The editor of The Times of India called one of Mumbai’s most powerful merchants, Yusuf K Hamied, in 1992. The editor inquired about Yusuf’s thoughts on the city’s communal rioting, referring to him as a “Muslim leader.” “As an Indian Jew, why aren’t you asking me?” Is it because my first name is Hamied? Yusuf said, “My mother was Jewish.” The Holocaust claimed the lives of his maternal grandparents.
Yusuf is the son of an aristocratic Muslim scientist from India and a Jewish Communist from what is now Lithuania. He is the chairman of one of India’s leading pharmaceutical companies. He combines his father’s scientific skills, commercial acumen, and Indian patriotism with his mother’s compassion for the least fortunate, as defined by his parents’ exceptional marriage. He accuses the pharmaceutical business in the West of “keeping three billion people in the Third World hostage by abusing their monopoly status to raise prices.” He’s also dedicated himself to developing life-saving, low-cost generic drugs for those in poorer countries.
