Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T08:11:24.391Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

SWADESHI CAPITALISM IN COLONIAL BOMBAY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2020

AASHISH VELKAR Open the ORCID record for AASHISH VELKAR [Opens in a new window]
AASHISH VELKAR*
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
*
Department of History, Samuel Alexander Building, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article examines economic nationalism in India, specifically the role of capitalists in late colonial Bombay. It shows how swadeshi was the fulcrum that supported the expressions of nationalism and capitalism. The notion that Indian capital needed to be used for the benefit of Indian nationals became established as nationalist thought by the 1930s. Such swadeshi capitalism – Indian capital for Indian industries – recasts the notion of swadeshi as a broader, more sophisticated cultural response to colonialism and globalization. As capitalism transitioned from mercantile activities to capital-hungry industrialization, nationalism was itself reframed from being anti-colonial in 1905 to being anti-globalization by the 1950s. Swadeshi capitalism helped to overlay a radical, grittier form of economic nationalism over the intellectually driven version of the nineteenth century. Swadeshi, as a form of economic patriotism, can be distinguished from similar expressions of nationalism within the British empire and dominions. This article is an effort to decolonize the narratives of modern capitalism by shifting the focus away from the global West. It will appeal to readers interested in South Asian history, and those interested in cultural responses to globalization, the contested nature of economic nationalism, and histories of capitalism in the global South.

Type
Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 64 , Issue 4 , September 2021 , pp. 1009 - 1034
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Earlier versions of this article were presented at the International Conference in Indian Business and Economic History, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, Aug. 2019, and at the workshop on Indian economy at Université Lyon 2, Mar. 2019. I thank all the participants for their insights and comments on the paper. I am also grateful to the archivists at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, and the Godrej Archives, Mumbai, for their assistance.

References

1 Thackeray, David, ‘Buying for Britain, China, or India? Patriotic trade, ethnicity, and market in the 1930s British empire/commonwealth’, Journal of Global History, 12 (2017), pp. 386–409CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Barnes, Felicity, ‘Lancashire's “war” with Australia: rethinking Anglo-Australian trade and the cultural economy of empire, 1934–36’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 46 (2018), pp. 707–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Compare similarities with Chinese consumer culture around the same time: see Gerth, Karl, China made: consumer culture and the creation of the nation (Cambridge, MA, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Globalization usually refers to some form of unrestricted international trade in capital and goods. As this article shows, many Indian capitalists supported some form of ‘regulated’ globalization, whereas many Indian nationalists were vocally anti-globalization.

4 Subramanian, Lakshmi, Three merchants of Bombay: business pioneers of the nineteenth century (New Delhi, 2016)Google Scholar.

5 Purshotamdas Thakurdas et al., Memorandum outlining a plan of economic development for India, parts one and two (Harmondsworth, 1945) (hereafter Bombay Plan).

6 Kudaisya, Medha M., Tryst with prosperity: Indian business and the Bombay Plan of 1944 (Gurgaon, 2018)Google Scholar, pp. 78 ff.

7 Chattopadhyay, Raghabendra, ‘An early British government initiative in the genesis of Indian planning’, Economic and Political Weekly, 22 (1987), pp. PE19–PE29Google Scholar.

8 Bombay Plan, p. 9.

9 Goswami, Manu, Producing India: from colonial economy to national space (Chicago, IL, 2010)Google Scholar.

10 Ranade, Mahadev Govind, Essays on Indian economics (2nd edn, Madras, 1906)Google Scholar; Naoroji, Dadabhai, Poverty of India: papers and statistics (London, 1888)Google Scholar.

11 C. Vijiaraghavachariar, ‘Presidential address, Indian National Congress, 26 December 1920’, reprinted in Indian annual register (Calcutta, 1921), ii, part iii, p. 125.

12 On Indian capitalism, see Roy, Tirthankar, A business history of India: enterprise and the emergence of capitalism from 1700 (Cambridge, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tyabji, Nasir, Forging capitalism in Nehru's India: neocolonialism and the state, c. 1940–1970 (New Delhi, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the material turn, see Rappaport, Erika, A thirst for empire (Princeton, NJ, 2019)Google Scholar; Sven Beckert, Empire of cotton: a global history (New York, NY, 2015).

13 Birla, Ritu, Stages of capital: law, culture, and market governance in late colonial India (Durham, NC, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Johnson, Paul, Making the market: Victorian origins of corporate capitalism (Cambridge, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Kudaisya, Tryst with prosperity.

16 Chatterjee, Partha, The nation and its fragments: colonial and postcolonial histories (Princeton, NJ, 1993)Google Scholar.

17 This is debated within the literature on planning. Some like Chibber remain sceptical about the ‘support’ from capitalists for planning, while others like Kudaisya present a contrary view. This article deviates from Chibber's interpretation. Chibber, Vivek, Locked in place: state-building and late industrialization in India (Princeton, NJ, 2003)Google Scholar; Kudaisya, Tryst with prosperity.

18 Adarkar, B. P., ‘Tariffs and fiscal policy’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 233 (1944), pp. 141–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Chandavarkar, Rajnarayan, The origins of industrial capitalism in India: business strategies and the working classes in Bombay, 1900–1940 (Cambridge, 2002)Google Scholar.

20 Ibid., pp. 25–7; Kidambi, Prashant, The making of an Indian metropolis: colonial governance and public culture in Bombay, 1890–1920 (Aldershot, 2007)Google Scholar.

21 Dinshaw Wacha, Premchund Roychund: his early life and career (Bombay, 1913), p. 53.

22 Subramanian, Three merchants of Bombay.

23 Wacha, Premchund Roychund, pp. 53, 62, and 68.

24 Chopra, Preeti, A joint enterprise: Indian elites and the making of British Bombay (Minneapolis, MN, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Wacha, Dinshaw, Shells from the sand of Bombay: my recollections and reminiscences 1860–1875 (Bombay, 1920), p. 470Google Scholar.

26 Wacha, Dinshaw, Rise and growth of Bombay municipal government (Bombay, 1913), p. 14Google Scholar.

27 Wacha, Shells from the sand, p. 470; Chopra, Joint enterprise.

28 Joshi, Sanjay, The middle class in colonial India (New Delhi, 2010), pp. xv–xviGoogle Scholar; Markovits, Claude, Merchants, traders, entrepreneurs: Indian business in the colonial period (Basingstoke, 2008), pp. 172–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Kidambi, Making of an Indian metropolis, pp. 194–7.

30 Joshi, Middle class in colonial India, p. xlviii; Misra, Maria, Vishnu's crowded temple: India since the Great Rebellion (New York, NY, 2007)Google Scholar.

31 Wilson, Jon, India conquered: Britain's Raj and the chaos of empire (London, 2016), p. 372Google Scholar.

32 Goswami, Producing India, p. 251.

33 Chakrabarti, Pratik, ‘Science and swadeshi: the establishment and growth of the Bengal Chemical and Pharmaceutical Works, 1893–1947’, in Gupta, Uma Das, ed., Science and modern India: an institutional history, c.1784–1947 (Delhi, 2011), pp. 117–42Google Scholar, at p. 128; Goswami, Omkar, ‘Sahibs, babus, and banias: changes in industrial control in eastern India, 1918–50’, Journal of Asian Studies, 48 (1989), pp. 289–309CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 Karanjia, B. K., Vijitatma: founder pioneer Ardeshir Godrej (New Delhi, 2004), pp. 87–9Google Scholar.

35 Ibid., p. 84; Ghose, Babu Aurobindo, Bal Gangadhar Tilak: his writings and speeches (3rd edn, Madras, 1922), pp. 373 and 376Google Scholar.

36 Ghose, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, p. 173; Kidambi, Making of an Indian metropolis, p. 195.

37 Kidambi, Making of an Indian metropolis, pp. 195–8; Sarkar, Sumit, Modern India 1885–1947 (New York, NY, 1989), pp. 132–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 Kidambi, Making of an Indian metropolis, p. 197.

39 Trivedi, Lisa N., Clothing Gandhi's nation: homespun and modern India (Bloomington, IN, 2007)Google Scholar.

40 Bayly, C. A., ‘The origins of swadeshi’, in Appadurai, Arjun, ed., The social life of things: commodities in cultural perspective, (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 285–322Google Scholar, at p. 285.

41 Ibid., p. 309; Anon., Cent per cent swadeshi or the economics of village industries (Ahmedabad, 1938)Google Scholar.

42 Desh Sevika Sangh to Motilal Nehru, 14 May 1930, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML), All India Congress Committee (AICC), file G-150; ‘Weekly reports’, NMML, AICC, file 6.

43 Anon., Cent per cent swadeshi, pp. 9–10.

44 ‘Report of the Boycott Committee, Indian National Congress’, reprinted in Indian annual register (Calcutta, 1923), i, p. 112.

45 Ibid., p. 109.

46 Maneklal Vakil, Boycott of British goods and foreign cloth (Bombay, 1930), p. 14.

47 ‘Report of the Boycott Committee’, p. 109.

48 Jawaharlal Nehru to Subash Chandra Bose, 15 Mar. 1927, NMML, AICC, file G-48.

49 Propaganda for boycott of foreign cloth, 1928, NMML, AICC, file G-64.

50 Ibid.

51 Before 1920, the government in India followed a policy of ‘absolute laissez-faire’ with tariff policy governed by the ‘wishes of English manufacturers’. Gadgil, Dhananjaya Ramchandra, The industrial evolution of India in recent times (Bombay, 1938), p. 310Google Scholar.

52 Lavington, F., ‘The Indian Fiscal Commission, 1921–22’, Economic Journal, 33 (1923), pp. 51–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Adarkar, ‘Tariffs and fiscal policy’.

53 Markovits, Claude, Indian business and nationalist politics 1931–39: the indigenous capitalist class and the rise of the Congress Party (Cambridge, 2002), p. 59Google Scholar.

54 Gadgil, Industrial evolution of India, p. 330.

55 The SMC was an international conglomerate dominating the global match industry.

56 Modig, Hans, Swedish match interests in British India during the interwar years, trans. Christopher, William Barrett (Stockholm, 1979)Google Scholar.

57 Report of the Indian Tariff Board regarding the grant of protection to the match industry (Calcutta, 1928).

58 Modig, Swedish match interests.

59 Indian Match Manufacturers Association to Motilal Nehru, 5 Oct. 1930, NMML, AICC, file G-48.

60 IMC to AICC, 24 Sept. 1931, NMML, AICC, file G-180; Bombay Provincial Congress Committee memo, 22 Oct. 1931, NMML, AICC, file G-180.

61 Rappaport, Thirst for empire, pp. 255–6.

62 Swadeshi Mart to Motilal Nehru, 19 May 1930, NMML, AICC, file G-150.

63 M/s Chand Brothers to AICC, 18 June 1930, NMML, AICC, file G-48.

64 Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry to Motilal Nehru, 31 May 1930, NMML, AICC, file G-150.

65 ‘Correspondence regarding boycott’, NMML, AICC, file G-177.

66 Cloth merchants of Agra to Motilal Nehru, 19 May 1930, NMML, AICC, file G-150.

67 Bombay Provincial Congress Committee memo, 22 Oct. 1931, NMML, AICC, file G-180.

68 Jawaharlal Nehru to Subash Chandra Bose, 15 Mar. 1927, NMML, AICC, file G-48; Patna Congress Committee to AICC, 27 Nov. 1931, NMML, AICC, file G-179.

69 Various letters, NMML, AICC, file G-179.

70 Various letters between G. D. Birla and Motilal Nehru, NMML, AICC, file G-150; AICC, Directory of textile mills in India (Allahabad, 1931).

71 See also Himani Chandana, ‘Godrej Vatni was India's foremost swadeshi soap, and it didn't remind you of Partition’, ThePrint, 28 Apr. 2019, https://theprint.in/features/brandma/godrej-vatni-was-indias-foremost-swadeshi-soap-and-it-didnt-remind-you-of-partition/228216/.

72 Trivedi, Clothing Gandhi's nation, p. 59.

73 Ibid., pp. 61–2.

74 Allahabad Swadeshi League, All India swadeshi directory (Allahabad, 1933), p. vii.

75 Chibber, Locked in place, p. 85, claims that planning failed owing to the ‘organised resistance of the business class’. Lockwood, David, ‘Was the Bombay Plan a capitalist plot?’, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, 72 (2011), pp. 618–31Google Scholar, at p. 623, argues that Chibber produced ‘very little evidence’ for his claims.

76 3.75 million rupees were raised in the city of Bombay against 500,000 rupees in the entire province of Punjab: Bombay Chronicle, 2 Aug. 1921.

77 Bombay Chronicle, 11 Aug. 1921.

78 Mukherjee, Aditya, Imperialism, nationalism and the making of the Indian capitalist class, 1920–1947 (Los Angeles, CA, 2002)Google Scholar.

79 Tairsee, L. R., Boycott of British empire goods as a businessman sees it (Bombay, c. 1926–8)Google Scholar; Bhattacharya, S., ‘Cotton mills and spinning wheels: swadeshi and the Indian capitalist class, 1920–22’, Economic and Political Weekly, 11 (1976), pp. 1828–34Google Scholar; Kidambi, Making of an Indian metropolis.

80 Keshavlal Parikh to Motilal Nehru, 16 June 1930, NMML, AICC, file G-150; also, unsigned postcard to Nehru from Oudh, n.d.

81 G. D. Birla to Motilal Nehru, 19 May 1930 and 31 May 1930, NMML, AICC, file G-150.

82 Markovits, Indian business, pp. 36–7.

83 Ghanshyamdas Birla, Indian prosperity: a plea for planning (Delhi, 1934).

84 Chattopadhyay, ‘Early British government initiative’; Zachariah, Benjamin, Developing India: an intellectual and social history, c. 1930–50 (New Delhi, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

85 Kudaisya, Tryst with prosperity, pp. 85–8.

86 Birla, Plea for planning; Chattopadhyay, ‘Early British government initiative’.

87 Birla, Plea for planning, p. 8.

88 Markovits, Indian business, p. 2.

89 Mukherjee, Aditya, ‘Indian capitalist class and the public sector, 1930–1947’, Economic and Political Weekly, 11 (1976), pp. 67–73Google Scholar; Lockwood, David, The Indian bourgeoisie: a political history of the Indian capitalist class in the early twentieth century (London, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

90 Sarabhai Prataprai to J. K. Mehta, 9 Aug. 1944, NMML, Indian Merchants Chamber (IMC), file no. 902; Prataprai to secretary of the Government of India, 12 June 1944, NMML, IMC, file no. 902.

91 Various internal memos, NMML, IMC, file no. 902.

92 Chatterjee, Nation and its fragments, p. 205.

93 Khilnani, Sunil, The idea of India (London, 2004), pp. 81–8Google Scholar.

94 Chatterjee, Nation and its fragments, pp. 201–2.

95 Chattopadhyay, ‘Early British government initiative’; Zachariah, Developing India.

96 Bombay Plan, p. 100.

97 Tyabji, Forging capitalism in Nehru's India, pp. 35–53.

98 Kudaisya, Tryst with prosperity, p. 98.

99 Bombay Plan, p. 93.

100 Ibid., pp. 99–100.

101 Kudaisya, Tryst with prosperity, pp. 128–38; Lockwood, ‘Was the Bombay Plan a capitalist plot?’

102 Reactions to economic programme of AICC, 6 Feb. 1948, NMML, IMC, file no. 1138; see also IMC's telegram to Jawaharlal Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel, and others, 13 Feb. 1948, NMML, IMC, file no. 1138.

103 Mukherji, Rahul, ‘The state, economic growth, and development in India’, India Review, 8 (2009), pp. 81–106CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 84; Tomlinson, B. R., The economy of modern India: from 1860 to the twenty-first century (2nd edn, Cambridge, 2013), pp. 136–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

104 R. G. Saraiya to Planning Commission, 2 Mar. 1950, NMML, AICC, file no. 1184.

105 Kudaisya, Medha, ‘“A mighty adventure”: institutionalising the idea of planning in post-colonial India, 1947–60’, Modern Asian Studies, 43 (2009), pp. 939–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 947. The proceedings of the Planning Commission are unavailable for public access; only their published plans and reports are available. The results are thus known, but not how this institution operated.

106 Roy, Tirthankar, ‘The origins of import substituting industrialization in India’, Economic History of Developing Regions, 32 (2017), pp. 71–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 75, emphasis in original.

107 For ‘the state’ and the ‘inner domain’ of sovereignty, see Chatterjee, Nation and its fragments, p. 6.

108 Chandra, Bipan, The rise and growth of economic nationalism in India: economic policies of Indian national leadership (New Delhi, 1966)Google Scholar.

109 Siganporia, Harmony, ‘Who dreams this dreaming? Patanjali's symbolic usurpation of the trope of the “enslaved” Indian economy’, Continuum, 32 (2018), pp. 758–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar.