Business and Ethics

This chapter examines the ethics issues Jamnalal experienced in business. The first section discusses the two defamation suits that Jamnalal filed against two Marathi papers. Unlike most defamation suits, Jamnalal only wanted to regain his honour. The next section describes the civil litigation suits filed by some of Jamnalal’s family members, who wished to establish their shares in his assets. From here, the discussion looks at Jamnalal’s entry into the industrial field, where he set up the Hindustan Sugar Mills and became its chairman. It also studies Gandhi’s influence on Jamnalal’s ethics and his attitude towards money and property. The chapter considers Gandhi’s ethical framework for the practice of trade and industry, and notes that Jamnalal may be the only industrialist who willingly subjected his commercial operations to the constraints of Gandhian ethics and Gandhian politics.