Ramkrishna Dalmia

Trivia

• Ramkrishna Dalmia was also a philanthropist and presided over a number of religious, educational and social conferences. He formed the Anti Cow-Slaughter League. He began a worldwide campaign promoting the idea of “One-World Government”.
• Ramkrishna Dalmia had contacts with persons in all walks of life. Among national leaders, he had direct contact with Gandhi, Jamuna Lal Bajaj, Sardar Patel, Rajendra Prasad and M.A. Jinnah. He set up cement factories in the kingdoms of Jind and Jaipur at the invitation of their ruling princes. However, he did not get along well with Nehru, who had once said of him: "He’s an ugly man with an ugly face and an ugly mind and an ugly heart. Just because he owns a few newspapers, he claims to be an ex
• Shortly before independence, the Dalmia empire was divided between himself, Jaidayal Dalmia, and son-in-law Shanti Prasad Jain, who had once been a tutor to his daughter Ruma. Later, when he was facing imprisonment and needed to repay 2.5 crores, he sold Bennett and Coleman to Shanti Prasad Jain to recover his monies.
• In the years leading up to Indian independence, Dalmia supported both Gandhi and Jinnah. Gandhi’s Civil Disobedience movement, started in 1930 with the salt satyagraha, was, in fact, financed almost entirely by him, a fact to which national leaders like Dr. Rajendra Prasad and Shri Syed Hasan Imam alluded in the future.
• Ramkrishna Dalmia's maternal uncle, Motilal Jhunjhunwala, gave him a job in his bullion business, which enabled him to earn just enough to support his whole family. At one point, he started speculating on silver and following the advice of an astrologer, at one point he quickly made one lakh rupees. This was the beginning of what would soon become India’s third-largest business empire.
• In December 1956 the firebrand socialist Feroze Gandhi exposed in parliament how Dalmia, as chairman of a publicly traded bank and an insurance company, had illegally transferred nearly a crore rupees to his mill in order to fund the Bennett and Coleman acquisition. In 1956 he was sentenced to two years in jail.
• At one point his name was being considered for India's finance minister.
• At the time of India's independence, Ram Krishna Dalmia was among the wealthiest and most powerful men in India, with good contacts with most political leaders.
• Starting with a bullion business, he built several sugar mills, and went on to acquire Bennett and Coleman, (the Times of India group).
• Ramkrishna Dalmia was a pioneer industrialist and founder of the Dalmia-Jain Group.