Intrepid and industrious

Many believe that the globalisation of Indian economy began with Manmohan Singh becoming the Union Finance Minister in 1991 in the PV Narasimha Rao Government; many Gujaratis believe that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had, as Chief Minister of Gujarat (2001-14), commenced the western state’s march to modernity.

Not quite.

Chhaya Goswami, an academic at Mumbai University, puts to rest such ‘speculations’ in her scholarly work Globalization Before Its Time: The Gujarati Merchants of Kachchh , which is part of the series called “The Story of Indian Business”, published by Penguin. Goswami’s work might go a long way in establishing that it was the Kutchhi (or ‘Kachchhi’) traders who were the real harbingers of the Indian economy’s global march, in the last two centuries, albeit at a slow pace. The 2001 killer earthquake in Kachchh hit global headlines; but the famed khamir (resilience) of its people ensured the sleepy district’s revival, so much so that Bhuj, the district headquarters, emerged as one of the best airports in India. Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan’s TV campaign to boost Gujarat tourism has made Kachchh’s ‘Rann Utsava’ a major attraction in the last five years. Kachchh has been an important nursery of India’s business acumen.

Goswami, herself a Kachchhi, traces the origins of the journey that led the early Kachchhi traders and merchants to set up shop in places as far-flung as Oman and Zanzibar. The stream of travellers became a torrent in the last two centuries, carrying the footloose Gujaratis all over the world. It was this Kachchhi migration that commenced the emergence of little Gujarats in Middle East and Africa, before they further migrated to the West, and then the East. Kachchh, as part of Bombay Presidency during the British Raj, had been the link between the merchants of Bombay and Karachi, through the port of Mandvi.

The very landscape of an arid Kachchh highlights adversity, something that prompted the people to smell an opportunity in this natural drawback. Kachchh has no fertile soil, plains or rivers; its long coastline and few harbours were the only silver lining, which the enterprising Kachchhis converted into their lifeline. They even made Oman virtually an extension of Kachchh, and Muscat that of Mandvi. Post-1947, Kandla and Mundra have emerged amongst the biggest ports of India.

Kachchh has been a land of entrepreneurs — and of decisive battles between India and her aggressors that changed the course of history. It was through this semi-desert that Mahmud of Ghazni came to loot the world famous Somnath Temple in the 10th century; Pakistan, too, invaded India in 1965 through this border district. The political rise and decline of Surat alternated with the decline and rise of the Mandvi port in Kachchh district. A major earthquake in the early 19th Century dried up the Lakhpat port, which forced the British to develop Karachi as an alternative, prompting many Gujarati traders and merchants to move there; but their strong links with Gujarat and Bombay endured. This included the family of Muhammed Ali Jinnah, son of a Saurashtrian Gujarati; Jinnah had himself settled down in Bombay (now Mumbai) before migrating to Karachi.

As elsewhere, therefore, war and trade opened new opportunities for the enterprising Kachchhis. Goswami’s book focusses on the doings and wanderings of Kachchhi merchants in the 18th and 19th centuries. The kings of Kachchh, or the Jadeja Raos, as they were called, were the prime movers of this early globalisation, as they provided a low-tax administration to boost trade, which cut across divisions of caste and creed. The Kachchhi merchants were among the early global bankers and venture capitalists, whose temples doubled as their banks.

What did the Kachchhi merchants trade in? Ivory, pearls, dates and arms were their mainstay in Oman, but they tended to become entrepreneurs in Zanzibar. Their first halt when they sailed through the Arabian Sea was Oman, where the Sultans not only allowed them to settle down but also practise their religion. From there, the Kachchhi diaspora spread across the world.

Goswami not only details how the Kachchhi merchants transacted business, she also researches on how they set up mercantile firms and business houses in Oman. They established the House of Bhimanis, Ratansi Purshottam, Khimji Ramdas, the Jorjanis.

The prominent business houses were those of Shivji Topan, Jairam Shivji and Thariya Topan.

The book is a pioneering study of Indian business history in its formative years, during the Mughal and British eras, without which any study of the current Indian globalisation would be incomplete.

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