Jamnalal Kaniram Bajaj was an Indian industrialist. He founded the Bajaj Group of companies in the 1920s, and the group now has 24 companies, including six that are listed on the bourses. He was also a close and beloved associate of Mahatma Gandhi, who is known to have often declared that Jamnalal was his fifth son.
An honest industrialist could perhaps be a myth in India given how frequently scams of different sizes surface. In the 1920s, though, when India was fighting for independence, Jamnalal Bajaj emerged as an ethical entrepreneur who was dubbed the ‘Merchant Prince’ by Mahatma Gandhi.

Jamnalal was born to small-time Marwari money lenders in a village in Rajasthan. He was adopted by a business family in Wardha, said the journal Marwar. After a brief schooling period, he was married off at the age of 12 to the daughter of a well-off merchant from Jaora. He took over the family business of his adoptive parents in Wardha at 17 and went on to establish several factories and companies.

After Mahatma Gandhi returned to India from South Africa, Bajaj took an instant liking to his teachings. Looking to get Gandhi to make Wardha a centre of his freedom movement, Bajaj donated 20 acres of land to Gandhi, who later adopted him as a son.

Despite the Marwari business community enjoying warm relations with the British, Jamnalal renounced the title of Rai Bahadur and the honorary magistrate post given to him during World War I, and joined the freedom movement.

Jamnalal went on to participate in the Non-Cooperation Movement (1920-22), Nagpur Jhanda Satyagraha (1923), Boycott of Simon Commission (1928), Dandi March (1930), among other important events leading up to 1942.

Following Gandhi’s arrest after Dandi March and the ensuing arrests, Jamnalal found himself in Nasik Central Jail for two years.

In 1942, at the peak of the freedom movement, Gandhi wrote about Jamnalal in Harijan, “There was no work of mine in which I did not receive his fullest co-operation in body mind and wealth. Neither he nor I had any attraction for what is called politics. He was drawn into it because I was in it. My real politics was constructive work, and so too was his. I had hoped that after me he would fully carry on those works of mine which would be regarded as of special importance.”

In his book India’s Struggle for Independence: 1857-1947, historian Bipan Chandra wrote, “Among the various groups that participated in the national movement were several individual capitalists who joined the Congress. They fully identified with the movement, went to jails and accepted the hardships that were the lot of Congressmen in the colonial period. The names of Jamnalal Bajaj, Vadilal Lallubhai Mehta, Samuel Aaron, Lala Shankar Lal, and others are well known in this regard.”

Jamnalal is said to have played a major role in securing funds for the All India Tilak Memorial Fund in 1921. The money — said to be Rs 1 crore — was to be used for popularising khadi in the country. Through his life, Jamnalal is said estimated to have donated close to Rs 25 lakh in charities.

He also served as a regular financer and banker for the Indian National Congress for almost two decades, and introduced the concept of trusteeship of profits in business.

But Bajaj was more than just an industrialist or freedom fighter, he was a philanthropist too.

Of the several social reforms Jamnalal undertook in his life, the Jamnalal Foundation lists speaking against caste system, support for child education and inter-caste marriage. He also opened the doors of his family temple to Dalits in the area even before Gandhi made untouchability a national issue.

He conducted khadi tours across India as the founder-president of the Gandhi Seva Sangh urging the establishment of khadi industries. He also actively propagated Hindi as the national language.

After 53 years of a life immersed in political and social activism, Jamnalal breathed his last at his Wardha home on 11 February 1942.

In his tribute to Bajaj in 1942 soon after his death, Gandhi wrote, “Whenever I wrote of wealthy men becoming trustees of their wealth for the common good I always had this merchant prince principally in mind.”
Humanitarian, freedom fighter, philanthropist, social reformer and a devoted Mahatma Gandhi follower, Jamnalalji was adopted as the fifth son by Gandhiji. He was the alter ego of the Mahatma in the Gandhian constructive movement, who took active part in the Indian freedom struggle. Jamnalalji also undertook pioneering work in the field of Go-seva (Cow protection), upliftment of the ‘dalits’ or the downtrodden, education of women, propagation of Hindi, spread of Khadi (hand spun and hand woven cloth) and the development of khadi and village industries. As an industrialist and a businessman, Jamnalalji was singular in enunciating for himself a strict code of ethics. He earnestly tried to practice the Gandhian ethic in every sphere of his life – political, social, business and personal. This was not an easy task. It was more difficult to be a Gandhian than to be a capitalist, a communist or a socialist.