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The Hindu
2 days ago
- General
- The Hindu
Review of Fortune Seekers by Raman Mahadevan
Reading Raman Mahadevan's deft and definitive profile of Tamil Nadu's business community, the Nattukottai Chettiars of Chettinad, led to what can only be termed a past life regression moment in my mind. I hope I will be forgiven for describing it. In the glory days of Khushwant Singh's determination to highlight various different Indian communities in the Illustrated Weekly of the mid-1970s in Bombay as it was known then, I was asked to seek out and explore the Nattukottai Chettiars of Tamil Nadu. I had as a companion a Gujarati husband who would accompany me to what seemed then a very distant place in South India. This was a sensible ploy for when I reached there as the honoured guest of the Raja of Chettinad whom I had met earlier in what was then Madras, none of the persons I met were willing to talk to me directly. I would ask my questions. They would answer them looking instead at my husband. In the process, I met many of the leading persons who are named in the book. Empire within an empire Mahadevan's great achievement is in retracing the trajectory of the Nattukottai Chettiar presence in what could be described as an empire within an empire of Greater India as it existed under colonial rule. It's come at an opportune moment. There's been an extraordinary renaissance in the corridors and interior courtyards of the grand old Chettiar mansions that have given the community its moniker—people who live in country forts as a tourist destination of multiple interests. The golden age of the Chettiars in the late 19th century often meant the menfolk returning with amazing amounts of Western artefacts, clocks, mirrors, bentwood furniture, hanging glass lamps, floor tiles and suchlike. These have now become a veritable museum of their travels into time. Recreating the ambience of their glory days are the small coterie of Chettiar women who have led the revival. They have simultaneously created a boost for the local crafts of basketry, textiles and dry legumes and fruits traditionally garnered from their regions. Oddly enough, Mahadevan barely mentions the role played by the Chettiar women, the Achis, as the older ladies are called, who stayed back and maintained their individual strongholds during the long absences of the men. Monopolies in trade As Gurcharan Das, the pundit on matters pertaining to corporate India in our times tells us in the preface, the study is part of an on-going Penguin series 'The Story of Indian Business'. Or as he puts it: 'Each slender volume offers an enduring perspective on enterprise, meant to promote a longer-term sensibility regarding artha, the material base of our civilization.' To that extent Mahadevan sticks to the formula: 'Follow the money' as indeed the tagline tells us. What makes the Chettiars different is not just their forays into Southeast Asia where they made their fortunes both as traders and merchant bankers, but their very resilient intra-caste module. The clans grouped around the nine temple towns of the Ramnad district over 78 villages. One of the earliest donors was a salt merchant who had made a promise to donate a tithe to a famous temple in the salt-starved Palani region of the Madurai district. Interestingly, a monopoly in salt became a feature of the Chettiar trade in basic domestic consumption needs. We hear, for instance, that they traded paddy and rice from Bengal to Burma and Ceylon. Other items, such as cotton, were from closer home in Tinnevelly. Their willingness to cross the seas brings to mind the Parsi community, who were also shipbuilders in their time. Like the Parsis, some of the Chettiar trade to Southeast Asia consisted of opium and raw spirits, such as arrack. Unlike the Parsis, who went on to create an industrial base for textiles early in the mid-19th century, the Chettiars preferred to concentrate on their banking skills in Burma and Malaya. The Burma teak was valuable for the use of railway sleepers. The rubber from Malaya was needed for the newly evolving automobile sector, as also tin, though these were primarily in the hands of the local Chinese. Mahadevan tracks the heyday with the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 all the way up to the Great Depression of the 1920s. The Second World War brought in its wake the Japanese occupation of the happy hunting grounds of the Chettiars. By that time, the Chettiars owned large tracts of Burma. The retreat of colonial powers brought an end to the Nattukottai hegemony. This is where Mahadevan poses the most crucial questions about whether the failure was also due to the intra-caste bonds of the community. By his meticulous tracking of the legendary figures that made up the Nattukottai Chettiars, Mahadevan has provided an invaluable dossier of a South Indian community that still remains uniquely different. The reviewer is a Chennai-based critic and commentator
Hindustan Times
25-04-2025
- Business
- Hindustan Times
The Chettiars could have rivalled the Marwaris had history played out differently: New book
In his new book Fortune Seekers, economic historian Raman Mahadevan maps the rise of the Chettiars — and why their vast Southeast Asian network didn't last. The Chettiars were reportedly known as the 'bankers of the East'. Exactly how powerful were they in their heyday? They were really big and economically quite influential. Some estimates suggest that the total assets of the Chettiar community, which were valued at around ₹10 crore in the 1880s, had by 1929 grown phenomenally to about ₹200 crore. Keeping in mind that this was a small community — some surveys suggest they numbered just around 1,25,000 in the 1930s — this was a very impressive achievement. Their migration to the Far East picked up in the 1870s, catalysed by the opening of the Suez Canal, which effectively shrank the distance between Asia and global markets. That had a huge impact on the whole process of commercialisation and created business opportunities, which, in a sense, triggered the movement of Chettiar capital to these regions. In Burma, for instance, while Europeans owned the big rice mills, the financing of agricultural production was almost entirely in the hands of the Chettiars. That's where they made their money. Similarly, the global automobile industry required rubber and tin — both of which came from Malaya — and again, the Chettiars financed the production of these commodities. In Ceylon, they funded the non-European coffee, tea, and coconut plantations. The crisis began with the Great Depression and deepened with the Second World War. Counterfactually, you could argue that had these global shocks not occurred, the economic landscape in India might have been very different. If the Chettiars had managed to bring all that capital back to India, they could well have become what the Marwaris were in Bombay and Calcutta. How did they differ from the Marwaris and Banias? One major difference was that the Chettiars went abroad in large numbers. The Marwaris did go too, but far fewer. While many Marwaris were bankers, they were also predominantly traders. My theory is that the transition from trade to manufacturing is easier — their access to market and commercial intelligence provided a certain edge to the trading class and gave them a head start in industrial ventures. In western India, Marwaris and Gujarati Banias were able to move into paper, sugar, and textiles. But the Chettiars' domestic footprint was relatively limited until the 1930s, as much of their capital remained locked overseas. More importantly, as the return on investment through banking in Southeast Asia was significantly higher than in Indian industry, there was no major inclination on their part to invest in industry. The risk the Chettiars took was also much greater as compared to other business communities. All business communities are risk-takers, of course, but the Chettiars, by moving out of South India to Southeast Asia and by learning new languages, operating in remote foreign regions governed by different legal systems, would seem to suggest that they displayed greater risk-bearing qualities. Another distinctly unique system they developed to enable them to make good use of their capital investment was the intra-community credit network — where one Chettiar would finance another. That speaks to a high degree of enterprise and trust. This is clearly suggestive of a system where mutual faith and a high degree of trust was central to their business enterprise. While many Chettiar firms faded post-independence, a few built lasting business houses. What set them apart? The Chettiars began repatriating some of their capital back to India in order to invest during the 1940s, when World War II created highly profitable conditions for business. Apart from textiles, a major area was plantations. Some Chettiars also ventured into Bombay. One such example is Alagappa Chettiar, who invested heavily in insurance companies but lost out due to overtrading. The MCT Group, which founded Indian Overseas Bank, also had investments in Elphinstone Mills. But large-scale domestic investment remained limited. After independence, you see figures like M.A. Chidambaram, after whom the cricket stadium in Chennai is named, making more serious moves. He acquired Automobile Products of India, the makers of Lambretta scooters, and also invested in diesel engine production. Later, he diversified into chemicals. The Murugappa Group is a standout example of Chettiar success. Two factors, I think, set them apart. First, the intrafamilial bonds were exceptionally strong, and the elders in the family ensured that the cohesive spirit was maintained across generations. Most business families begin to fragment by the third or fourth generation — but in their case, it seems clear this was anticipated and addressed early on. Second, they maintained a disciplined focus on core competencies — especially engineering-related sectors like Tube Investments and Carborundum Universal. Only after consolidating in those sectors did they diversify, for instance, with the acquisition of Parry & Co., which was in a different line of business. What can today's small and medium enterprises in India learn from the Chettiar model — especially in how to institutionalise trust, capital, and scale across generations? I think the most important lesson that today's entrepreneurs — small and medium included — can draw is the notion of trust and mutual accommodation, a feature central to the Chettiar model. This would enable entrepreneurs to optimise costs and cut down competition. The export-oriented Tiruppur knitwear industry is a good example of the Chettiar model. Chettinad cuisine is famous for its fiery meat dishes, but the community began as vegetarian. Did their migrations reshape their cuisine? Food isn't my area of expertise, but you could well be right. The Chettiars were — and are — devout Shaivites, and vegetarianism was a natural offshoot of this faith. In fact, the Tamil word for vegetarian food is 'saiva saappadu'. So yes, the long years of exposure to overseas cultures must have played a significant role in the evolution of their cuisine — from an exclusively vegetarian to a more inclusive cuisine. Their use of spices is also quite distinct from what you find in other parts of South India, and even here, it is possible to discern other influences. You've written about efforts to rekindle the Chettiars' entrepreneurial spirit. How far do you think this will go? Many Chettiars in the diaspora have moved into finance and IT, rather than traditional business. This shift worries some of the older generation, who feel there's a disconnect from their industrial legacy. So conferences and community events have been organised to revive that entrepreneurial zeal. But honestly, I think that time is over. The chapter of Chettiar dominance in traditional sectors is closed. ALSO READ: Book commemorates life and legacy of abstractionist Bimal Das Gupta
