Caste And Capitalism In Colonial India

Illustrations: 22 B/w Illustrations & 4 Maps Description: Caste and Capitalism in Colonial India presents an anthropological and historical challenge to the traditional assumptions about kinship, caste, and commercial organizations in South Asia. Focusing on the Nattukotai Chettiars, a merchant-banking caste that played a central role in South Indian banking and trade in the period from 1870 to 1930, Rudner explores the nature of non-capitalist economic formations and the impact of colonial rule on indigenous commercial systems, as well as variety and change among India's caste and ethnic groups. Regardless of theoretical perspectives adopted by anthropologists and historians studying social organization in South Asia, certain assumptions have remained unchallenged: that all castes are organized either by marriage alliance or status hierarchy and that caste structures are incompatible with the rational conduct of business. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and archival research, Rudner argues against such monolithic characterizations. He demonstrates that in the case of the Nattukotai Chettiars, caste and commerce are inextricably linked through formal and informal alliance, institutions, and practices crucial to the formation and distribution of capital. Rudner traces the growth of these structures over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, exploring the ways in which Indian merchant-bankers used indigenous social structures to profit from colonial rule. Caste and Capitalism in Colonial India is the first comprehensive analysis of the interdependence among Indian business practice, social organization, and religion. Rudner's findings have significant implications for scholars of Asian history and anthropology.

David Rudner's richly detailed ethnographic and historical analysis of a South Indian merchant-banking caste provides the first comprehensive analysis of the interdependence among Indian business practice, social organization, and religion. Exploring noncapitalist economic formations and the impact of colonial rule on indigenous commercial systems, Rudner argues that caste and commerce are inextricably linked through formal and informal institutions. The practices crucial to the formation and distribution of capital are also a part of this linkage. Rudner challenges the widely held assumptions that all castes are organized either by marriage alliance or status hierarchy and that caste structures are incompatible with the "rational" conduct of business. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1994.

Studying firms and entrepreneurs over three centuries, this book unravels the historical roots of the impressive business growth witnessed in contemporary India.

In a major new work, Indian historian Irfan Habib ranges across the political and economic landscape of pre-colonial and British India to provide an authoritative account of Indian history. Habib examines the place of peasantry and caste, the potential for indigenous capitalist development, the various forms of class struggle, the nature of capital accumulation under the Mughals, and the impact of colonialism on the Indian economy.

When thinking of India, it is hard not to think of caste. In academic and common parlance alike, caste has become a central symbol for India, marking it as fundamentally different from other places while expressing its essence. Nicholas Dirks argues that caste is, in fact, neither an unchanged survival of ancient India nor a single system that reflects a core cultural value. Rather than a basic expression of Indian tradition, caste is a modern phenomenon--the product of a concrete historical encounter between India and British colonial rule. Dirks does not contend that caste was invented by the British. But under British domination caste did become a single term capable of naming and above all subsuming India's diverse forms of social identity and organization. Dirks traces the career of caste from the medieval kingdoms of southern India to the textual traces of early colonial archives; from the commentaries of an eighteenth-century Jesuit to the enumerative obsessions of the late-nineteenth-century census; from the ethnographic writings of colonial administrators to those of twentieth-century Indian scholars seeking to rescue ethnography from its colonial legacy. The book also surveys the rise of caste politics in the twentieth century, focusing in particular on the emergence of caste-based movements that have threatened nationalist consensus. Castes of Mind is an ambitious book, written by an accomplished scholar with a rare mastery of centuries of Indian history and anthropology. It uses the idea of caste as the basis for a magisterial history of modern India. And in making a powerful case that the colonial past continues to haunt the Indian present, it makes an important contribution to current postcolonial theory and scholarship on contemporary Indian politics.