs that if strong India has to be built, education is the sin-qua-non.
A man of high energy, he believed that with strong beliefs in democracy, India had to be an independent country. This quest made him join the Indian National Congress.
He established close rapport and became friends with Mahatma Gandhi (Father of Nation), Pandit Nehru (First Prime Minister of India), Rajaji (First Indian Viceroy), and several other great leaders. Mahatma Gandhiji's famous "lion cloth" incident happened when Gandhiji was staying in Kalaithanthai's house in Madurai. Gandhiji went outside to see the people and found them nearly all to be shirtless. Gandhiji said, "If a true Indian man cannot afford a shirt and does not wear one, and if I have to represent them, I have to be and feel like one; be like one." Saying this he threw his shirt (never to wear once again) “Therefore, from today onwards I am not going to wear shirts.” Little did he realize in fifty years one of the biggest textile manufacturers of the world would be his host. We today owe our source and inspiration to this great man. We today continue to walk in his footsteps following his vision. |
