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Family Firms in Hyderabad: Gujarati, Goswami, and Marwari Patterns of Adoption, Marriage, and Inheritance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 October 2011

Karen Isaksen Leonard
Karen Isaksen Leonard*
Affiliation:
Anthropology, UC Irvine
*
kbleonar@uci.edu
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Extract

Scholars are looking again at banking and mercantile families in India's early modern history, responding to the challenge issued by Claude Markovits in the epilogue of his 2008 volume, Merchants, Traders, Entrepreneurs, to “return the merchant to South Asian history.” Some of the underlying assumptions and questions being asked are old and some are new. My own longstanding assumption, upon which this article relies, has been that bankers and merchants played multiple and important roles with respect to states in South Asia, and that their relations with non-kin officials and other political actors determined their success or failure and sometimes the success or failure of a state, most notably, the Mughal state. Questions are again being raised about “trust,” assumed to be a leading attribute of and asset to financial networks (especially in long-distance trade diasporas), and the notion so commonly put forward by scholars to explain the success of Hindu banking and mercantile communities. Recent work by Francesca Trivellato has found that membership in the Sephardic trade diaspora facilitated but did not guarantee trust or cooperation: the Sephardic merchants relied on non-Jewish as well as Jewish agents and networks of information, and evolving legal norms guided their business activities.

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 53 , Issue 4 , October 2011 , pp. 827 - 854
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Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2011

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References

1 Markovits, Claude, Merchants, Traders, Entrepreneurs: Indian Business in the Colonial Era (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Earlier, Subrahmanyam, Sanjay and Bayly, C. A. attempted to stimulate research on the precolonial period: “Portfolio Capitalists and the Political Economy of Early Modern India,” The Indian Economic and Social History Review 25, 4 (1988): 401–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Leonard, Karen “The ‘Great Firm’ Theory of the Decline of the Mughal Empire,” Comparative Studies in Society and History (Apr. 1979): 151–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and repr. in Alam, Muzaffar and Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, eds., The Mughal State 1526–1750 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), 398–420Google Scholar; Leonard, Karen, “Banking Firms in Nineteenth-Century Hyderabad Politics,” Modern Asian Studies 15, 2 (1981): 177–201CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Trivellato, Francesca, The Familiarity of Strangers: The Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno, and Cross-Cultural Trade in the Early Modern Period (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009)Google Scholar.

4 Anantdeep Singh, “The Divergence of the Economic Fortunes of Hindus and Muslims in British India: A Comparative Institutional Analysis,” PhD diss., University of Southern California, 2008, 634–96, employs quantitative methods to show the disadvantages of Islamic law in India, following the lead of Timur Kuran. Kuran argues this for the Middle East in The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011)Google Scholar; Timur Kuran and Anantdeep Singh, “Economic Modernization in Late British India: Hindu-Muslim Differences,” MS.

5 Guha, Sumit, “Wrongs and Rights in the Maratha Country: Antiquity, Custom and Power in Eighteenth-Century India,” in Anderson, Michael R. and Guha, Sumit, eds., Changing Concepts of Rights and Justice in South Asia (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998)Google Scholar, 14. Guha concludes that the ability to exercise rights “depended on the political strength of the persons concerned” (p. 24).

6 Benton, Lauren, Law and Colonial Cultures: Legal Regimes in World History, 1400–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)Google Scholar, 152, 259. She writes, “Legal norms encoded both culture and property, and neither could change without the other” (p. 262).

7 Birla, Ritu, Stages of Capital: Law, Culture, and Market Governance in Late Colonial India (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2009)Google Scholar, 21.

8 Government of India, Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency (Bombay, 1884), vol. 23, 105–6Google Scholar.

9 Recent work on the entrepreneurial Marwaris in British India starts later than the period covered here and does not include material on inheritance and marriage practices. Hardgrove, Anne, in Community and Public Culture: The Marwaris in Calcutta, 1897–1997 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004)Google Scholar, starts her investigation of the construction of the Marwari ethnic label in 1897; Birla, Stages of Capital, starts with the 1860s and 1870s, but most of the colonial laws she discusses were enacted decades later.

10 The Agarwals are divided into eighteen named exogamous groups, or gotras, the Maheshwaris have seventy-two exogamous sections, or khamps, and the Oswals also have many exogamous groups: Hassan, Syed Siraj ul, The Castes and Tribes of H.E.H. the Nizam's Dominions (Bombay: The Times Press, 1920)Google Scholar, I, 492–98; Gupta, B. R., The Aggarwals in History and Legend (New Delhi: S. Chand, 1975), 3–4Google Scholar.

11 Khalidi, Omar argues that the Nizam's state did not discriminate against Hindus: “Business Rajas: The Gujaratis, Gosains, and Marwaris of Hyderabad,” Deccan Studies 4, 1 (2006): 49–79Google Scholar.

12 For Gujaratis and Marwaris in the 1980s in Hyderabad, see: G. Viswanadham, “Gujarathi and Marwadi Migrants in Hyderabad: A Study in Residential Choice,” conference paper, mimeo, ca. 1988; see also his Urban Demography and Ecology: A Case Study of An Indian City (Hyderabad) (New Delhi: Light & Life Publishers, 1979), 96–97Google Scholar, 105–6.

13 India's mortality rate began falling in the 1920s, but India has not yet entered stage three of the demographic transition, when the fertility rate also falls significantly and stabilizes or decreases population growth.

14 Sharma, Ramesh C., “The Ardha-Kathanak: A Neglected Source of Mughal History,” Indica 7, 1 (1971): 49–73Google Scholar, reference to 51, 119.

15 Gadgil, D. R. drew attention to adoption in Hindu family firms: Origins of the Modern Indian Business Class (New York: Institute of Pacific Relations, 1959Google Scholar, [mimeo]), 34.

16 Goody, Jack, “Adoption in Cross-Cultural Perspective,” Comparative Studies in Sociology and History 2 (1969): 62–66Google Scholar; and “Strategies of Heirship,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 15 (1973): 3–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar. He stresses adoption and polygyny as ways to secure heirs to property.

17 Birla, writing primarily about Marwaris, states, “The constitution of native firms shifted depending on the birth of sons within joint families and the marriage of daughters into other families. This fluidity allowed the management of debt and the transfer of capital between [sic] retail, wholesale, and moneylending concerns.” The British worried that this familial structure allowed evasion of contractual responsibilities and in 1907 introduced a bill giving provisions for the registration of family firms. Stages of Capital, 205–6.

18 Anantdeep Singh and others now need to trace actual Muslim inheritance practices over time, much as McChesney, R. D. has done for waqfs, in: Waqf in Central Asia: Four Hundred Years in the History of a Muslim Shrine, 1480–1889 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 In Mirzapur, Uttar Pradesh, the important northern depot for traders to the Deccan in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Alka Patel and I found that the Goswamis there kept Adivasi tribal women. Interview with Dr. Bhudev Pande, Mirzapur, 15 Aug. 2009.

20 Current debates center on the medieval or early modern period in North Africa and Europe. Avner Greif points out that a regional business culture could prevail despite differences of religion, showing that Maghribi Jewish merchants adopted Arabic language and culture and did not relate to European Jewish merchants: Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy: Lessons from Medieval Trade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)Google Scholar. Greif maintains also that legal systems played marginal roles in mitigating agency problems in long-distance trade, while Edwards, Jeremy and Ogilvie, Sheilagh argue the opposite, in Contract Enforcement, Institutions and Social Capital: The Maghribi Traders Reappraised (Munich: Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute for Economic Research, 2008)Google Scholar.

21 Markovits, Claude, The Global World of Indian Merchants, 1750–1947: Traders of Sind from Bukhara to Panama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 261–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 249, 252.

22 Papanek's, Hanna work on the Memon and Bohra Muslims stresses shared dialects and account book scripts: “Pakistan's Big Businessmen: Muslim Separatism, Entrepreneurship and Partial Modernization,” Economic Development and Cultural Change 21, 1 (Oct. 1972): 1–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Pakistan's New Industrialists and Businessmen: Focus on the Memons,” in Singer, Milton, ed., Entrepreneurship and the Modernization of Occupational Cultures in South Asia (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Program in Comparative Studies in Southern Asia, 1973), 61–106Google Scholar; personal communication, 17 Feb. 2010.

23 Stewart Gordon, writing about family firms, and citing Bohras in western India in particular as largely self-governing and sharing both a faith community and internal marriage ties, states, “Distances were long, sums large and transport slow. All this demanded an extraordinary degree of trust among traders.” Marathas, Marauders, and State Formation in Eighteenth-Century India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994), 176–77Google Scholar.

24 Bayly, Christopher, in Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992, 369–426)Google Scholar, does not use the word “trust.” He sees “the social and business practice of the merchant family firm as a special kind of economic enterprise” and remarks that the behaviors of such firms have been termed “‘queer’ or ‘irrational’” (p. 375; his latter quotes are taken from Jain, L. C., Indigenous Banking in India [London: Macmillan, 1929, 91])Google Scholar. K. L. Sharma writes about “distinctive values and norms” and “traditionalism,” in “Changing Aspects of Merchants, Markets, Moneylending and Migration: Reflections Based on Field Notes from a Village in Rajasthan,” in Cadene, Philippe and Vidal, Denis, eds., Webs of Trade: Dynamics of Business Communities in Western India (Delhi: Manohar, 1997)Google Scholar, 178. Richard Fox cites the rationale of kinship and family, a familial organization of business leading to structure and attitudes that discourage risk-taking, although he hedges this by speculating that prevailing economic conditions might have produced the conservatism and common traits of the Baniya (trading and commercial) castes: “Family, Caste, and Commerce in a North Indian Market Town,” Economic Development and Cultural Change 15 (Apr. 1967): 297–314CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 314.

25 Scott Levi, “Trust Me! Family, Caste and Investment Capital in the Indian Merchant Diaspora,” paper presented at the University of Wisconsin Conference on South Asia, 23 Oct. 2009, Madison.

26 Trivellato, Familiarity of Strangers, esp. 9–20.

27 Khan, Yusuf Husain, The First Nizam (New York: Asia Publishing House, 1963)Google Scholar; Rao, P. Setu Madhava, Eighteenth Century Deccan (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1963)Google Scholar; Leonard, Karen, “The Hyderabad Political System and Its Participants,” Journal of Asian Studies (May 1971): 569–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 Thomas A. Timberg used this term to describe a firm engaged in a variety of enterprises, with several branches, often based on one “household.” I further defined it as firms not only making loans but also receiving deposits and dealing in hundis, written orders for payment transmitted throughout India. See Timberg, Thomas A., “A North Indian Firm as Seen through Its Business Records, 1860–1914: Tarachand Ghanshyamdas, a ‘Great’ Marwari Firm,” Indian Economic and Social History Review 8 (July–Sept. 1971): 264–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reference to 267–68; Leonard “The ‘Great Firm’ Theory,” 154–55.

29 I cited many examples of merchants and “great firms” playing key political roles, in “The ‘Great Firm’ Theory.” See also examples in C. A. Bayly, “Indian Merchants in a ‘Traditional’ Setting: Benares, 1780–1830,” in Dewey, Clive and Hopkins, A. G., eds., The Imperial Impact: Studies in the Economic History of Africa and India (London: Athlone Press, 1978), 171–93Google Scholar; Bayly, Christopher, “Delhi and other Cities of North India during the ‘Twilight,’” in Frykenberg, R. E., ed., Delhi through the Ages: Essays in Urban History, Culture and Society (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1986), 221–36Google Scholar; Subrahmanyam and Bayly, “Portfolio Capitalists”; and Gordon, Marathas, Marauders, and State Formation.

30 Sheikh, Samira, contradicts Michael Pearson's earlier view that linkages between merchant and state in Gujarat were weak, in Forging a Region: Sultans, Traders, and Pilgrims in Gujarat, 1200–1500 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010)Google Scholar; Pearson, Michael, Merchants and the Rulers of Gujarat: The Response to the Portuguese in the Sixteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976)Google Scholar. See also Bhattacharya, Bhaswati, Dharampal-Frick, Gita, and Gommans, Jos, “Spatial and Temporal Continuities of Merchant Networks in South Asia and the Indian Ocean (1500–2000),” Journal of Economic and Social History of the Orient 50, 2–3 (2007): 91–105CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reference to 100.

31 A special 2007 issue of Journal of Economic and Social History of the Orient (50, 2–3) published revisions of a set of papers on South Asian merchant networks, first presented at the 2006 European Conference of Modern South Asian Studies, in Leiden.

32 For general surveys, see Jain, Indigenous Banking in India; Gadgil, Origins of the Modern Indian Business Class; and Krishnan, V., Indigenous Banking in South India (Bombay: Bombay State Co-operative Union No. 18, 1959)Google Scholar. See also Datta, P., “Rise of the Calcutta Money Market in Relation to Public Borrowing and Public Credit,” Calcutta Review 46 (Feb. 1933): 171–203Google Scholar; and Rau, B. Ramachandra, “Organized Banking in the Days of John Company,” Bengal Past and Present 37 (Jan.–June 1929): 145–57Google Scholar; and 38 (July–Dec. 1929): 60–80. Chandavarkar, A. G., “Money and Credit, 1858–1947,” in Kumar, Dharma, ed., The Cambridge Economic History of India 2: c. 1757–1970 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 762–803Google Scholar, discusses commercial banking (775, et passim) and “non-institutional” or indigenous finance and credit sectors (796, et passim), writing that not until 1929 did “unorganized finance” become a major concern of colonial policy (797).

33 Markovits, Global World of Indian Merchants; Levi, Scott C., The Indian Diaspora in Central Asia and Its Trade 1550–1900 (Leiden: Brill, 2002)Google Scholar.

34 Bhacker, M. Reda, Trade and Empire in Muscat and Zanzibar: Roots of British Domination (New York: Routledge, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gregory, Robert G., India and East Africa: A History of Race Relations within the British Empire 1890–1939 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971)Google Scholar; Brown, Rajeshwary Ampalavanar, Capital and Entrepreneurship in South-East Asia (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 Rudner, D. W., Caste and Capitalism in Colonial India: The Nattukottai Chettiars (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Brown, Capital and Entrepreneurship.

36 Amrita Shodhan's pioneering work on religious groups and colonial law in Gujarat shows that before 1827 in Bombay Presidency the colonial legal system treated caste and religious groups as active polities, whose internal affairs were the concern of courts. After 1827, it treated them as text-based self-regulating communities, and after 1857, the Bengal judicial model was applied to all three Presidencies and attempts were made to unify codes and decisions. See her A Question of Community: Religious Groups and Colonial Law (Calcutta: SAMYA, 2001)Google Scholar; and “Caste in the Judicial Courts of Gujarat, 1800–1860,” in Simpson, Edward and Kapadia, Aparna, eds., The Idea of Gujarat: History, Ethnography and Text (New Delhi: Blackwell Swan, 2010), 32–49Google Scholar. I think it probable that precedents in the Bombay Presidency had more influence in Hyderabad chiefly because continuing conflicts with the Marathas engaged officials in Hyderabad more with policies evolving in western India. See also the grouping of Hyderabad with Maharashtra in three sections by H. Fukazawa, in Raychaudhuri, Tapan and Habib, Irfan, eds., The Cambridge Economic History of India, I: c. 1200–1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar: “Maharashtra and the Deccan: A Note,” 193–203; “The Medieval Deccan and Maharashtra,” 249–60; and “Maharashtra and the Deccan,” 308–15. In Dharma Kumar, ed., The Cambridge Economic History of India 2: c. 1757–1970, Hyderabad has been largely shifted from western India, the Bombay Presidency, to South India, but it is not really covered therein since the focus is on Madras Presidency: see the sections on Western India by H. Fukazawa, 177–206; and V. D. Divekar, 332–51; and on South India by Dharma Kumar, 207–41, and 352–75.

37 Originally a part of the Nizam's forces, this military unit was turned over by Raja Chandu Lal to the supervision of European officers under the Resident Henry Russell. The Nizam continued to pay the soldiers, but under successive residents the unit became in effect part of the East India Company's army and could not be used without the resident's permission.

38 I currently have under review a paper titled, “Palmer and Company: An Indian Banking Firm in Hyderabad State.”

39 The governor general initially declined to interfere, but when the resident persisted and the claim of the firm was found to be a crore of rupees, Lord Hastings insisted on its liquidation. The Nizam signed a deed relinquishing in perpetuity his claim to seven lakhs of rupees payable annually as peshkush for the Northern Circars. When the governor general received this deed from Chandu Lal, he remitted a crore of rupees to Hyderabad to settle the claims of Palmer and Co. However, these actions were censured and prompted an enquiry in England, leading to the firm's bankruptcy in 1824: Peter Wood, “Vassal State in the Shadow of Empire: Palmer's Hyderabad, 1799–1867” (Ph.D. thesis, History, University of Wisconsin, 1981).

40 See Leonard, Karen Isaksen, Social History of a Hindu Caste: The Kayasths of Hyderabad (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978)Google Scholar.

41 See Leonard, “Banking Firms,” for details of the financial crisis, the prelude to Salar Jang's long Diwanship (1853–1883). Lyall, A. C., ed., Gazetteer for the Haidarabad Assigned Districts, Commonly Called Berar (Bombay: Education Society's Press, Byculla, 1870), 132–33Google Scholar, states, “Messrs. Palmer and Company overshadowed the Government…. Then Puran Mal, a mighty money-lender of Haidarabad, got most of Berar in farm; [and then] Messrs. Pestanji sent agents to take his place … [but] Pestanji and Company had no better luck in the sequel.”

42 For example, Mishra, Kamla Prasad, Banaras in Transition (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1975)Google Scholar, 170.

43 Kuran and Singh, “Economic Modernization.”

44 Archival materials on Hyderabadi Muslim banking and mercantile family genealogies and residential patterns must be in the State Archives, the Wakf Board office, and other locations. The 1911–1913 maps of Hyderabad produced under the direction of Leonard Munn show Muslim names in both Karwan and Begum Bazar, the localities associated with bankers: Hyderabad Municipal Survey (Hyderabad: Town Planning Department, 1911–1913).

45 In the 1820s, for example, an anonymous defender of Palmer and Company stated that the Nizam's government credit was so low that the Minister was unable to secure funds from “the native bankers” and had to turn to “Gosains or Patans”: Anonymous, “Further Development of the Iniquitous Conduct of the Indian Government, as Connected with the Transactions at Hyderabad,” Oriental Herald and Journal of General Literature 4 (1825): 471–502Google Scholar.

46 Gordon, Marathas, Marauders, and State Formation, 176–77; Gordon also mentions Chitpavan Brahmins, Nagar Brahmins and Jains, and Gosains as important bankers and traders linking the western Deccan to central and northern India, the latter to Mirzapur.

47 File number 1424/CWIII/66of 1965, titled “Makbarah Panch Bhai,” in the office of the Commissioner of Wakfs. The file concerns a case against sellers of part of the wakf land, and cites historical references from Ghulam Husain Khan, Tarikh-i-Gulzar-i Asafiyah (Hyderabad, 1890–1891, but written in 1842–1843/1258 Hijri); Makhan Lal's Yadgar-i Makhan Lal (Hyderabad, [1829]); and Qadiri's, Sayyid MuhiuddinGuldastah-i Tajalliyat (new ed., Hyderabad: n.p., 1999)Google Scholar. There were descendants, people consulted in 1965 by the commissioner's office, living in Purana Idgah, Mogulpura, and Khilvat Mubarak. The Wakf office also interviewed Atam Parkash, mahant of Govind Bagh, which lies on two sides of the makbarah, who said his grandfather gave the land to the Panch Bhai for a graveyard. In my interview with Roy Mahboob Narayan of Shahalibanda, on 19 June 1971, he reported a rumor that these Panch Bhai were Gaur Kayasths who had converted to Islam. He also said that Chandu Lal's brother Govind Baksh had given the garden to his guru Bandari Maharaj, son of Hari Har Swami/Maharaj, who had maths at Aurangabad and Jalna and followed the Granth Sahib. This last fits well with my observations and interviews in August 2009 at Kabirpanthi and Udasin maths in Burhanpur.

48 Note prepared for me on 18 June 1971, by the Commissioner of Wakf's office, citing wakf registration in Book of Endowments serial number 57 of 1350 Fasli/1940; and, for the 1958 transfer from Haji Mohammed Noor Khan to His Exalted Highness the Nizam Mir Osman Ali Khan, letter number 1867, [date uncertain: either 9 July or 7 Sept.] 1958, of the secretary of the A. P Wakf Board, Hyderabad, and entry serial number 43 in the Register of Trustees. There are two graves within the ashurkhana limits but their occupants are unknown; there is a pucca samakhana attached to the ashurkhana.

49 Khan, Gulzar-i Asafiyah, 625–66, 628–29.

50 The bankers whose grandsons and sons Syed Ahmed entertained with dancing girls and then imprisoned were Hindus, the grandson of Jysee Ram and the sons of three other Marwari bankers. (Others imprisoned were a grandson of Raja Chandu Lal, the son-in-law and the grandson of one revenue minister and the son of the other revenue minister, and the son of Muktul Ram, Shums ul Umra's factotum). Madras Spectator, 3 Oct. 1846; Ali, Mahdi Syed, ed., Hyderabad Affairs (Bombay: Times of India Steam Press, vols. 1–11, 1883–1889)Google Scholar; and vol. 5 (1883): 602; also in vol. 5, Madras Spectator, 6 Oct. 1846: 603; and Madras Spectator, 5 Jan. 1847: 604.

51 For more on the Raja and his Devi temple, see Leonard, Karen, “Hindu Temples in Hyderabad: State Patronage and Politics in South Asia,” South Asian History and Culture (July 2011): 352–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

52 Khan, Gulzar-i Asafiyah, 622–25.

53 Markovits, Global World of Indian Merchants, 271.

54 Thus Alka Patel was able to photograph and analyze many surviving residential and religious buildings of merchant/bankers in Hyderabad (and elsewhere), showing how architectural styles reflect interactions among regional cultures in South Asia. Alka Patel, “Mercantile Architectural Patronage in Hyderabad, Late 18th–19th Centuries,” in Alka Patel and Karen Leonard, eds., Indo-Muslim Cultures in Transition (Leiden: Brill, 2012); Alka Patel, “Shekhawati and Beyond: ‘Marwaris’ at Home and in the Diaspora,” Marg (forthcoming).

55 There were indigenous financiers, Komatis, in the Deccan, but the Nizam had no faith in indigenous folk, so outsiders, Gujaratis, became his preferred sahukars or bankers: Raja Vallabh Das, interview, 29 Aug. 1983.

56 The family had other gardens too, resumed in about 1890, allegedly for not being properly managed. The first was named after Sardar Begum, the second after Qadar Ali or Qadar Khan, a prince who fell from his horse and died there. Told that it was inauspicious, the Nizam sold it to his valet and head of his personal cavalry, Tipu Khan, and somehow it went to the Gujarati family. Raja Vallabh Das, interview, 16 Aug. 1983.

57 The Government of Hyderabad, Chronology of Modern Hyderabad from 1720 to 1890 A.C. (Hyderabad, 1954). The translation spells the name variously. Later references to bankers in the Chronology include Marwaris, Eurasians, Englishman, and Goswamis, all with access to the Nizam's court and, in 1851, to the British resident.

58 Chronology of Modern Hyderabad, 21, 27, 31, 53, 55, 68, 102. Govardhan Das is an ancestor in the genealogy of Benkati Das discussed below. Govardhan Das, great grandson of Nandu Shah of Gujarat, probably lived in the time of the first Nizam; his grandson, Jagmohan Das, father of Benkati Das, was said to live in Aurangabad and died during “the war with Tipu Sultan” (battles with him occurred in 1787, 1791, 1792, and 1799). Raja Vallabh Das, interview, 16 Aug. 1983. Aurangabad was the capital until 1771–1772 (although Salabat Jang was based in Hyderabad), and the government offices moved from Golconda Fort to the Nizam's city palace only in 1779. According to the Chronology of Modern Hyderabad, 61: “21 July, 1779, the establishment and the officials of the Nizamat of Hyderabad are removed from the residence of Khan Dauran to the palace of the Nizam.”

59 This family continued to serve its community and locality: Lachman Das (see below) and other descendants were sarpanch of the Modh visa in Karwan; relative Raghunath Das, Khazanchi of Karwan, now has descendants only in Madras. Raja Srinivas Rao, son of Kishnaji Naik from an old Deccani Brahmin family, also lived in Karwan, was a leading banker, and served on the Bankers Committee in 1300 Hijri: Rao, Manik Rao Vithal, Bustan-i-Asafiyah VII (Hyderabad: Anvar ul Ulum Press, 1932), 268–69Google Scholar.

60 Sirajuddaula's capture of Calcutta in 1756 is too early for this story; perhaps a more minor event is the basis of this “memory.”

61 Raja Vallabh Das gave the name of Jagmohan Das’ grandfather as Govardhan Das. He also told of the family's origin in Ahmedabad: “We came down with the daughter of King Karan Videla, in the time of Alauddin Khilji (1296–1316); she hid in the Ajanta caves and we stayed away in Devgiri, and therefore we ended up in Aurangabad.” (These dates cannot be accurate.) Raja Vallabh Das, interview, 29 Aug. 1983. On 7 January 2008, descendant and current head of the family Krishna Kumar gave a variation when interviewed in Hyderabad by myself and Alka Patel: Jagmohan Das was subahdar, or collector, of Aurangabad and knew about the Tipu Sultan attack, so his son Benkati Das ran away to Calcutta. Kumar dated the troubles in Calcutta to 1785 and said that Benkati Das was walking in the bazaar in Hyderabad when seen by an English lady whose life he had saved in Calcutta.

62 According to some versions, Benkati Das helped Palmer in 1814 and then became a partner: Khan, Gulzar-i Asafiyah, 629; Briggs, Henry George, The Nizam: His History and Relations with the British Government (London: B. Quaritch, 1861), vol. 2, 167–68Google Scholar. But Peter Wood shows that the East India Company recommended “Bungkuttee Doss” from Benares to Resident James Kirkpatrick in Hyderabad in 1805 (“Vassal State,” 137). An original contract, undated, but because of the inclusion of William Rumbold as a partner, probably 1816, was in the private papers of Raja Vallabh Das, Hyderabad (viewed by the author in 1983).

63 Young William Palmer came to Hyderabad in 1799 and became an officer in the Nizam's military forces. Thompson, Edward John, Life of Charles, Lord Metcalfe (London: Faber & Faber Ltd., 1937)Google Scholar, 192; Bullock, H., List of Local Officers of the Nizam's Army, 1807–1853 (Rawalpindi: British Museum, 2d ed., 1938)Google Scholar, 31. He was the first English officer to serve in Col. Finglass’ Brigade, from 1800, and he was in charge of Berar where he stood off the Marathas in 1803 and put down Mohipat Ram in 1808. In 1810, he left as brigadier general in the Nizam's Bodyguard to found his mercantile house. See “The Palmer Histories” [1934], India Office Library, Mss. Eur. D443, 3.

64 Other firm affiliates included Henry Dighton, sometime revenue contractor for the Nizam, who split off and founded a rival firm; Raja Kandaswamy Mudaliar, who later served as Salar Jang I's vakil, or representative to the resident; and Sir William Rumbold, whose wife was a ward of Governor General Hastings. For Dighton, see Cadell, Patrick, ed., The Letters of Philip Meadows Taylor to Henry Reeve (London: Oxford University Press, 1947)Google Scholar, 19; and Gribble, J.D.B., History of the Deccan (London: Luzac and Co., 1896)Google Scholar, 11, 191. For Mudaliyar, see Temple, Richard, Journals Kept in Hyderabad, Kashmir, Sikkim, and Nepal (London: W. H. Allen and Company, 1887)Google Scholar, I, 146. For Rumbold, Thompson, Life of Charles, 193. For Rumbold's connection to Lord Hastings, see Fraser, H., Memoir and Correspondence of General J. S. Fraser of the Madras Army (London: Whiting and Co., 1885), 289–91Google Scholar. In Dalhousie's view, Dighton's employment by the Nizam violated the Treaty of 1798 and also the Act of Parliament forbidding British subjects to lend money to native princes. Some Residency officials were also affiliated with the firm: the Chief Assistant Resident Sotheby (his partnership unknown to Metcalfe), and the Residency Surgeon Dr. Currie (Thompson, Life of Charles, 201). Dr. Currie, although fully British, was allegedly permitted to be a partner in the firm because of his low income as court physician (Rs 1000 per month) (ibid., 194).

65 The Nizam rewarded Palmer for opposing a plan for British administration of the state by giving him a monthly allowance for his own support and the education of his two sons in England: “Palmer Histories,” India Office Library, Mss., 7–8. In the mid-twentieth century, Palmer's unmarried granddaughter Mabel was still getting a pension of 100 rupees left for her by him: email from Bruce Cox of Melbourne, Australia, a great-great-grandson of Palmer, 2 Feb. 2008.

66 B. R. Agarwala wrote about his own Marwari community that not only lineal descendants but also sons-in-law, brothers-in-law, and maternal relatives formed kindreds that commanded capital and industries: “Caste in a Mobile Commercial Community,” Sociological Bulletin 4 (Sept. 1955): 138–45Google Scholar, 141.

67 Mudiraj, K. Krishnaswamy, Pictorial Hyderabad (Hyderabad, 1929, 1934)Google Scholar, states that this family went from Modhera or Morera, Gujarat, to Delhi, and then to Hyderabad: vol. 2, 497.

68 Khan, Gulzar-i Asafiyah, 630.

69 This firm was the mystery one that came forward and backed the new young Diwan: Karen Leonard, “Banking Firms,” 195.

70 In 1884, one branch combined the descendants of Lachmi Das’ two older sons (Govardhan Das and Mohan Das) by his first wife, and the other branch combined those of the two younger sons (Bhagwan Das and Balkishen Das) by his second wife. The first branch split again in 1894 when Chaturbhuj Das, the eldest son of the eldest son, split from his two cousins Purshottam Das and Venkati Das, sons of his father's younger brother Mohan Das. Raja Vallabh Das, the son of Bhagwan Das and grandson of Chaturbhuj Das, reported that the Chaturbhuj Das Govardhan Das firm closed in 1928, after Bhagwan Das died in 1922 and he himself, a minor, became a ward of the Court of Wards. The Balkishen Das Lachmi Das firm had done well in World War I, but then speculated unwisely and closed in 1921. The Purshottam Das Venkati Das firm that split off in 1894 had done little or no business. Raja Vallabh Das, interview, 29 Aug. 1983.

71 Raja Vallabh Das, interview, 16 Aug. 1983. Gangabai was from Varanasi but apparently did not accompany her husband when he left Hyderabad for Varanasi in the late 1820s.

72 In 1826, one Radha Kishen Sahu, who had a shop in the Residency area, gave two diamond rings to the Nizam through (then Minister) Raja Bala Pershad: Chronology of Modern Hyderabad, 179.

73 Cohn, Bernard, “The Role of the Gosains in the Economy of Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Upper India,” Indian Economic and Social History Review 1 (1964): 175–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 180.

74 These accounts are in Ali, Hyderabad Affairs, V: Madras Spectator, 3 Oct. 1849, 646–67; Englishman, 16 Oct. 1849, 647; Englishman, 26 Oct. 1849, 649; Englishman, 24 June 1850, 664. The two were still fighting each other in 1853, as the “old quarrel” caused fresh bloodshed: Bijigir sent two hundred Sikhs to attack Baldevgir's house in Begum Bazar, which was defended by ten Arab retainers. When one of the Arabs was killed, one hundred Arab reinforcements showed up and drove the Sikhs away, wounding and capturing Bijigir in the battle. The journalist opined that the government, having awarded the property to Baldevgir for “a consideration,” might now give Bijigir a share for a similar payment: Englishman, 18 May 1853, 746.

75 In a somewhat analogous situation, British Indian law and politics changed the field of play for successors to Sufi saints in the western Punjab: Gilmartin, David, “Shrines, Succession, and Sources of Moral Authority,” in Metcalf, Barbara Daly, ed., Moral Conduct and Authority: The Place of Adab in South Asian Islam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 221–40Google Scholar.

76 For biographies of Umrao Girji/Dhanraj Girji and Lal Girji, see Mudiraj, Pictorial Hyderabad, vol. 2, 433–40, 474–75. For Umrao Girji's powerful role in mid-nineteenth-century Hyderabad and his murder blamed on Salar Jung, see ibid., 433–36; and Leonard, “Banking Firms.”

77 Pinch, William, Warrior Ascetics and Indian Empires (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006)Google Scholar; Kasturi, Malavika, “‘Asceticising’ Monastic Families: Ascetic Genealogies, Property Feuds and Anglo-Hindu Law in Late Colonial India,” Modern Asian Studies 43, 5 (Sept. 2009): 1039–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

78 “Ganeriwala,” in Bhandari, S. R., Agravala Jati ka Itihasa, I (Bhanpura, Indore: Agraval History Office, 1937), 382–85Google Scholar.

79 For the 1811 incident: Chronology of Modern Hyderabad, 146. For the manja requisites sent to the court in 1839: ibid., 217–18. Puran Mal sent his gifts on 20 August, the day of the mehndi ceremony, and Kishen Das, Lachmi Das, and Jaganath Das, Gujaratis of Karwan, sent theirs the next day, when the bridegroom left for the bride's residence.

80 A jagir is a conditional or unconditional land assignment from which the holder collects the land revenue. An inam is a hereditary, rent-free land grant.

81 Alka Patel and I found the same situation at the Jham Singh Deval in Hyderabad, where an earlier mosque on the grounds was hidden behind a new and ugly rathkhana (carriage house) and disavowed by temple authorities in January 2009.

82 “Sitarambagh Temple Case,” Evening Mail, 17 Apr. 1894, in the Andhra Pradesh State Archives Clipping Collection. “A respectable Hyderabad merchant” had been preserving the mosque and appointing Muslim managers for some seventy years, but then an old moulvi claimed it and the Hyderabad government got involved, leading to petitions submitted to the Nizam, the resident, and the viceroy by leading merchants. For more details (but no resolution), see also Bombay Gazette, 12 Apr. 1894; Deccan Budget, 13 Apr. 1894; and Hyderabadee, 30 Apr. 1894, all in the Andhra Pradesh State Archives Clipping Collection.

83 Family members today continue to maintain property, including temples in Rajasthan, in Lakshmangadh and Pushkar.

84 Since the jagirs were in Berar, ceded to the British to support the Hyderabad Contingent in 1853, the cases went through the Court of the Resident in Hyderabad in 1896: installment 9, list 1, serial number 26, D2/d1, Religious Affairs, Endowment Department, “Sitaram temple complaint of mismanagement,” Andhra Pradesh State Archives. Also in the Archives, see installment 31, list 9, serial number 663, L5/b945, settled in 1933 by the Commissioner of the Berar Division of the (British) Central Provinces; and the 1307 Fasli file titled “Sita Ram Bagh,” in the Amur-i-Mazhabi files.

85 Bhandari, S. R., Bhandari, C. R., Gupta, K. L., Soni, B. L., and Ratnawat, B. R., Osavala Jati ka Itihas (Bhanpura, Indore: Osavala Histri Publisinga Hausa, 1934)Google Scholar; Bhandari, S. R., Agravala Jati ka Itihasa, vol. 1 (Bhanpura, Indore: Agraval History Office, 1937)Google Scholar, and vol. 2 (Bhanpura, Indore: Agrawal History Office, n.d.); Bhandari, S. R., Mahesvari Jati ka Itihasa, vols. 1 and 2 (Bhanpura, Indore: Maheshvari Histri Aphisa, 1940)Google Scholar. Timberg, Thomas A. first used these books, in: The Marwaris, from Traders to Industrialists (New Delhi: Vikas, 1978)Google Scholar.

86 The earliest, the family of Seth Srichand Das Raghunath Das Jhandawala, came in the 1730s, reportedly recommended by the Jodhpur ruler to the Nizam. The ancestor Maluk Chand was Treasurer of Jodhpur, and when the Nizam sent for an able person to develop banking in Hyderabad, Seth Maluk Chand responded. His grandson Srichand Raghunathdas became choudhri (headman) of Kasai Kata and Begum Bazar (metal and grain markets), and Srichand's son Raghunath Das briefly served as Diwan and gained the title Jhandawala (flagbearer) from Salabat Jang (1750–1752), becoming one of only three people with flags (the Nizam, Raghunath Das, and Fakir Sajjad Ali Saheb): Bhandari, Mahesvari Jati, vol. 2, page numbers illegible on available copies.

87 Tarun Sharma, who in 1985–1986 translated histories relevant to the Nizam's dominions for me, from Hindi, wrote: “Out of the families analysed, more than 50 percent have adoption cases.”

88 I counted generations of named men, and sometimes the earliest named ancestors had not migrated to Hyderabad.

89 However, McChesney remarks, in Waqf in Central Asia (p. 99), that in the seventeenth century in Balk sons came of age—what he terms “the age of discretion”—at about seven years.

90 Cynthia Holton, “Changing Property Relations in a Bombay Merchant Caste,” paper presented at the Association for Asian Studies meeting, 1981, Toronto.

91 This was the family of Sri Raghunath Mal: Bhandari et al., Osavala Jati, 92–93.

92 These were the families of, respectively, Rae Sahib Seth Rup Chandji Lathi, Surat Ram Govind Ram, Ramsukh Puran Mal Hera, Sri Harishchandraji, and Sri Satyanarayanji Loya (Bhandari, Mahesvari Jati, vol. 2, page numbers illegible).

93 This was the family of Seth Narayan Das Chuni Lal; the boy brought up was Seth Motilal Hirakhanwala, and his second wife was Tarabai, from Aurangabad (Bhandari, Agravala Jati, vol. 2, page numbers illegible).

94 Kuran and Singh (“Economic Modernization”) consider other factors too, notably preferences for partnership or for joint family enterprises and the establishment and operation of waqfs.

95 I did not find members of these mercantile communities playing major financial roles in Hyderabad State. In 1937 in British India, the Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act denied groups like the Khojas their customary rights of inheritance: Fyzee, Asaf Ali, Outlines of Muhammadan Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 3d ed., 1964)Google Scholar, 68, cited by Shodhan, A Question of Community, 194. Showing the complexity of the situation, this 1937 Act was inconsistent with various sections of acts and regulations in Bombay, Madras, Oudh, the Punjab, the Central Provinces, and Ajmere (see Repeals subheading).

96 Pomeranz, Kenneth, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000)Google Scholar, draws on relevant work by South Asianists, especially Perlin, Frank, “State Formation Reconsidered, Part Two,” Modern Asian Studies 19, 3 (1985), 415–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar; C. A. Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars; and Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, The Political Economy of Commerce: South India 1500–1650 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

97 Markovits, Claude, “Structure and Agency in the World of Asian Commerce during the Era of European Colonial Domination (c. 1750–1950),” Journal of Economic and Social History of the Orient 50, 2–3 (2007): 106–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 122.

98 Goody, Jack, The East in the West (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and The European Family: An Historico-Anthropological Essay (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2000)Google Scholar.

99 Trivellato, Familiarity of Strangers, 132–39.

100 Wechsberg, Joseph, The Merchant Bankers (Boston, 1966), 351–52Google Scholar; Landes, David, “Bleichroders and Rothschilds: The Problem of Continuity in the Family Firm,” in Rosenberg, Charles E., ed., The Family in History (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1975)Google Scholar, 108. Daughters did not inherit property under Jewish law.

101 I argue that Hyderabad was a plural society, not a cultural synthesis, in Leonard, Karen, “The Deccani Synthesis in Old Hyderabad: An Historiographic Essay,” Journal of the Pakistan Historical Society (Oct. 1973): 205–18Google Scholar. For political changes in the course of the nineteenth century, see Leonard, “Banking Firms”; and Leonard, Karen, “Mulki—non-Mulki Conflict in Hyderabad State” in Jeffrey, Robin, ed., People, Princes and Paramount Power: Society and Politics in the Indian Princely States (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 65–108Google Scholar.

102 Anne K. Bang describes the situation in Zanzibar when a relatively informal hierarchy of Sunni and Ibadi qadis appointed by the Sultan was reorganized, from 1890 to 1908, and courts presided over by British judges were set up. She concludes that the dual legal system was in flux for decades, relatively open to use by litigants not clearly identified as either Sultanic subjects or British-protected subjects: “Cosmopolitanism Colonised? Three Cases from Zanzibar 1890–1920,” in Simpson, Edward and Kresse, Kai, eds., Struggling with History: Islam and Cosmopolitanism in the Western Indian Ocean (New York, 2008), 177–79Google Scholar.

103 Benton, Law and Colonial Cultures, 150–53, 255–65. Benton states that shifts toward state legal hegemony need not foreclose possibilities for “alternative legal authorities centered in ethnic subpolities or cross-border communities” (264).