Capitalism and community: A study of the Madurai Sourashtras

Indian Economic and Social History Review

Volumn 34, Issue 4, 1997, Pages 437-463

  Roy, Tirthankar ^a  

^a INDIRA GANDHI INSTITUTE OF DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH   (India)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0011166078     PISSN: 00194646     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/001946469703400402     Document Type: Article

References (129)

1. A.J. Saunders, 'The Sourashtra Community in Madura, South India', mimeograph prepared at American College, Madura, c. 1920-22, p. 2.
2. A.J. Saunders, 'The Sourashtra Community in Madura, South India Ibid., p. 119.
3. Origins of the Modern Indian Business Class: An Interim Report, mimeograph, Institute of Pacific Relations, New York, 1959, p. 16. Gadgil, however, was aware that this is a very speculative stance given the scarcity of research on the artisan, p. 22. The research he initiated at the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics derived from that awareness.
4. 'Introduction' in Rajat K. Ray, ed., Entrepreneurship and Industry in India, 1800-1947, Delhi, 1994, p. 12.
5. This is a well-known finding evident from a combination of two sets of data on industrial employment, censuses and the Labour Bureau. See, for a recent survey of the subject, K.V. Ramaswamy, 'Small-Scale Manufacturing Industries: Some Aspects of Size, Growth and Structure', Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XXIX, No. 9, 26 February, 1994.
6. It has been suggested that the higher growth of employment in small-scale factories is a tendency that goes back to the interwar period, though in a subdued form; see Tirthankar Roy, 'The Pattern of Industrial Growth in Interwar India', Journal of Indian School of Political Economy, Vol. 6, No. 3, July 1994.
7. Well-known examples of agrarian capital in industry include the 'Kammavar Naidus' and Gounders of Kongunad, Anavil Brahmans in south Gujarat, Mahishyas of Howrah, etc. For a review efferent writings on the 'rural capitalist', simultaneously rich farmer and small-scale industrialist, see Mario Rutten, Farms and Factories, Delhi, 1995, pp. 41-50. The concluding section will refer to studies on artisan-capitalists. In this article I use the word 'community' both in its everyday sense, a relatively homogeneous linguistic-cultural group, and in a more analytical sense, as recreated identity or organisation. These latter concepts will be explained in relevant contexts.
8. These figures come from F. Nicholson and E. Thurston, eds, Gazetteer of South India, Madras, c. 1900, 'Madura District';
9. J.H. Nelson, The Madura Country: A Manual, Madras, 1868;
10. Saunders, The Sourashtra Community; K. Bharathan, 'Handloom Industry in Tamil Nadu: A Study of Organisational Structure', Ph.D. dissertation, Madras Institute of Development Studies, 1988;
11. sources cited below Table 3, Ch. 5, in Tirthankar Roy, Artisans and Industrialization: Indian Weaving in the Twentieth Century, Delhi, 1993.
12. For a more detailed description, see T. Chinnaraj Joseph, 'Saurashtras', in K.S. Singh, ed., All Communities, Vol. VI, of the series People of India, Delhi, 1996.
13. Sourashtra Community: State Representatives' Conference (in Tamil), Madurai, 1996, p. 7.
14. Edgar Thurston, ed., Tribes and Castes of Southern India, Madras, 1909, 'Patnulkaran'.
15. Saunders, 'The Sourashtra Community', pp. 5-7, and fieldwork-notes. We need to remember that both are very approximate figures.
16. K. Nagaraj, S. Janakarajan, D. Jayaraj and B. Harriss-White have discussed the various reasons for the accelerated consumption of silk saris in Tamil Nadu in 'Adjustment and Development: Agrarian Change, Markets and Social Welfare in South India 1973-1993', Madras Institute of Development Studies, Madras, 1996.
17. Both based on fieldwork-notes.
18. Except, reportedly, in Kumbakonam to a small extent.
19. Based on fieldwork-notes.
20. 'Sourashtra Community', p. 7. The primacy of the family is apparently contradicted by the 1991 census figures which suggest a rather small proportion of workers in Madurai town engaged in 'household industry'. This seems to arise because the families work on contract, and invariably describe themselves as wage-earners.
21. The term 'cooly' is widely used in south Indian weaving, but its meaning is equally variable. At one end, it can refer to families on contract, as in the Madurai case. At the other, it refers to loomless, non-hereditary, possibly lower caste, immigrant workers, the true proletariat, e.g., Census of India, 1961 (Vol. IX, Madras, Part VII-A-1),
22. Silk Weaving of Kanchipuram, Madras, 1964, p. 29.
23. On the demographic profile of the weaver household, among Sourashtras and in general, three sources have been drawn upon: R. Kumaran, 'A Study of Joint Family among Sourashtras Living in Madurai City', M.A. dissertation, American College, Madurai, 1992;
24. fieldwork-notes; and the section 'Large households' in Roy, Artisans and Industrialization, Chapter 3.
25. For some data on these aspects, see 'Sourashtra Community', p. 4.
26. In an example studied by G. Karunanithi, one such senior manager in one of the larger cotton mills in the town created an entire Sourashtra team of staff to help his work, and with that 'sincere and hard-working group', initiated a number of successful expansions, Caste and Class in Industrial Organisation, Delhi, 1991, p. 73.
27. See J. Berna, Industrial Entrepreneurship in Madras State, London, 1960.
28. Nelson, The Madura Country, p. 87.
29. Nicholson and Thurston, eds, Gazetteer, pp. 224, 247;
30. Saunders, 'Sourashtra Community', pp. 67-69 for a description in 1920; fieldwork-notes for contemporary situation.
31. Nelson, The Madura Country, p. 87.
32. The general processes of which the changes in Madurai were characteristic have been studied in Roy, Artisans and Industrialization. Briefly, these are - extension of long-distance trade, concentration of capital, innovation and quality control, and new production and exchange contracts consistent with these tendencies. Most important textile towns in the interwar period illustrate the transition.
33. On counts, see Haruka Yanagisawa, 'The Handloom Industry and its Market-structure: The Case of the Madras Presidency in the First Half of the Twentieth Century', Indian Economic and Social History Review, Vol. XXX No. 1, January-March 1993, p. 5. On dyeing, see below.
34. Nicholson and Thurston, eds, Gazetteer, p. 225.
35. Saunders, 'Sourashtra Community', pp. 67-69. Contemporary sources on handloom market in these locations confirm the penetration of Madurai.
36. Roy, Artisans and Industrialization, Ch. 4 for a general description of this crisis in dyeing.
37. Contrast the description of dyeing in Nicholson and Thurston, eds, Gazetteer, p. 247, when (c. 1900) dyeing was part of family division of labour, with later sources on Madura dyeing,
38. such as Saunders, 'Sourashtra Community',
39. or N.G. Ranga, The Economics of Handlooms, Bombay, 1930.
40. K.S. Venkatraman, 'The Economic Condition of Handloom Weavers', Journal of the University of Bombay, 1936-37, p. 180.
41. Saunders, 'Sourashtra Community', pp. 70-71.
42. A brief biography is in order. Thulasiram was born in 1870 of poor parents. Being an exceptional student, he found a sponsor in Rev. William Miller, and became the first Sourashtra graduate and lawyer. He had a reputation for proficiency in Tamil, argued cases in chaste and effective Tamil, and contributed to bibliographical projects. Thulasiram made at least two visits to Europe, 1909 and 1919, on technological missions. For 36 years he was a member of the town council. During this period, Madurai acquired its electricity and sewage systems. The most influential voice in the community of his time, he acquired for the poorer weavers a legal right to the commons, water for dyeing in this case, and was a key figure in the foundation of the Sourashtra Cooperative Bank, the Sourashtra Sabha, the Sourashtra Club, and the Sourashtra High School.
43. Ranga, Economics of Handlooms, describes this sector. After the success, the town diversified into block-printing in a small way. The first printing factory was established in 1920, serving a demand of Muslim women who alone patronized printed saris in the south,
44. Thurston, Tribes and Castes, 'Patnulkaran', and All India Handicrafts Board.
45. Report on Hand Printed Textile Industry in Madurai (Madras), New Delhi, 1964.
46. The context is a number of innovations, including the fly-shuttle slay, which the provincial industry departments were trying to introduce to the handloom weaver in the first decades of the present century. The machinery to disseminate information were inadequate, but even where information did spread, there were countless cases of rejection and reversion. In official discourse these examples were usually seen as unreasonable. Some of these cases and the economic conditions for acceptance and rejection of new tools and processes, have been examined in my 'Acceptance of Innovations in Early 20th Century Indian Weaving', seminar on 'Cloth, the Artisans and the World Economy', Dartmouth College, April 1993.
47. Cited by Thurston, Tribes and Castes, 'Patnulkaran'. See also on new devices,
48. K.R.R. Sastry, South Indian Gilds, Madras, 1925, p. 25.
49. Saunders, 'Sourashtra Community', p. 63.
50. Sastry, 'Some Figures from a Local Economic Enquiry Conducted at Madura and Environs', Indian Economic Enquiry Committee, Calcutta, 1925, Evidence, Part II. p. 300, on alcohol, and my fieldwork-notes on non-vegetarianism. Reportedly, the work was too tough to be sustained with a vegetarian diet. Sourashtras, except the priests, observe no taboo about meat-eating, but are not habitual non-vegetarians.
51. Saunders, 'Sourashtra Community';
52. Sastry, 'Some Figures'.
53. Among many examples of access, the following is rather striking. I.R. Dave reports that many Sourashtra women worked for wages in fairly skilled textile processing, and not only were they not obliged to give accounts to their husbands, but they even 'lent' their husbands money with interest, The Saurashtrians of South India, Rajkot, 1976, p. 53.
54. Saunders, 'Sourashtra Community', pp. 107-09.
55. An old episode of Sourashtra accumulation involves a stretch of prime property near the palace in Madurai. This stretch housed the Parayians in the employ of the court in a remote period, but the proverbially profligate 'Pariah' mortgaged his plot for the sake of colourful clothes and feasts, while the diligent Sourashtras 'work[ed] hard, save[d] their money, and invested it in lands and better houses'. In course of time, the area changed ownership completely. Saunders, 'Sourashtra Community', p. 18.
56. Earlier, most of the imported jari came as postal consignments, but after the war, the trade preferred sole-agency contracts with European firms. The exact antecedents of this shift are not clear, but a surge of speculation during the war might have contributed to it. Smuggled jari further affected the Indian trade in Madurai area. Sourashtra control on jari trade declined immediately after the war, but possibly revived in the 1930s, or retained a substantial hold. See, on various aspects of this shift in control, the following sources on jari, W.S. Hadaway, Monograph on Tinsel and Wire in the Madras Presidency, Madras, 1909, p. 3;
57. V.N. Mehta, Gilt Wire and Tinsel Industry, Bulletin of Indian Industries and Labour No. 25, Bombay, March 1922, p. 24;
58. Indian Tariff Board, Evidence Recorded during Enquiry Regarding Gold Thread Industry, Calcutta, 1931, evidence of E.G. Cornet, probably importer based in Pondicherry, p. 75;
59. and Venkatraman, 'The Handloom Industry in South India', p. 180.
60. Saunders, 'Sourashtra Community', pp. 18, 26.
61. Census of India, 1961 (Vol. IX, Madras, Part VII-A-VII),
62. Druggets and Carpets of Wallajahpet, Madras, 1965, pp. 3-4.
63. Dave, Saurashtrians.
64. Dave, Saurashtrians;
65. H.N. Randle, The Saurashtrans of South India, Madura, 1949.
66. A more detailed account of this history will appear in Douglas Haynes and Tirthankar Roy, 'Conceiving Mobility: Migration of Handloom Weavers in Precolonial and Colonial India', under preparation.
67. Randle, The Saurashtrans, p. 13. The script in which Sourashtran works were written were partly a 'Sourashtran' script, partly Devanagari, but increasingly Tamil.
68. Nelson, The Madura Country, p. 87.
69. A major recent study has analysed this propensity among the Visvakarmas of Karnataka. The analysis has three core arguments: manufacturers have no fixed point of reference in the varna theory; striving for respectability thus tends to take the form of claims upon Brahmanhood or Kshatriya status; and which model of respectability is chosen with what success depends on the position of the seller in the marketplace. See Jan Brouwer, The Makers of the World: Caste, Craft and Mind of South Indian Artisans, Delhi, 1995, Part One.
70. For a selection of examples of such claims from southern and western India, see Vijaya Ramaswamy, 'Artisans in Vijayanagar Society', Indian Economic and Social History Review, Vol. XXII, No. 4, October-December 1985, pp. 438-39;
71. Nelson, The Madura Country, pp. 70-72,
72. on metal craftsmen from Madura; Census of India, 1901, Madras, Vol. I (Report), p. 14,
73. on Devangas of Nellore; and 'Devang' in R.E. Enthoven, Tribes and Castes of Bombay Presidency, Bombay, 1922, p. 302, on the Koshlis of Poona. With silk weavers, there is an apparent association between claim to Brahmanhood, and the making of ritual (Brahmanic) clothing. Counterpart status claims appear among Muslim silk weavers of northern India, see
74. Gyanendra Pandey, 'The Bigoted Julaha' in The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India, Delhi, 1991.
75. In 1921 Census, the Sourashtras entered themselves as 'Sourashtra Brahmans', a fact suggestive of an official reluctance to register them as 'Brahmans'. This reluctance found expression in a 1920 press communique from the Government of Madras, and in some statements by bureaucrats. Saunders, 'Sourashtra Community', pp. 23-24.
76. The visible signs of Brahmanhood were names, dresses, and rituals.
77. Rhetoric and Ritual in Colonial India: The Shaping of a Public Culture in Surat City, 1852-1928, Berkeley, 1991, p. 244.
78. All four elements remain uppermost even today in any conversation with a Sourashtra about the community.
79. It must be noted that in the changed political circumstances of post-independence Tamil Nadu, the claim is no longer pushed, and has lost its sense of purpose. In fact, the Sourashtras now demand backward status.
80. The Sourashtra Sabha's statement on free education cited in Saunders, 'Sourashtra Community', p. 57.
81. The 'community feast' is an early example of philanthropy, Saunders, 'Sourashtra Community', p. 49. Later, almost all important examples converge on education. The prominent names include Sankara Narayana Iyer who introduced in 1911 the free meal scheme in schools, N.M.R. Subburaman, a councillor and member of the legislative assembly, active for 30 years in women's education, K.L.N. Janaki Ram, leading figure of an important business family, who has played a key role in establishment of the Sourashtra College, K.L.N. Krishnan, his brother and the prominent industrialist of the community, instrumental in the establishment of the Sourashtra Engineering College.
82. In 1897, a petition to the then Governor of Madras, Havelock, by some Sourashtras of Madurai resulted in the establishment of the Government Technical Institute in the town, basically a school for instruction in weaving and related processes. The Institute was not considered a success by the government when the time came, in the 1920s, to impose general budget-cuts. But the idea endured, in the writings of Alfred Chatterton for example, who popularised the view that training and re-equipment of handloom weavers should be a singular priority for provincial governments.
83. Introduced in 1911 for poor children by Sankara Narayana Iyer (1843-1922), with government aid. Dependence on aid was dispensed with later, the exact date is not available. See Sourashtra Community.
84. Dave, The Saurashtrians, p. 73. Dave's sources are not clear, but appear to be data supplied by the community in Madurat.
85. The former figures were from a 5 per cent sample survey, All India Handloom Board, Survey of Handloom Industry in Madras State, 1955-56, Bombay, 1959, p. 77.
86. Saunders mentions this last role, but does not illustrate, 'Sourashtra Community', p. 65.
87. Seemingly, an important guild-like feature arose from a membership condition: to be eligible as a contributing and voting member of the Sabha, one needed to be 21 years, and to have completed apprenticeship in weaving. However, whether apprenticeship was formally linked with eligibility, and what difference voting made to economic issues are not very clear. For more details on the Sourashtra Sabha, see K.R.R. Sastry, South Indian Gilds, pp. 26-27.
88. Venkatraman, 'Economic Condition', p. 105.
89. 'one large and close gild' in Saunders, 'Sourashtra Community', p. 117. Also the title of Sastry's book, South Indian Gilds.
90. Sastry, South Indian Gilds, p. 26.
91. Dave, The Saurashtrians, p. 52.
92. J.D.K. Sundar Singh, The Handloom Industry in Madurai City, Madurai, 1981, p. 169.
93. Also, 'in their trade and industry, they employ the persons of their own community', even entertain 'contemptuous view about being employed by other persons that too in any other occupation', Dave, The Saurashtrians, p. 65.
94. Kumaran, 'A Study of Joint Family', also mentions this aversion.
95. Dave, The Saurashtrians, p. 41.
96. Saunders, 'Sourashtra Community', p. 116.
97. Fieldwork-notes.
98. Saunders, 'Sourashtra Community', p. 27.
99. Saunders, 'Sourashtra Community', p. 109.
100. Two types of works should be distinguished: mainly anthropological with reference to economic history, and mainly economic or historical. A selection of the former should include Mattison Mines, The Warrior Merchants: Textiles, Trade and Territory in Souih India, Cambridge, 1984,
101. on Sengundar economy and society; M.L. Reiniche, 'The Urban Dynamics of Caste: a Case Study of Tamil Nadu' in C.J. Fuller, ed., Caste Today, Delhi, 1996, on Sengundars of Tiruchengodu;
102. S. Saberwal, Mobile Men: Limits to Social Change in Urban Punjab, New Delhi, 1976, on Ramgarhia Sikhs;
103. Owen M. Lynch, The Politics of Untouchability, New York, 1969, on the Jatavs of Agra leather. These studies describe processes of identity formation and social mobility, and touch on economic mobility indirectly.
104. A selection of the second type of studies should include Y. J. Arturburn, The Loom of Interdependence, Delhi, 1982, on Kanchipuram; Geert de Neve, 'Continuity and Change: A Preliminary Outline of the Role of Communities and Individuals in Urban Dynamics', Madras Institute of Development Studies, mimeo, 1996, on Sengundars in Bhavani and Devangas in Kumarapalayam; Nagaraj et al., 'Adjustment and Development', on Arni silk weaving; Douglas Haynes, 'Weavers' Capital and the Origins of the Powerlooms: Technological Transformation and Structural Change among Handloom Producers in Western India, 1920-1950', annual meeting of the Association of Asian Studies, Washington, 1996, and 'The Artisanal Origins of Surat's Industrialization', to appear in a volume on social change in India to commemorate I.P. Desai;
105. several of Hein Streefkerk's works describing the transformation of carpenters, metal-workers and potters into leaders in manufacture of machine-parts and tools, including Industrial Transition in Rural India: Artisans, Traders and Tribals in South Cujarat, Bombay, 1985, and a few others cited in his 'Gujarati Entrepreneurship: Historical Continuity against Changing Perspective', Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XXXII, No. 8, February 22, 1997.
106. Artisanal origins of Ludhiana's hosiery industry have been discussed in Manjit Singh, The Political Economy of Unorganised Industry, New Delhi, 1990, pp. 96-103.
107. ' . . . people emerge from traditional business activities into modern business as members of a group', but tend to shed that 'communalism' in the course of associating with other groups via modern industry and banking, Lamb, 'The Emergence of an Indian Business Class', mimeograph, 1953, p. 15.
108. Morris. D. Morris, 'Values as an Obstacle to Economic Growth in South Asia: An Historical Survey', Journal of Economic History, Vol. 27, No. 4, December 1967;
109. Dwijendra Tripathi, 'Indian Entrepreneurship in Historical Perspective: A Re-interpretation', Economic and Political Weekly, Review of Industry and Management, May 1971;
110. Makrand Mehta, Indian Merchants and Entrepreneurs in Historical Perspective, Delhi, 1991, Ch. I;
111. and Jack Goody, The East in the West, Cambridge, 1996.
112. On common identity, an example is Shoji Ito, 'A Note on the "Business Combine" in India', The Developing Economies, Vol. IV, No. 3, September 1966. On family as principle of cooperation, '. . . there existed between the family-firm and the trading community of which it was a member an informal relationship symbolized by a very strong sense of responsibility for the well-being of one's community fellows and an overt preference for dealing with them',
113. A.F. Brimmer, 'The Setting of Entrepreneurship in India', Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. LXIX, No. 4, November 1955, p. 557.
114. This role of family or family-firm has also been stressed by Helen Lamb, 'The Indian Business Communities and the Evolution of an Industrialist Class', Pacific Affairs, Vol. XXVIII No. 2, June 1955,
115. and by Morris D. Morris, 'Modern Business Organisation in India, 1850-1947', Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XIV, No. 40, October 6, 1979.
116. 'Endogamy' can be a means to link collaboration and family, see for example Hanna Papanek, 'Pakistan's New Industrialists and Businessmen: Focus on the Memons' in Milton Singer, ed., Entrepreneurship and Modernization of Occupational Cultures in South Asia, Duke University, 1973.
117. Examples of these functions are T.A. Timberg, 'Three Types of the Marwari Firm' in Ray, ed., Entrepreneurship and Industry,
118. and Mattison Mines, Muslim Merchants, New Delhi, 1972.
119. On how 'community' enabled ease of entry and exit, served as a brand name in credit market, and simplified dispute settlements among Kallidaikurichy and Nattukottai Chettiar bankers, see V. Krishnan, Indigenous Banking in South India, Bombay, 1959, pp. 12, 35, 65.
120. Ashish Nandy, 'Entrepreneurial Cultures and Entrepreneurial Man', Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. VIII, No. 47, Review of Industry and Management, November 24, 1973.
121. A.K. Bagchi, 'European and Indian Entrepreneurship in India 1900-30' in Ray, ed., Entrepreneurship and Industry.
122. See also on a related theme, Omkar Goswami, 'Then Came the Marwaris: Some Aspects of the Changes in the Pattern of Industrial Control in Eastern India', Indian Economic and Social History Review, Vol. XXII, No. 3, July-September 1985.
123. Several ethnohistorical studies of industrial-financial groups have discussed this process, and noted the role of Sabhas, temple trusts, educational institutions and collective worship in it. See David W. Rudner, Caste and Capitalism in Colonial India: The Nattukottai Chettiars, Delhi, 1995;
124. Lynch, Politics of Untouchability;
125. and Saberwal, Mobile Men.
126. Rudner has argued that notions of social organization among industrial-financial groups tend to 'fall outside most standard views of caste social organizations', Caste and Capitalism, p. 214.
127. This seems to be true for Madurai even in the late twentieth century. But, in the broader group of solid-bordered silk saris or korvai, community control has been in mutation in a number of semi-rural weaving towns of Tamil Nadu. On this process and its complex ramifications, see Nagaraj et al., 'Adjustment and Development'.
128. Sourashtras were not exceptional in the matter of community-bound charitable expenditure. Haynes makes the important point that, in Bhiwandi, 'symbolic investments in temples, mosques or community education' enabled capitalists to become social leaders, and thus might have diffused potential tensions from growing inequality, 'Weavers' Capital and the Origins of the Powerlooms', p. 24. Sourashtras were exceptional in the accent on education, and almost certainly, the level of spending on average. Many mercantile groups also make routine charitable expenditure, but seemingly as charity rather than as 'development'.
129. There is a concept of a threshold implicit here, a minimum level of access to resources needed to make an 'industrialist' out of a petty trader or workshop-owner. Many artisan-capitalists fail to reach that threshold, or prefer not to risk an attempt. The notion appears in Mines, Muslim Merchants, in the context of credit in particular.