Jamshedpur, as named by a British Viceroy and landscaped by a German, turns 100

Envisioned by a Parsi, planned by an American, named by a British Viceroy and landscaped by a German, the industrial city of "Jamshedpur" turned 100 on Wednesday. A small hamlet known as "Sakchi" was rechristened as "Jamshedpur" on this day on January 2, 1919, by Lord Chelmsford, the then Viceroy of India, in memory of Tata Steel founder Jamshedpur Nusserwanji Tata. "This place will see a change in its name and will no longer be known as Sakchi, but will be identified with the name of its founder, bearing down through the ages the name of the late Mr Jamsetji Tata. Hereafter, this place will be known by the name of Jamshedpur," the British ruler had said, according to a company statement in Jamshedpur.

"On January 2, Jamshedpur completes 100 years of being renamed as Jamshedpur from Sakchi," Tata Steel CEO and managing director, TV Narendran said at a function organised to mark the New Year on Tuesday. "...few places in India can equal Jamshedpur's pluralism."

US engineer Julian Kennedy planned the city on the basis of the blueprint of JN Tata, a Parsi, and later, in 1940s, Otto Koenigsberger of Germany gave Jamshedpur its parks and gardens, the Tata Steel said in its website.

"It is hard to imagine that 10 years ago, this place was scrub and jungle; and here, we have now, this place set up with all its foundries and its workshops and its population of 40,000 to 50,000 people. This great enterprise has been due to the prescience, imagination of the late Mr Jamsetji Tata," Chelmsford had said on this day in 1909.

The Tata Workers Union has planned to celebrate the centenary year in several ways, Narendran said.