The Tappoo family has established a Charitable Foundation to benefit a large cross-section of the underprivileged in Fiji.
The Tappoo Group of Companies executive chairman, Mr Kanti Tappoo, said the company decided to do this as part of its commitment to community and nation building.
The setting up of the foundation coincided with the 65th anniversary celebrations for the Tappoo Group in 2006.
The Tappoo family has a long history of philanthropic activities, actively serving the poor and the needy in the community.
The Foundation will consolidate the various activities of the Tappoo Group and the Tappoo family in social, educational and community based projects.
The Tappoo Foundation was officially launched with the opening of a new school wing at the Sai School in Drasa, Lautoka, in February 2006.
The concept of the Sai School is what the family readily agrees with: free education for all disregarding race, colour and creed, the teaching of human values as an integral part of the curriculum and seeking harmony and peace in the world by turning out students of excellent character. Its a rural school that caters to the less fortunate in society, including the villages nearby.
A multi-purpose community hall in Sigatoka is another project the Tappoo Foundation helped build. The hall, amongst other things, is a center for imparting education in human values to young children in the Nadroga region.
The Gandhi-Tappoo center is the latest of Tappoo Foundation projects. Tappoo Foundation (Tappoo Charitable Trust) is registered under the Charitable Trust Act of Fiji.
Tappoo family is committed to making Fiji a better place for all, irrespective of race, religion or creed. The Tappoo Group has been supporting numerous charitable and sports activities in the past. Now Tappoo wishes to promote specific projects that will benefit the community at large. Mr Kanti Tappoo said.
Vision
The Gandhi-Tappoo Centre is named afterMahatma Gandhi, born on 2nd October 1869, died on 30 January 1948. Arguably the man ofthe millennium, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi became a Mahatma while working in South Africa among indentured Indians and small merchants, Africans, Afrikaners and the British imperial forces.
The Indian Diaspora of the dispossessed and disenfranchised made him a unique and universal thinker and leader. He wrote profusely and profoundly. His Collected Works have been published in more than 100 volumes. No other human hand has written as much as Gandhijis. Writing became for him a way of seeing, understanding and solving human problems in humane ways. Through his writing and thoughtful action he gave hope, faith, and a love for life to millions within and outside India. He developed and deployed the weapon of Ahimsa - unconditional love and Satyagraha - love in action - in the quest for human dignity, personal decency and human freedom.
His legacy has been as effective in South Africa as it is relevant to the South Pacific; from America to Zimbabwe, he continues to give light to those who seek peaceful solutions to complex, contemporary issues. Gandhijis seminal and significant ideas were concerned as much with wholesome food as with the wholeness of being of an individual within his or her society. For him, no community was too small and no individual was expendable: for Gandhi the vulnerable were the most valuable.
As a man of vision and action, he asked the deepest questions that face us as we struggle to live in a community, building bridges between cultures and peoples. As a person of his time who struggled with the profoundest issues confronting the world, he became the conscience of humankind. If his fearless life was his message, his passage through our troubled world ennobles all of us: in remembering and respecting him, our self-respect is enhanced, spiritually and materially. Gandhiji sent, among others, Mani Lal Doctor and, his wife Jaikumari and Rev C F Andrews to Fiji. Their efforts, with others reports and agitation, finally led to the abolition of the Indenture system.
In the Fiji Islands, at The University of Fiji, the Gandhi-Tappoo Centre will act as a magnet and a creative catalyst to foster and forge new ways of thinking about our problems and possibilities and seek solutions in an atmosphere of peace, respect and understanding. It will endeavour to provide and promote an integral vision of our humanity with enduring and ethical values inherent in each one of us. The Centre will imaginatively and courageously cultivate the ideas and ideals of democracy, national identity, and nurture the values of good citizenship and examined life, and strive to promote a culture of understanding, fearlessness, peace and growth within the civic institutions of a multicultural society. The three major interrelated areas the Centre will explore and develop within the University are: WRITING , ETHICS, AND PEACE STUDIES.
The greatest fact in the story of man on earth is not his material achievement, the empires he has built or broken, but the growth of his soul from age to age in its search for truth and goodness. Those who take part in this adventure of the soul secure an enduring place in the history of human culture. Time has discredited heroes as easily as it has forgotten everyone else; but the saints remain. The greatness of Gandhi is more in his holy living than in his heroic struggle, in his insistence on the creative power of the soul and its life-giving quality at a time when the destructive forces seem to be in the ascendant. - President S Radhakrishnan
Mission
To teach and disseminate Mahatma Gandhis ideas and actions relevant to a variety of issues and activities within Fiji and the Pacific;
To establish significant links with similar Centres in other parts of the world;
To teach Writing, Ethics and Peace Studies within the Centre and make these vital components in the intellectual, imaginative, civic and practical concerns of the community and the individual;
To seek funding from individuals, associations, institutions, organizations, foundations, governments to carry out the activities of the Centre through research, writing, public lectures, publications, seminars, conferences and community involvement;
To invite individuals and relevant organizations to work collaboratively with the Centre in its pursuit of excellence and the freedom of expression and imagination;
To emphasize the integral place of ethics in business, professions, social, cultural, spiritual and public life;
To promote the importance of civic education for the cultivation of the virtues of democratic accountability and conflict resolution and to make truth, justice and reconciliation part of the Fiji way of life;
To promote the welfare of women and children through cross-cultural research and intercultural communication;
To make the Centre into a Centre of Excellence within the University of Fiji;
To plan and organize activities in consonance with the aims of the Centre and give it a regional focus and international profile with institutional relationships and stimulate innovative thinking for the peaceful progress of the Fiji Islands within the region.
Sponsorship
The initial funding to establish the Centre is being provided by The Tappoo Family of Fiji. The Tappoo Group is keen to assist the University of Fiji in creating the Gandhi-Tappoo Centre in the revered name of Shri Tappoobhai, a disciple of Gandhiji. This visionary generosity is deeply appreciated by the University Community; doubtless the Fiji community will share the generosity and inspiration.
The Centre aims to be self-funding and seeks resources and grants form other sources within and outside Fiji, especially from philanthropic individuals, foundations, big and small, who share the ideas and ideals for which the Mahatma lived and died, and which continue to give hope to our one and only shared world.
Advisory Board
Chair Mr Suresh Lal Tappoo BE, Civil Engineering (Auckland) Executive Director, Tappoo Group of Companies Members - Father Kevin Barr - Mr Filipe Bole, Director, Centre for Indigenous Studies - Professor Rajesh Chandra, Vice-Chancellor - Mr Krishna Murti, Executive Director, Tappoo Group - Justice Nazhat Shameem - Mrs Suliana Siwatabau - Mr Kamlesh Tappoo, Executive Director, Tappoo Group - Mr Mahendra Tappoo, Executive Director, Tappoo Group - Professor Satendra Nandan, Director
International Advisory Associates of the Centre
Professor David Dabydeen Cambridge/Warwick, UK
Professor Seumas Miller Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
Dr Debjani Ganguly The Australian National University, Australia
Dr Kavita Nandan School of Humanities, The University of the South Pacific, Fiji
Professor Amitav Ghosh Harvard University, New York, USA
Professor Ashis Nandy Centre for Developing Societies, New Delhi, India
Dr Ralph Goodman University of Stellenbosch, South Africa
Professor Alastair Niven Principal, The Cumberland Lodge, Windsor, London, UK
Dr Syd Harrex Flinders University of South Australia, Australia
Professor GJV Prasad Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India
Professor Jacqueline Hurtley University of Barcelona, Spain
Dr Daniel S Roberts Queens University, Belfast, Northern Ireland
Professor Janette Turner Hospital University of South Carolina, USA
Professor Lim Chee Seng University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Professor Chelva Kanaganayakam Trinity College, University of Toronto, Canada
Professor Tara Sethia Ahimsa Centre, University of California, USA
Dr Anil K Khandelwal Chairman, Bank of Baroda, Mumbai, India
Professor Harish Trivedi University of Delhi, India
Professor M A Quayam International Islamic University, Malaysia
Professor Edwin Thumboo National University of Singapore, Singapore
Professor Vinay Lal UCLA Berkeley, California, USA
Professor Robert JC Young University of New York, USA
Professor Seri Luanghphinith University of Hawaii, Hilo, USA
Professor Wolfgang Zach University of Innsbruck, Austria
Director: Professor Satendra Pratap Nandan Foundation Professor & Dean of Humanities and Arts, The University of Fiji; Professor Emeritus, University of Canberra; Adjunct Professor, Research School of Humanities, ANU, and Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, ANU, CSU, Melbourne, E- mail: satendran@unifiji.ac.fj Telephone: (679) 664 0600 Fax: (679) 664 0700
Centres Design Consultant: Maisuria Design Ltd Creative Director, E Impressions, Melbourne, Australia Email: pankaj@eimpressions.com.au
Mail to: Private Mailbag, Saweni, Lautoka, Fiji Islands Web: www.unifiji.ac.fj
Life story of Tappoo Kanji, The Founder of the Tappoo Group of Companies.
Mr and Mrs Tappoobhai Kanji.
Abject poverty, dire circumstances. Imagine a situation when you are one year old, your mother has just died from the plague that is claiming thousands of lives in India and your father leaves you in the care of poor relatives and goes to a distant land in search for a better life for his family. It is as good as being orphaned.
That is the way the founder of the Tappoo Group, Tappoo Kanji (henceforth referred to as Tappoobhai) started life - in abject poverty, in dire need and without the succour of immediate family members. He grew up shuttling from one relative to another.Relatives themselves had children of their own and themselves were in abject poverty. An additional mouth to feed was obviously a burden for those taking care of Tappoobhai.
From such incongruous beginnings, the Tappoo name today is a household name in Fiji and is a business of respect among major multi-nationals in the world.
Growing up in Movan, off Khambharia in the state of Saurastra, Gujerat, India, Tappoobhai experienced the most abject poverty. The village itself was poor the sole village school teacher ran away because the villagers could not pay him. This was the end of his first attempts to gain education.
I started working when I was eight years old, harvesting wheat alongside the adult in the fields, Tappoobhai said.
He was paid four annas a day, a denomination of the Indian rupee that is so small that it has been discontinued.
One set of shirt and pants, to be washed in the river when dirty and worn again as soon as dry, enough to eat to fuel the body the situation was same for all those who lived in the poor village.
Tappoobhai's father and an elder brother, Meghji were already in Fiji, striving to make a better life than what was back home. He left his other children in the care of relatives in India as he struggled to establish himself and save up enough money to get Tappoobhai and his brother Meghji over to Fiji.
Tappoobhai was at the mercy of circumstances. He had to put in a full day's chores as well work long hours in the wheat fields for a pittance. Tappoobhai remembers his daily excursion into the nearby forest to graze the cattle. The forest was full of snakes and I used to be in deadly fear of them,he recalls.
A villager was bitten once and in those days the antidote was to pump in as much ghee (clarified butter) into the person to induce vomiting.
They forced about half a tin of ghee into him and he started vomiting- dark green and lots of it and he survived. Not everybody survived, he said.
The years passed with Tappoobhai working in the fields when work was available and surviving as best as circumstances allowed him to. Until the fateful day when tickets arrived for his brother and himself to journey to Fiji. He was 15 years old and only later he would find out that his father had sent money for the tickets much earlier but it had never reached its destination.
The journey
Two tickets and a hundred rupees that was all the two teenagers Nanji and Tappoobhai had for making their way to Fiji.
The brothers travelled by track and rail for four days to reach Calcutta (Kalkot), only to find out that the ship Ganges was not to sail until six days later.
Fortunately, they could stay at the wayfarer's house, the Satyanarayan Dharamshala (an orphanage) for free. There was little money as most of the hundred rupees had gone towards purchasing a set of pant suits for each brother as well as the tickets for rail travel and food.
When the Ganges set sail on April 11, 1932 for Suva, the brothers were on their last few rupees.
The journey was frightening, especially when storms came up, Tappoobhai recalls some 70 years later. We were on the deck and open to the elements.
"I really thought the deck would split from all the noise it was making. Only after much assurance from the others was I able to control some of the terror.
He remembers being seasick for most of the journey and even well after landing on Nukulau Island (an island off the coast of the main island of Viti Levu in Fiji) for the quarantine.
On the ship, because we were vegetarians, we could only make our meals once the fireplace was free and everybody else's meal was cooked we made what we could and survived on that. Water was rationed and we felt thirsty most of the time. We slept on bunkers.
The ship dropped anchor at Nukulau Island on May 19, 1932 and there followed a week of spraying, injecting (to induce diarrhoea) and powdering to ensure the immigrants were diseases free.
Friendly officials and locals guided the boys to a sailing canoe which was to take them from Suva to Sigatoka.
This was the only mode of travel between the centres as the roads had not been built. The canoe deposited them up the Sigatoka River after a day's journey and Tappoobhai met his father again after 15 years.
Tappoobhais first work shop (10ft x 10ft) in Sigatoka in 1941. Tappoobhai and Ladhiben standing in front of the shop after 55 years.
Tappoobhais small rural grocery shop in Wairambetia in 1936 in partnership with two others. Picture taken 60 years later.
The first years in Fiji
Tappoobhai lived with his father in Kavanagasau (in the interior of the Sigatoka Valley Road) in a lean-to one bedroom shack. Cooking was done in a small shed with fireplace. Tappoobhai had to cook and do other household chores until his father put him in school.
Fate was not kind to Tappoobhai. His father put him in school, first at Cuvu for six months and then at Kavanagasau. After getting a smattering of the English language, his father could not afford to send him to school anymore and Tappoobhai was again denied an opportunity for education.
He is philosophical about it: I could handle names of the products I sold but the English language as a whole has been denied to me he says. That does not stop him from being a voracious reader, in Hindi and Gujerati. Even at 91, Tappoobhai reads books and magazines on a regular basis. His beliefs have been shaped by reading all the volumes of the life of Mahatama Gandhi and the life and message of Ramakrishna Paramhamsa.
His mental faculties remain acute except for his hearing, a good fortune he attributes to his continued interest in things around him and his love for reading.
Denied education, Tappoobhai chose to make the best of his circumstance. Fiji, while not the land of opportunity it was being bandied about in India, nevertheless was an opportunity.
He resolved to work hard in fact, he had little choice in the matter also as circumstances ganged up on him.
Tappoobhai worked for various businesses in those first years in Fiji, including a stint as an apprentice tailor with Kara Punja. In 1936 he went into business with his brother Nanji, opening up a small grocery store in Wairambetia, Lautoka to service the cane belt in that area.
Two years was enough to tell the brothers about the dire situation of doing business in the economically repressed area, where the CSR Company dictated lives autocratically. The business was closed and Tappoobhai moved to Sigatoka.
Tappoobhai decided to revive the family tradition of jewellery making. He would work flat out to make silver jewellery (earrings and anklets) and then go pedalling his bicycle hawking it in the hilly terrains of the Sigatoka Valley Road area to sell what he had made by hand.
He operated from a tiny workshop, working over a small forge, melting the silver, purifying it. Once cooled, he would beat silver into wires the thickness of hair. Such delicacy allowed him to fashion artistic pieces of silver jewellery after long hours at the forge. It was a one-man show, hardwork combined with rare skills.
He was making a living albeit a hard-earned and backbreaking one. He had a reputation of being a good guy, able to earn a living and provide for his family, credentials enough to start getting offers of marriage.
Finally a family friend settled it all and Tappoobhai was married to Ladhi Ben in 1940.
And his luck seemed to change also. It was 1941 and American soldiers had started getting based in Fiji as the war front shifted to the Pacific.
Now Tappoobhai had a market that he barely could service. He was selling as fast as he could handmake the silver jewellery pieces. The business then went from being a handcrafted jewellery store to a grocery business and then to grocery/drapery and general goods store.
Pay-off
The hard work and the dedication started to pay-off for Tappoobhai. The rental for his first business was five pounds a month. Six year later he shifted into better premises, willingly paying 40 pounds a month.
In 1962 he paid three thousand pounds for his own piece of land. Within two decades from starting his own business, Tappoobhai had made his first major capital investment. It was the start of an organisation that would go national within the next two to three decades, opening up shops all around the country and becoming a household name in Fiji.
He also had a small truck that serviced the business and he had hired his first employee, an indigenous Fijian named Bulou after whom is named a major investment company of the Tappoo Group.
He now had his own shop, a wife who lent an able hand and an economy that was stable and conducive to business. It was also time to start a family.
The children were schooling. It was still hard times: running a business and raising a family, and the streak of persistence that marked Tappoobhai held everything together.
Kanti was the smartest, he says of his eldest. Kanti was the catalyst that changed Tappoo from a smalltown grocer into a major national retailer.
Kanti changed the small-scale produce distribution around Viti Levu into a mammoth national distribution unit that now deals with some of the most famous branded names in the world.
He changed the grocery/drapery business into a duty free/luxury goods concern that extended into hotels and later into the airport concession arena.
With other brothers joining him as they finishedt heir education, Kanti steered the company into an expansionary mode that continued finding avenues of interest in any aspect of retailing and distribution.
The secret of success
The Grace of God, the Founder states when asked what is the secret of the success of the company.
It is more the success of the family than the company that I am concerned about, he says.
The company can only be good when the family is united, supportive and together, he says.
Tappoobhai retired in 1972, handing over the running of his shop to his eldest son, later to be joined by other sons and their sons.
Devoutly religious and a great believer in the human values of truth, righteousness, peace, love and nonviolence Tappoobhai has striven to imbue these values into his family.
When the family is strong and on the right path, whatever they do will be right the says.
It is by the grace of God that my family has been together as one and that is all I ask from the Almighty, he says.
On the company itself, Tappoobhai sees it as vehicle to do good.
It was Mahatma Gandhi who taught me that rather than giving hand-outs, one should create jobs so that people benefit in the long run.
Near the Sigatoka river bank where Tappoobhai first arrived in a sail boat from Suva in 1932.
There are 800 people working for us and their homes are running because of the jobs they have. I am happy that the company offers this great service to the nation.
There is more benefit in offering people a chance to earn their living than in giving alms.
On the nation that he has come to call his own: I only wish we had the unity that we had before. We worked together; Hindus, Muslims, Christians. Race was never a problem.
We did not have any division. Even now I go to Kavanagasau, or the village or settlement around Sigatoka and the respect they show me is humbling, Tappoobhai says.
I have very fond memories of my life with the Fijians and the Indian cane farmers with whom I have lived and interacted so much throughout my working life.
The Tappoo family grew up with the villagers of Laselase (where the first Tappoo store was).
Tappoobhai and his wife Ladhiben continue to live in Korotogo, Sigatoka. The headquarters of the Tappoo Group remains in Sigatoka to this day.
The Sigatoka Methodist Primary School Water Project
SIGATOKA, Fiji:
THE plaque simply states Safe drinking water for SigatokaMethodistPrimary School . After
years of suffering interruptions to classes and healthy conditions because of
sudden cuts to water supply, around 850 students in the salad bowl region of Fiji are beaming.
This comes after the 92-year-old founder of
the Tappoo Charity Foundation, Tappoo Kanji, decided to make their plight his
own.
Kanji Tappoo at the opening of the new water tank at Sigatoka Methodist Primary School
The patriarch of the Tappoo Group of
Companies spent much of his young life cycling up and down the Sigatoka valley,
peddling his silverware to farmers and their families. And he attributes much
of his success to the area in which he started off his commercial dreams and
where his young children were educated.
So when the head teacher of Sigatoka
Methodist Primary School Sovita Nagatagata approached Kanji over the plight of
students facing continuous water cuts, the eldest Tappoo was quick to step in
to help.
Kanji felt a deep affinity with the school
where the Tappoo family's relationship goes back four generations. When the
school put in a request for water assistance, he readily agreed, saying it
would be a worthy cause towards children's education.
Students and teachers of SigatokaMethodistPrimary School are very
thankful to the Tappoo Charity Foundation for donating and installing a water reservoir
with the capacity of 10,000 litres in the school, Nagatagata says.
Ninety-two-year-old Tappoo Kanji, centre, donated a 10,000 litre water tank to Sigatoka Methodist Primary School
School closure, during water cuts, is now a thing of the past to the 850 students and 28 teachers at the school .
Tappoo Kanji officially opened the Tappoo
Charity Foundation project earlier this month in what was a very rare public
appearance. But education has always held a soft spot for the ageing founder of
the Tappoo Group.
The SigatokaMethodistPrimary School is made up
of 453 Fijians, 379 Indians and 17 students of other races. Despite its tough
conditions in 2006 and 2007, it managed to see its students achieve a 100
percent pass rate in Fiji Eighth Year Examination.
With a 10,000 litre water tank now allowing for uninterrupted school year, Kanji and teachers at school are hopeful that the academic results will continue to improve and provide hope for many families in the valley area.
