: GD Birla: The Nationalist Businessman Who Helped Fund The Freedom Struggle #IndiaNEWS #Famous Personalities Ghanshyam Das (GD) Birla, the architect behind the Indian business conglomerate, the Birla

GD Birla: The Nationalist Businessman Who Helped Fund The Freedom Struggle #IndiaNEWS #Famous Personalities
Ghanshyam Das (GD) Birla, the architect behind the Indian business conglomerate, the Birla Group, with interests spread across cement, telecom, aluminium and financial services, managed to marry his business interests with aspirations for India’s freedom. (Above image of GD Birla and MK Gandhi courtesy Aditya Birla Group)
A close associate of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and friend to many leaders of the freedom struggle, GD Birla not only gave money for the cause but also built his own business empire despite the initial roadblocks set by the colonial administration, British and Scottish business interests and their Indian cronies. Leading the charge for Indian businesses, he played a pivotal role in the formation of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI).
Post-Independence, he founded the esteemed Birla Institute of Technology and Sciences (BITS) in his hometown of Pilani, Rajasthan. For his many contributions to the country, he was awarded the Padma Vibhushan by the Government of India in 1957.
Early racism & the business giant
Born on 10 April 1894 in Pilani, Rajasthan, GD Birla underwent formal education only until the age of 11, after which he followed in his father Baldeodas’s footsteps into the family’s trading business in Mumbai and then Kolkata.
As he once wrote, “In our village no one bothered with newspapers; not even half a dozen people would have read them. And where were the newspapers in those days? No one in the village could read and write English. Nor was there a school. A few people could read and write simple Hindi or Urdu, but perhaps only one in a hundred. At the age of four, I was put under a tutor who claimed to know more about arithmetic than reading and writing. And so my education began with futures – addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, etc. At the age of nine, I learnt a little reading and writing and got a smattering of English. My school education, however, ended with the ‘First Book Reading’ by Pyaricharan Sarkar, when I was only 11. ???
At age 16, he started his ‘independent business’ as a jute broker, and this is where he first encountered the racist practices of the English who were his patrons and clients.
“During my association with them, I began to see their superiority in business methods, their organising capacity and their many other virtues. But their racial arrogance could not be concealed. I was not allowed to use the lift to go up to their offices, not their benches while waiting to see them. I smarted under these insults, and this created within me a political interest which, from 1912 until today, I have fully maintained,??? he wrote.

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