Birla Family
Members of the Birla family have been leading industrialists in Rajasthan state, India, for well over a century. Seth Baldevdas Birla (1860–1902), later known as Raja Birla, was a Maheshwari Marwari (trading caste) member who migrated from Calcutta in the 1890s and established his family at Pilani, in the Shekhavati region of Rajasthan. Here he continued to work as a broker and trader until his death, when his sons took over, expanding the family business into areas Indians had not previously been able to exploit. Their industries included jute mills, cotton cloth, coal, and paper. Since independence, the family has been so successful that they have been acknowledged as India's leading industrialists.
G. D. Birla (1894–1983), one of these business magnates, was also one of the sponsors of the first national press agency, the Free Press of India, established in 1927. During the 1929–1931 period, G. D. Birla was a member of the Royal Commission on Labour (also known as the Whitley Commission), which investigated all aspects of labor conditions in British India and made many recommendations In the 1931–1932 period, G. D. Birla, along with Mohandas Gandhi (1869–1948), was one of the delegates to the second session of the Round Table Conference in London. This session was to grapple with the problem of communal representation in general and Muslim representation in particular.
Further Reading
Birla, G. D. (1953) In the Shadow of the Mahatma: A Personal Memoir. Bombay, India: Orient Longmans.
Timberg, Thomas A. (1978) The Marwaris: From Traders to Industrialists. New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House.
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