10
Conclusion: Social Structure as Social Investment

Reflecting on various approaches to the study of Indian society, Chapter 2 of this book suggested that India must be recognized as a caste society. It also suggested, however, that caste must be reconceived, not as a unitary phenomenon, but as an umbrella concept, covering categories of people who are potential candidates for different kinds of practical and moral linkage. The suggestion derived from historiographic interpretations for the rise of Western-style, politically oriented caste associations in early twentieth-century India. But it need not and, I argued, should not be limited just to this context. On the contrary, the notion that people invest in caste identities of different sorts in order to accomplish different ends can be usefully employed for understanding various caste formations, ranging from dominant agrarian castes mobilized for non-Western forms of political organization such as the Pudukottai Kallar, to castes specialized around artisanal production and marketing such as the Kaikkolar, to castes organized around both banking and territorial dominance such as the Nakarattar. Caste, in short, represents a differentiated form of "symbolic capital" (Bourdieu 1977), available for different uses by members of different castes. In a less euphonious Bourdieuvian phrase, castes constitute "structured structuring structures," shaped by the activities of their members, constraining those activities, and offering distinct possibilities and payoffs for different actions.

The present chapter summarizes my findings about the symbolic capital of Nakarattar caste identity, defined by component investments in elite status, marriage alliance, descent group, and temple cult. I argue that all these "social investments" contrast in interesting ways with social investments by nonmercantile castes. In particular, I argue that the respective

"social portfolios" of different castes reflect a differential specialization and diversification in liquid or fixed forms of symbolic capital. The lesson I draw is twofold: First, the Nakarattars and, arguably, other mercantile castes exhibit forms of social organization that fall outside most standard views of caste social organization. They require, as a consequence, that these standard views be modified and enlarged. Second, I argue that a fiduciary perspective on variation in caste structure suggests that castes be treated not so much as legal corporations, enduring timelessly through history, but rather as social investments, structured by and structuring human action over time.

Competing for the Past, Investing in the Future

A key institutional feature of Nakarattar caste organization is embodied in the role of the Nakarattar parent banker or adathi , a figure standing in the center of clearinghouse operations for financial and commodity flows and a figure of considerable economic and ritual influence throughout the Nakarattar community. Chapter 5 has already indicated the way that all Nakarattars used wealth in the form of deposits in temple trust funds (kovil panam or dharma panam) for maintaining capital reserves in their family businesses. Chapter 7 explored some of the ways that elite Nakarattars, typified in the colonial period by adathis , attracted such deposits (subsequently marked by the special term adathi kadai panam ) and otherwise influenced these and other collective funds by making "charitable" endowments to temples and educational institutions. All of these gifts and endowments represented investments in elite identity and status for individuals within their caste and for Nakarattar identity and status, generally, within South Indian and Southeast Asian society.

Investments in elite status, however, did not simply reproduce a static social order. They also generated social conflict and social change. Temple endowment (kattalai ) and various kinds of more "secular" philanthropy provide a dramatic illustration of the dynamic quality of investment in the symbolic capital of elitehood, the social relationships it creates, and the social changes it effects. I have specifically flagged religious gifting because some authorities, especially Arjun Appadurai (1981a, 1981b), have suggested that the social dynamism to which I refer springs from cultural properties of Tamil deities themselves, rather than from more general processes of conflict and change. This suggestion seems unduly restrictive, and I propose to extend Appadurai's insights about the political dynamic of worship to a wider range of elite activities than temple endowment.

Appadurai's argument is that although they were the explicit beneficiaries of temple endowments, temple gods remained silent as the stones

from which their images were carved. They left the interpretation of their wishes about the disposition of temple trust funds and ritual honors to devotees who were apt to disagree with one another, especially when it came to defining and determining control of scarce ritual and material resources. As a consequence, elite devotees battled one another within the political arena of a god's temple for ritual honors and financial perquisites. They sought to establish historical charters that justified their political goals for contemporary and future control of the temple.

For example, although Chapter 7 did not explore the history of Palani Temple subsequent to Kumarappan's seventeenth-century founding of the Tai Pucam pilgrimage, oral traditions recovered by Manuel Moreno (1981, 1984) suggest that Kumarappan's family eventually lost their exclusive role as dharma karta in the control of Nakarattar ritual at the temple. Arguably, they even lost control of their own identity when a family of Nakarattars from a totally unrelated lineage succeeded in claiming Kumarappan as their ancestor. This new group of "descendants" were not able to claim his position as trustee—an office won by still another family through other battles—but they do, at present, claim a variety of ritual rights as Kumarappan's descendants.^[1] The lesson I draw from this incident is that the history of Palani is no straightforward account of objective facts, but a contested history of history making and manipulation. The enduring battles to create and authenticate a hegemonic history of Palani reveal that temple endowment represents an investment in a specific, culturally constructed past that constitutes a form of symbolic capital, indeed a scarce resource (Appadurai 1981b) over which political factions fight for exclusive rights of definition and access.

Such an Appaduraian interpretation is entirely persuasive. But, as I suggested above, it can be expanded beyond the realm of religious gifting. In particular, as we observed in Chapter 7, secular charitable institutions that emerged in the colonial period performed a role that was equally effective in generating conflict and defining reality. They lacked the devotional focus on a deity that characterized temples. But the purpose of a secular endowment in serving the public interest (particularly the causes of the Tamil Renaissance) was as open to multiple interpretation as were the wishes of any deity. Contenders for titles, honors, and positions of power in secular endowments—like contenders for similar scarce resources in religious endowments—frequently disputed one another's credentials and performance of duties in the political and jural arenas of Madras. Even the twentieth-century case of Annamalai University, described in Chapter 7, was not as clear-cut and conflict-free as my account may have indicated. In fact, at the very time when (then) Rao Bahadur Annamalai Chettiar

offered a matching donation of Rs. 200,000 to the Madras government for the Tamil University at Chidambaram, Kalimuthu Thiagarajan, another elite Nakarattar, offered Rs. 350,000 to establish a University in Madurai. On the face of it, Thiagarajan's offer was superior to Annamalai's on economic grounds. But Annamalai was better positioned politically and won the contest. The outcome resulted in his control of public resources far in excess of the amount of the endowment.

Unlike the battles for ritual honors at Palani Temple, the contest to found the first Tamil university was not about authenticating the past but about defining the present. Annamalai's victory helped define the Justice party as a leader of the movement for Tamil revitalization. It contributed to the party's credibility in labeling the National Congress party as the party of imperialist, North Indian, Brahman "carpetbaggers." But it is interesting to speculate what would have happened if Thiagarajan had won the battle for a Tamil university at Madurai. For, unlike Annamalai and Muthia, Thiagarajan was an early supporter of Congress. Nor was he alone. Other prominent Chettiars such as Sa. Ganesan and Annamalai's own son-in-law, S. Rm. Ct. Chidambaram, also played an active role in the Congress party and, like Thiagarajan, combined a strong commitment to Tamil culture with a strong commitment to Indian nationalism. In the end, they lost. And our historical view of Madras' past was established in the 1920s and 1930s, when Raja Sirs Annamalai and Muthia won their ethnohistorical battle to define Madras' present.

Such "just-so" stories from pasts that might have been illustrate the social potentiality of capitalism, even in its explicitly ritual forms. They remind us that Hindu notions of moral action, in whose service Nakarattars conducted their sacred and secular gifting, do not entail fatalism, but rather provide a framework for seeking this-worldly success as well as a framework for expressing transcendent devotion or service. For the Nakarattars, as for other Hindus, such seeking often took standardized forms, consisting of competitive investments in elite status and position. I will return to issues of Nakarattar elitehood and its implications for Nakarattar values and social structure after considering other issues in the construction of Nakarattar status relationships.

Marriage and Minimization

Elitehood was generated, in part, by investments in temples and universities. It was indexed by ritual prerogative and denoted by title. The trust and respect in which Nakarattars held elites was further reflected in special long-term deposits (adathi kadai panam ) that helped to maintain cash reserves for Nakarattar firms and which were, themselves, indexes to

long-term relations between two families. But, as important as they were, relations between adathis and their clients constituted only one component of Nakarattar capitalist organization. Another component was marriage alliance.

Just as relationships between an adathi and another Nakarattar family firm were indexed by special deposits listed in the client firm's account books, so relations of marriage alliance were specially marked in accounts called accimar panam , or "women's deposits." Chapter 8 illustrated the way such long-term deposits were established as trusts for women by families into which they had married. They came with a woman as part of her dowry, as cir: that which brings fame or glory. But, although they belonged to the woman in name, they were actually controlled by the woman's in-laws until her daughters required dowry.

Aside from the amounts given as dowry, Nakarattars were not unusual in these respects. In other regards, however, they were quite remarkable. As we saw in Chapter 8, they maintained no positive marriage rule, nor did they exhibit any of the elementary structures of kinship that anthropologists claim is entailed for people who employ a Dravidian kinship terminology. Nakarattar marriage alliances did embody normative rules that distinguished them from relations of mere marriageability between terminological affines. But the normative content of these rules applied to various murai (gift-giving obligations) within the alliance, not to obligations to renew an alliance between allies.^[2]

When I first began to investigate marriage practices among the Nakarattars, I thought to confirm the received view that contrasted marriage rules among mercantile castes with those among nonmercantile castes. I expected to demonstrate that this contrast could be explained as a functional adaptation to, respectively, mercantile and agrarian lifestyles. The following argument summarizes the theory I had formulated to account for variability in patterns of marriage alliance among different castes. First, I adopted a standard anthropological view of marriage as a transaction of women between male-controlled descent groups. Second, I accepted Brenda Beck's (1972) suggestion that the contrasting strategies of affinal transactions affected the size of affinally allied clusters of descent groups (marriage circles) tied to each other by marriage. Third, I related this variable of marriage-circle size to Marriott's (1976) theories about Hindu transactions by speculating (contra Marriott) that "minimizing" groups do not avoid transactions of gross substances (ritual food, wives, etc.) so much as they restrict the size of the group with which they engage in such transactions. Fourth, and as a lemma to the preceding argument, I also speculated that "minimizers"—at least in the case of the Nakarattar—try to maximize the

size of the group with which they engage in transactions of subtle, nonpolluting substances (money, credit, market commodities, etc.). Finally, I explained the restrictive scope of transactions in gross substances and the expansive policy of transactions in subtle substances by interpreting these transactions as expressions of a moral commitment to, respectively, long-term and short-term maintenance of the relationships. That is, I viewed transactions in different media of exchange as both symbols of and symbols for a difference in the duration of commitment to a social relationship. I anticipated that, by following marriage rules restricting the size of their marriage circles (and of other groups with whom they engaged in transactions of gross substances), Nakarattars effectively limited their liability for the welfare of a large number of kin (and other clients). They thereby freed up capital resources for "subtle" financial investments in trade, finance, and industry. By contrast, agrarian "maximizers" committed capital reserves to a large group of people in return for mutual cooperation and liability in coordinated agrarian ventures. Maximizers "capitalized" a relatively large proportion of their resources for investment in such fixed assets as military manpower, farm labor, and irrigation works. Minimizers maintained a pool of relatively liquid assets backed by a small reserve of long-term deposits such as accimar panam , established by gifts of cir .

In other words, I viewed transactional strategies of minimizers—including institutionalized rules for patrilateral marriage alliance—not as efforts to avoid every kind of transaction, but as efforts to minimize the number of long-term moral relationships and maximize the number of short-term moral relationships. I viewed maximizers in the opposite way. I interpreted the difference between the two as functional, not merely formal. And I explained the specialization of different groups in different strategies as adaptive specializations to specific economic niches.

It still seems to me that Nakarattars followed a mercantile, minimizing strategy, but not by practicing the minimizing strategy of patrilateral cross-cousin marriage. Rather, they accomplished their strategy by rejecting any rule that would perpetuate ties of marriage alliance: not only maximizing rules that generate large marriage circles, but even minimizing rules that generate small circles.

Nakarattar marriage strategy did, in fact, produce small marriage circles, but these circles were temporary and adjustable in the face of changing economic opportunity. They represented a form of liquid wealth, just like the financial instruments that were invested in their production and maintenance and that they, in turn, produced and maintained. Indeed, the symbolic capital of Nakarattar marriage alliance was explicitly indexed by deposits of real capital in the form of accimar panam , the dowry trust fund

that Nakarattars established on behalf of their daughters at the time of marriage (generally in the groom's family's bank) and enlarged over the two-generation life of the marriage alliance. Finally, both of these kinds of capital were further indexed and augmented by the entire set of ceremonial prestations that marked the life of the marriage alliance.

As I observed above, Nakarattars controlled many forms of capital differing from each other along a scale of relative liquidity. Thus, Nakarattar marriage alliances were liquid relative to the kinds of capital Nakarattars invested when they sought control of a temple endowment, but fixed relative to the kinds of capital they invested in an agricultural loan. When I speak of Nakarattar marriage alliance as liquid capital, however, I am not merely making a comparison between the various forms of capital invested by Nakarattars; I am also contrasting the specific capital of Nakarattar marriage alliance with the kinds of capital represented by marriage alliances established by non-Nakarattars. The difference emerges not only with respect to the contrast between the presence and absence of marriage rules but also with respect to the twofold contrast in ceremonial prestations between Nakarattar and non-Nakarattar castes, described in Chapter 8. On the one hand, Nakarattar prestations of cir and moi failed to coincide neatly with the distinction between external and internal gifts in the manner Dumont ascribes to the Kallar, Maravar, and Vellalar castes. On the other hand, Nakarattars did not make even a token symbolic expression of reciprocity in cir exchanges on the occasion of a wedding (let alone on the subsequent occasions for external gifting, which are asymmetric among all groups studied). Both of these ceremonial distinctions coincided with the absence of a deferred normative obligation to return a daughter in marriage to a group from which one had taken a wife. In sum, the asymmetry and lack of marriage rules signaled both the lack of reciprocity and the determinate, one-time-only nature of the alliance (regardless of subsequent pragmatic considerations that might lead to renewal). The absence of any clear demarcation of two distinct moi -giving groups did not even provide an opportunity for renewal because it failed to define self-perpetuating, corporate kin groups that could renew an alliance at all!^[3]

Merchant and Peasant: Nakarattar and Goundar Political Structure

As in the case of marriage, so in the case of political style in the control of temples and land in Chettinad. In both instances Nakarattar practice differs from current anthropological views of dominant agrarian castes in South India, and it differs in the direction of flexibility and liquidity. The following three sections undertake two tasks: (1) to contrast Nakarattar

and non-Nakarattar forms of political organization as alternative ways to invest in the symbolic capital of descent-based cults of territorial dominance, and (2) to consider implications of Nakarattar political strategy for the cultural principles by which the Nakarattars conceive social relations between different political segments.

According to Brenda Beck (1972), Nakarattars and merchant castes, in general, diverge dramatically from dominant agrarian castes. I do not refer here to the effective use of "formal" political structures institutionalized by Indian governments since the turn of the century.^[4] Rather, I mean the operation of a distinctively organized "informal" political system, such as that described in Chapter 9, which predated the colonial system and which continues to underpin Nakarattar political dominance up to the present day. As we have seen, this informal system is defined by principles of descent, territory, and cult membership. The importance of such variables for understanding the organization of caste groups was pointed to by Dumont (1964) thirty years ago.^[5] My analysis of Nakarattar data, however, suggests that Nakarattars constructed their social organization with respect to these variables in ways that were significantly different from investments in social organization by noncommercial castes such as the Kallar, analyzed by Dumont, or the Goundar, analyzed by Beck.

As we saw in Chapter 9, Nakarattar social organization comprised a two-tier social structure that allocated and legitimized control over specific temples by specific clans and lineages. This two-tier organization played one additional, highly important political function: it tied together what were otherwise territorially discrete temple cults in a pattern of crosscutting segmentation. Every Nakarattar was simultaneously a member of the cults of both his clan and his village. These cults crosscut Chettinad in such a way that members of the same clan belonged to different villages, and members of the same village belonged to different clans. Moreover, although lineage groups from particular clans dominated particular villages, they did not dominate adjacent villages, nor did clans dominate clusters of villages.^[6] Thus, the Chettinad territory was not divided up into microregions over which different clans exercised control.

This situation contrasts dramatically with the pattern of control in agrarian castes. In the case of the Goundar Vellalar, the dominant peasant caste of Kongunadu in Coimbatore, described by Beck (1972), it can be argued that lineage groups who controlled territorial clusters of Goundar settlements all belonged to the same clan.^[7] Unlike the Nakarattar, among the Goundar both tiers of descent-group organization controlled corresponding tiers of Goundar territorial organization. In other words, there was an isomorphic relationship between descent groups and territorial

divisions in Goundar social organization: a relationship that was replicated again by a system of religious cults in which members of Goundar descent-cum-local groups participated.

According to Beck, the caste as a whole dominated the region of Kongunadu as a whole. Goundars asserted their common identity through collective worship at Sivan and Murugan temples inside and outside Kongunadu. The Kongunadu region was divided into discrete subregions, each of which was dominated by a different Goundar subcaste that worshiped at a Mariamman temple in the major revenue village of the subregion. Revenue villages were in turn divided into hamlets dominated by separate clans, each with its own clan goddess temple. Hamlets were divided into settlements, each with its own Vinayakar temple dominated by a specific lineage. Settlements were divided into neighborhoods with common (nattukkal ) shrines, whose inhabitants attended each other's funerals. Neighborhoods were divided into streets, whose inhabitants attended each other's weddings. Streets were divided into houses, each with a shrine for the household's ancestors and family deities. All of these simultaneously descent-cum-territorial-cum-ritual groups formed a single nested system.

Anthropologists will already have recognized in this description of Goundar social structure the characteristic pattern of segmentary political organization familiar from African studies of the Nuer and the Tiv. Presumably, one could explain Goundar dominance in Kongunadu by appeal to their segmentary organization, and explain the subordinate status of other caste groups by the absence of any organization with equal political impact (Sahlins 1961). This seems to be what Beck has in mind when she compares the way that different non-Goundar castes of Kongunad integrate (or fail to integrate) descent and territory. From Beck's point of view, however, deviation from the Goundar pattern of isomorphism between units of descent and territory is tantamount to an absence of any organization. For example, in her analysis of "left-hand," mercantile groups, she is moved to say that they lack any descent organization (1972: 106). Since this is demonstrably not the case, I take it she means that their descent organization does not fit isomophically with a nested territorial organization. In any case, Table 15 presents an idealized table showing the nested segmentary structure among Goundar social groups (including groups at higher and lower levels of organization than just clans and lineages). It also indicates the isomorphism among organizing principles of descent, territory, and ritual cult membership.

This is all straightforward stuff. But how are we to understand the operation of the differently organized forms of Nakarattar dominance? Among the Nakarattars, descent groups and territorial groups formed two crosscutting systems. There was no isomorphic correspondence between a

nested system of descent groups and a nested system of territorial groups. There were macro-territorial units that encompassed endogamous clusters of villages called vattakais (see Chapter 8). But these differed from Goundar subcaste regions, revenue villages, and hamlets in that clan membership in Nakarattar multivillage vattakais was mixed, and no clan emerged as a dominant political force.

Lacking an isomorphic system of descent and territorial groups, did Nakarattars therefore lack a political organization enabling them to dominate Chettinad? Obviously not. There are many ways to construct a political system besides resorting to the anthropologically classic forms of segmentary organization. The Nakarattar crosscutting segmentary organization was simply different from the nested segmentary organization of the Goundar.

Hierarchy, Territorial Precedence, and Royal Honors: The Pudukottai Kallars

Nakarattar investment in crosscutting social organization has important implications for the cultural (as opposed to formal or functional) principles

by which the Nakarattars conceive social relations between different political segments. In particular, it is difficult to see how Nakarattars could combine a system of status hierarchy—which is, according to Dumont (1957b), the alleged standard hallmark of politico-ritual relations within caste groups as well as between them—with a formally crosscutting, non-hierarchical structure. And indeed, notwithstanding the presence of titled, elite members of their caste, Nakarattars have adhered to an egalitarian ideology that fails to fit Dumont's model of status hierarchy, a model which, as we have already noted, is overgeneralized from studies of agrarian castes. Before considering Nakarattar egalitarian political culture, however, it is useful to review ways that a nonmercantile dominant caste has overlaid a ranking system rooted in Tamil beliefs about kingship on top of a nested segmentary kinship system. Once this is accomplished, we will then be in a position to contrast the hierarchical values that have shaped a Tamil "little kingdom" with the egalitarian values of mercantile Nakarattars.

According to Dumont (1957b), nonmercantile castes such as Kallars, Maravars, and Vellalars conceive and order their internal kinship groups according to the same basic principle by which entire caste groups are ordered in relation to each other: namely, status hierarchy. Moreover, it is clear in his (1957a) monographic treatment of Pramalai Kallars and in his (1957b) comparative essay on a variety of caste groups that this hierarchy is associated with a system of territorial control. Finally, it is also clear from Dumont's data that many dominant castes exemplify a nested segmentary system of ranked descent groups and territorial units (although this system differs in some respects from Beck's descriptions of Goundar social organization).^[8]

The pattern of nested and hierarchically ranked segmentary social organization that Dumont finds among many landed and military castes also emerges with particular clarity and elaboration in Nicholas Dirks' (1988) analysis of the Pudukottai Kallar.^[9] Unlike Goundars, Pudukottai Kallars inflected their segmentary system with an incipient state organization under the control of a king, a political form that Aidan Southall (1956) christened "the segmentary state" and that has entered the South Indian research literature through the work of Burton Stein (1969, 1980). In the Pudukottai kingdom, structural distance between political segments was a function not only of descent, territory, and cult membership, but also of a differentiated and ranked system in which military service was exchanged for land control (inam ) and honors (maryatai and piratu ).^[10]

Pudukottai Kallar relations of royal service and honor formed a super-structure for every other relationship and occasionally altered the strict

isomorphism between descent and territory that was characteristic of the purely segmentary Goundar. In some cases, clusters of lineage segments (karai, pattappeyar ) combined together to form larger, territorially bounded lineage clusters (kuppam, teru ) on the basis of coresidence within a territorial region (sub-natu ).^[11] Among these groups, structural closeness to the king sometimes reflected the order of lineage entrance into the (in part) residentially defined lineage cluster (kuppam ) instead of the genealogical closeness or "blood purity" of descent-group relations. In other words, residential priority could play an alternative and not just a complementary role to descent.

Pudukottai Kallar lineage clusters (kuppams ), in turn, were clustered together into discrete sub-jatis , once again through operation of the descent principle—in this case, expressed by a rule of endogamy. Sub-jatis , however, were grouped together into the Pudukottai Kallar jati not by any principle pertaining to kinship, but solely by principles of honor and service. This final integration of all Pudukottai Kallar social groups (comprising the jati ) and all territorial segments (comprising the "little kingdom") was accomplished by the king's appointment of chiefs or commanders (cervaikkarars ), typically from the royal subcaste, to territories (natus ) outside his own (Dirks: 1976: 30, 1983: 28).^[12] Like the lineage clusters (kuppams ), Pudukottai sub-jatis were ranked in consideration of their order of entrance into the relevant territorial unit: here, the "little kingdom" rather than the sub-natu .

Despite these differences from purely segmentary systems, the segmentary state of the Pudukottai also exemplified a nested or inclusive taxonomy of social groups, including (from top to bottom) the jati , sub-jati , lineage cluster (kuppam, teru ), and lineage (karai, pattappeyar ). Again, each group was marked by participation in a common cult; the group's participation provided the context for the exchange of honors for service that tied together the different segments in the Pudukottai segmentary state and that ranked the different segments belonging to various cults in the Pudukottai status hierarchy (see Table 16).^[13]

A Mythic Charter for Nakarattar Values

At this juncture, we are ready to return to the question: is the principle of hierarchy a universal principle in Indian conceptions about political relations between the constituent segments of castes? Some elements of my previous discussion about Nakarattar elites suggests that it may be. Nevertheless, the Nakarattar varalaru , already alluded to in Chapter 9, suggests otherwise.

The story in question concerns the consequences and implications of royal abductions of Nakarattar women. According to their traditional

caste history, the Nakarattar accepted a Pandyan invitation to immigrate to and take possession of the land of Chettinad.^[14] One day, the Pandyan king went riding in the countryside and came upon a beautiful maiden. Unaware that the girl was a Nakarattar, he carried her off to his palace. As soon as he discovered his error, however, he returned the girl to her people, without molesting her sexually or harming her in any other way.

The Nakarattar history records that he implored them not to harm the girl since he would not have carried her off if he had known who she was and since he had returned her untouched once he had discovered her identity. Furthermore, not content with this plea, he warned them that if they killed her he would collect eight heads and eight thousand gold pieces from them in retribution. Despite his warning, the Nakarattar determined that their caste regulations had been infringed upon and that, as a consequence, they were required to put the girl to death. They recognized, however, the justice of the king's demand and decided that a representative from each of seven families who had initially immigrated to Chettinad should offer himself for execution. This posed a further dilemma. The Nakarattar were still responsible for selecting an eighth person for execution, but they had no moral basis for choosing who it should be. The following translation of

a passage from an early published version of the caste history describes the way in which the dilemma was solved:

At that time one of the seven families, viz, the people of the three temples of Ilayattakudi, Iraniyur, and Pillaiyarpatti said, "Even though our family is the same our temples are three. Therefore it is us that should give the extra head." Okkurutaiyar [the leader from a subdivision of the Nakarattar of Ilayattakudi] arose and said, "We will give that extra head. We esteem honor more than our life. It is enough if all Nakarattar agree to let us receive first honors such as receiving holy ashes, etc. from temples and the gurus." The Nakarattar agreed to this. Then all of them approached the king and said, "We have brought eight heads and eight thousand gold pieces according to your orders." Hearing this, the king was deeply worried. He said to them, "I don't want to commit any additional sin other than the one I already have done [i.e., abduction of the girl]. You need not give me anything. Please return to your city." And so the Nakarattar did return to their city. (Paramasivam 1981b: 7)

One moral of this story is that the abduction of a Nakarattar maiden by the Pandyan king represented a form of hypogamous union, recognized and prohibited by Hindu doctrine as pratiloma marriage. In the view of the Nakarattar, compliance with dharmic law took precedence over any obligation to obey the king's law and justified the execution of their own daughter. At the same time, the Nakarattar also recognized that the Pandyan king acted out of justice, in compliance with his own dharma , and accordingly they were willing to submit themselves to his judgment. In doing so, they indicated that each of the seven Nakarattar families making up the caste was the status equal of every other family. No family commanded the others, and no family had any special obligation or honors before the others. A single subbranch of one family voluntarily offered itself as a special sacrifice on behalf of the entire caste. But its doing so constituted an exception that proved the general Nakarattar rule that every caste member belonged to the same family. In other words, the same motif that represents Nakarattar superiority over non-Nakarattars also represents Nakarattar equality among themselves.

Ambidexterity in the Nakarattar Varalaru

There have been very few systematic studies of South Indian caste histories. In fact, their discussion is most typically confined to ethnographic paraphrases of the relevant versions collected eighty years ago by Edmund Thurston (1909). Brenda Beck (1972) offers an important exception to this generalization in the same book to which I have already referred. It is her

view of Indian society and its extension to the analysis of merchant caste varalarus that I now address.^[15]

As in the case of variation in South Indian social organization, Beck interprets most South Indian caste histories as corresponding not only to the varnic classification scheme of the sastras but also to a mercantile/agrarian or "left-hand/right-hand" division of society. It seems to me that the current unqualified acceptance of this specific model of South Indian society is ill-considered. It is true, as Beck asserts, that high-ranking, left-hand varalarus in Kongu share some common motifs with South Indian mercantile varalarus from other regions. But the overlap is by no means so extensive as Beck makes out. In the case of the Nakarattar, for example, the shared motifs number only three out of the seven that Beck proposes as core motifs for all 'left-hand' varalaru , namely:

Moreover, in other notable respects, South India's merchant varalarus frequently diverge from one another. In the case of the Nakarattar varalaru , the differences suggest that Beck's economically based, binary classifications of left- and right-hand castes should not be generalized beyond the Kongu region. The following list identifies distinctive contrasts between the motifs that Beck suggests characterize all merchant varalaru and the motifs that actually figure in the Nakarattar varalaru:

In sum, the difficulty with Beck's "economic" theory^[16] of a left/right division associated with occupational specialization is that it fails to predict the right-hand stylistic features of Nakarattar histories—stylistic features which root their mercantile origins and migrations in the actions of men and kings rather than gods. In other words, Nakarattars seem to give more weight to political considerations connected with their position as a dominant caste in Chettinad than to any ritually unblemished origin. This is not to say that Nakarattars thereby adopt an unambiguously right-hand style. On the contrary, Nakarattar myths almost go out of their way to avoid ranking Nakarattar clans and lineages: an avoidance characteristic of Beck's left-hand castes. There is, at most, a single event in the Nakarattar myth of arrival and domination in Chettinad that singles out a Nakarattar subclan for preeminence over any other clan, and even this event highlights the relative equality of all clans.

In other words, just as in the case of their kinship organization, Nakarattars represent an ambidextrous anomaly in terms of Beck's principal diagnostic features for distinguishing between left-hand and right-hand varalarus . We should not be surprised. The anomaly is striking only as a consequence of the present widespread acceptance of Beck's model of South Indian society. But she presents no persuasive evidence to support her generalizations from the specific region of Kongunadu to all of South India. Moreover, a careful review of the distribution of indigenous historical uses of the left/right metaphor for social relations shows (a) that it occurs sporadically in time and space, (b) that it is employed most frequently in urban, not rural, centers, (c) that within these centers, it is employed as a political idiom, often marking a difference between establishment and arriviste contenders for various ritual privileges, and finally, (d) that on those occasions when political combatants are classified by the left/right metaphor, they do not invariably break down into mercantile and agrarian communities (Appadurai 1974).^[17]

Cross-Cut Segmentation and Equality

The mythical motif of status equality among Nakarattar kin groups faithfully replicates life. Unlike the Kallar groups analyzed above, there were no Nakarattar kings with whom other Nakarattars could undertake an asymmetrical exchange, even though Nakarattars did receive honors in temples. Nakarattars simply did not engage among themselves in asymmetrical exchanges of military service for royal honor. Instead they engaged each other in symmetrical exchanges of credit. In other words, Nakarattar kin group relations were marked by an absence of structural hierarchy even in the presence of individual receipt of temple honors.

In general, for the Nakarattar, the symbolic expression of descent group hierarchy was negligible or relativized to contexts that cancelled each other out. As we saw in Chapter 9, at each taxonomic level in Nakarattar descent-group organization, specific kin groups maintained a shrine or temple for cult worship. At these temples, elite cult members might have been ranked according to their generosity (vallanmai) or trustworthiness (nanayam) , as measured by active participation and donorship in supporting the cult. Such minimal ranking was marked by rights to the receipt of honors from the cult deity. But the majority of cult members were ritually undifferentiated and unranked.

Moreover, unlike the invariant ranking of elites among the royal Kallar of Pudukottai, the minimal ranking exhibited by Nakarattars was relativized to specific contexts, so that cult members who were honored on one occasion did not receive special honors on another occasion, when they were replaced by some previously unhonored cult member. The effect of this "replaceability" was to offset and equalize the ritual rank acquired by cult members on different occasions. Every lineage segment had its own village temple in which it received first honors. But the segment did not by receipt of this honor obtain a higher ritual rank than any other joint family or lineage segment, which likewise had an associated village temple. Where lineage segments shared a village temple, they maintained separate shrines. Alternatively, in the same shrine of the same temple, different groups controlled different rites of worship, either on the occasions of different religious festivals or in the same festival during the performance of different ceremonies.

In the context of membership in Nakarattar temple-clan cults, the same principles of differentiated membership and performance operated to give members from different clans more or less equal access to temple honors. In addition, the nonhierarchical ordering of clan members was maintained through the system of rotating trustees. The reason for this difference from both Goundar and Kallar groups—insofar as a functional explanation provides us with a reason—was telegraphed at the beginning of our comparison of mercantile and agrarian strategies for territorial dominance. Unlike their agrarian brethren, Nakarattars dominated their own little kingdom not by force of arms but by the force of money remitted from their trading empire back to villages, temples, and descent groups in Chettinad. Conversely, the shifting tides of change in Asian and world economic systems in which they participated required an ability to mobilize money from multiple sources. Relationships of opposition and cohesion in a purely segmentary organization might suffice for dealing with the local conflicts encountered by Goundar agriculturalists. But they were

limiting to a businessman interested in attracting venture capital from beyond his immediate locale. Institutionalized chains of command established in a segmentary state were useful to the Pudukottai king and his commanders in mobilizing military forces. But such hierarchical relationships could get in the way of mutually depositing and loaning bankers who were creditors on one occasion and debtors on the next and who, again, needed to maximize the possibilities for attracting capital beyond the narrow avenues defined by chains of command. The great efficiency of the Nakarattar banking system depended in large part on the freedom to draw on kinship ties that were independent of and crosscut territorial ties and, conversely, to draw on territorial ties that were independent of and crosscut ties of kinship.

Equality and Elitehood

Did Nakarattar values of equality conflict with the reputations of elite members of their caste, of their temple trustees (dharma kartas) , and of adathis? Does the existence of a Nakarattar elite imply that Nakarattars subscribed to a principle of hierarchy in business matters compartmentalized from the arenas of myth, ritual, and kinship that we have just reviewed? In other words, is there not a Dumontian case to be made that Nakarattars maintained a principle of hierarchy in ordering their internal social relations, just like any other caste group?

A poetically just answer might be to argue that Nakarattar equality "encompassed" differences of economic stratification signaled by elite Nakarattar status. Indeed, I have offered evidence for precisely such encompassment in the preceding analyses of egalitarian values in the Nakarattar jati varalaru and of ritual mechanisms for relativising and distributing temporary elitehood in Chettinad temples, such the rotation of temple trustees. Yet this argument is only part of the answer. For the rest of the solution, it is important to recognize that, regardless of the symmetry and lack of rank among Nakarattar relationships with each other—in fact, as part of this symmetry and lack of hierarchy—Nakarattars competed with each other for non-Nakarattar clients. It was precisely in contexts external to the caste community that terms such as adathi had a currency. The only Nakarattars today who remember the term adathi are retired bankers. The only published reference to adathis is the Imperial Bank's "adathi list" of approved bankers. Those few Nakarattars that are familiar with the term adathi gloss it as "parent banker" without any literal Tamil translation. In other words, just like titles such as "Salt Chetti," Zamindar, Rao Bahadur , or even, in the most extreme case, "Raja Sir," the elite status of the adathi gained meaning outside the caste. From the

inside , it was recognized as an asset or an investment; something to be achieved, not something ascribed; and something equally achievable by any Nakarattar businessman. Elite status among Nakarattars was a valuable tool, but it had no intrinsic value in ordering Nakarattar relationships with each other. It could be sought, obtained, and employed in relationships with non-Nakarattars without coming into conflict with Nakarattar egalitarianism.

The Symbolism of Finance

Whether advancing a loan, making a deposit, encashing a hundi, negotiating a dowry, or endowing a temple, Nakarattars exchanged goods or services in self-perpetuating and generative social relationships.^[18] In every case, the exchange not only reproduced and transformed the social relationships existing among transactors, but also served as a sign or index of those relationships. In each case, transactors fetishized the objects they exchanged by objectifying them as alienable commodities or by transforming them into charismatic gifts of transcendental value. In making this argument, I do not mean to deny important differences among the various objects, services, and persons exchanged by Nakarattars, but rather to underscore two qualities that they shared in common: their use as capital for social investment and their significance as symbols of social relationships. These two qualities are inseparable.

In contrast to other items of exchange—food, land, or women, for example—Nakarattar financial instruments (including those employed for the inter-Nakarattar deposits that indexed Nakarattar social organization) were remarkable for their context-free liquidity and negotiability. They were, in McKim Marriott's (1976) terms, things which had a "subtle substance-code" among the universe of things exchanged by actors in Hindu society.^[19] This subtlety—in Marriott's sense—was clearly reflected in their negotiability. Nakarattar financial instruments did not conduct pollution. Actors of different ritual status who exchanged financial instruments were not at risk as they would have been if they had exchanged such things as cooked food, garbage, or bodily waste (hair clippings, menstrual blood, etc.). Financial instruments, therefore, had a negotiability throughout society that permitted their exchange between people whose ritual status was known to be unequal and (in long-distance, indirect, or multiple-party transactions) between people whose ritual status was unknown. Beyond this negotiability, Nakarattar financial instruments were often saleable, with the larger Nakarattar firms acting as clearing-houses for instruments drawn up by smaller firms. Finally, although in many cases loans were refinanced or deposits maintained indefinitely,

transactions of specific Nakarattar instruments either were automatically terminated after a fixed period of time or were terminable on demand. A transaction involving Nakarattar financial instruments was therefore, in principle, free from any of those enduring obligations that mark gift-giving relationships of generalized reciprocity (Sahlins 1966). The social relationship symbolized by a financial transaction was, to adapt Marriott's (1976) terminology, "minimized." In fact, Nakarattar financial instruments constituted a type of commodity, circulating freely in Indian and Southeast Asian society; their transaction was constrained only by considerations of price (Kopytoff 1986).

In one crucial respect, however, Nakarattar financial instruments were distinct from commodities in the idealized, market-oriented sense of the word. Although exhibiting a discrete value that left their transactors free from the obligations of generalized reciprocity, they did establish temporary bonds of trust and mutual expectation between transactors. Moreover, different kinds of instruments symbolized different bonds, for different periods, and secured by different sanctions. In other words, although financial instruments as a class of objects were, in Marriott's terms, all constituted of subtle substances in the Hindu universe of exchange, within this subtle class there existed various subtly distinguished subclasses.

This is particularly apparent in the different kinds of deposits established by interbank transactions between Nakarattars. In "purely" business contexts, these deposits included short-term kadai kanakku ("shop account") deposits that functioned like checking accounts and that could be drawn on by dharsan or nadappu hundis ("sight" or "walking" hundis ). Other "purely" business transactions included long-term thavanai ("resting") deposits on which Nakarattars could draw thavanai hundis , payable after a short period of rest. But business was seldom "pure," especially among the Nakarattars themselves. So, in addition to their kadai kanakku deposits, Nakarattars established various long-term, ritually generated deposits (mempanam) , including deposits for affinal relatives (accimar panam) ; deposits for lineage mates and clanmates, particularly through the medium of deposits from temples controlled by various descent-based cults or worship (tanatu murai panam); and deposits made to parent bankers (adathi panam) . In other words, transactions of Nakarattar financial instruments that established different kinds of deposits with different terms to maturity also established distinct spheres of exchange between Nakarattar firms related by a variety of caste-based principles for social cooperation.^[20]

The capital structure of individual firms reveals the extent of caste-based mutual risk taking through the number and size of long-term

deposits. And the disposition to take risks over the long term, it seems to me, corresponds very closely to our notion of "trust": what Nakarattars refer to in Tamil as nanayam . It emerges in Nakarattar account books as a continuous cultural variable that distinguishes a range of long-term and short-term social relationships, exploding the overly-simple dichotomy between gifts of open-ended, generalized exchange and market commodities restricted to a momentary, one-time-only transaction.

The spheres of exchange that entailed the most trust and that were defined by ritually based, long-term deposits are especially interesting in the present context because they included transactions that were functionally equivalent to investments in long-term certificates of deposit issued by Western banks. And, like these long-term certificates of deposit, the funds they represented were not left sitting idly in the recipient firm's coffers. They were lent out. The firm then received interest. The borrower had capital he could invest or otherwise spend. At the same time, the original deposit still stood to the credit of the original long-term depositor, earning him interest and providing him security against which he could obtain loans for further investment and expenditure.

By conducting financial transactions within different spheres of exchange, individual firms were able to control their cash flow and to insure that original depositors and subsequent borrowers did not claim the funds at the same time. In this way, every deposit to a Nakarattar bank could and did serve as the basis for expanding the supply of money and credit for the system as a whole. That is, Nakarattar financial transactions generated what Western economists refer to as a "multiplier effect." The capital thereby created (along with profits and interest generated by other banking and trading operations) was expended on a wealth of items for consumption, exchange, and further investment. To put it simply, financial transactions between different Nakarattar spheres of exchange created wealth. In Marriott's terms, multisphere transactions were made possible by the subtle medium of Nakarattar financial instruments and generated an increase both in the supply of money and in the production of things with substance-codes of grosser quality, such as land, minerals, or agrarian commodities. Nakarattar financial instruments were, indeed, not only highly liquid, negotiable, and transformable, but also richly productive and generative.

The extent of Nakarattar money creation is not clear. I have not ascertained the normal reserve ratio maintained by Nakarattar bankers. The ease and reliability of interfirm loans reported by retired bankers suggest—and the practices brought to light by court records (see Chapter 4) confirm—that the ratio was remarkably high. In any case, it seems clear that

the tremendous growth of Nakarattar assets in Southeast Asia cannot be entirely attributed (as it is sometimes suggested) to either a transfer of funds from India or a diversion of profits from the agricultural and mining industries of Southeast Asia.

This is not to say that the Nakarattar banking system resembled an economist's model of Western-style banking systems. It bears repeating that Nakarattars loaned and deposited money with one another in caste-defined social relationships based on business territory, residential location, descent, marriage, and common cult membership. Unlike in modern Western banking systems, it was the reputation, decisions, and reserve deposits shared among exchange spheres defined according to these principles, and not a government-controlled central bank, that played a dominant role in the regulation of reserve levels and assured public confidence in individual Nakarattars as representatives of the caste as a whole. In other words, the Nakarattar banking system was a caste-based banking system. Individual Nakarattars organized their lives around participation in and management of various communal institutions adapted to the task of accumulating and distributing reserves of capital.

Macro-, Micro-, and Mediate Analysis

I suggested in Chapter 1 of this book that anthropological studies of culture and society have moved in two increasingly divergent directions. One entails a macroperspective on the causes and consequences of people's actions within their environment, both social and natural. The other takes a microperspective on the concepts and values that motivate people's everyday lives and give them meaning. The present study has tried to mediate between these two perspectives: on one hand, describing the cultural world in which Nakarattars created, reproduced, and transformed their distinctive social institutions, and on the other hand, describing the interaction between these institutions and the world of colonial India. The result is similar, in some respects, to an old-fashioned anthropology focused on institutions of Nakarattar kinship organization: its families, lineages, clans, and kindreds.

Yet, despite certain surface similarities, I do not subscribe to assumptions about social equilibrium that mar so many classic structural-functionalist accounts written in the 1950s and 1960s. On the contrary, I have taken my task to be describing how, for a moment in India's long history, a group of people, calling themselves the Nakarattar of Chettinad, organized themselves as a particular kind of "trading diaspora" (Cohen 1969; Curtin 1984; Timberg 1978) and in so doing provided much of the financial basis for agriculture and commerce in South and Southeast Asia. The

core of my analysis lies in an expanded view of the nature and functioning of capital: a view that encompasses investments of symbolic capital (Bourdieu 1977) as ways of achieving different kinds of transcendental goals (Bloch and Parry 1989), as part of elite tournaments for prestige (Appadurai 1985; Tambiah 1984), and as tactics for obtaining different kinds of more calculable, tangible rewards (Bourdieu 1977). Nakarattar symbolic capital, I have argued, consisted not only in their financial instruments but in the social relationships and institutions they symbolized. Moreover, the capital and investment goals of individual Nakarattars coincided with the capital and investment goals of collective institutions of caste and kinship. For a specific moment in Indian history, these goals reinforced and reproduced each other.^[21]

It was, however, but a moment in a dynamic historical process of individual and collective investment. Nakarattar investments created a specific institutional structure. This institutional structure, in turn, provided an efficient system for transferring knowledge and money throughout the world of British South and Southeast Asia. But it was not long before that world changed, and individual Nakarattars responded to these changes by altering their investments and their institutions. It is important not to adopt the classic structural-functionalist stance and hypostatize the colonial pattern of social organization as necessarily or purposely self-reproductive. But it is also important not to ignore that pattern. One cannot understand the actions of individual Nakarattars without understanding the historical contexts, institutional and global, in which they lived their lives and which made their actions possible. Similarly, one cannot understand the mechanisms of colonial credit markets for agrarian and industrial development without understanding the institutions of informal banking constituted by Nakarattar collective practice. All three levels of analysis—the macro political economy of colonial India, the micro world of individual Nakarattar business practice, and the mediating world of Nakarattar caste and kinship—affected each other. The most general conclusion drawn by the present study, then, concerns neither caste nor capital but the necessity for integrating micro and macro studies with a mediating focus on social institutions.

Conclusion

This completes my reflections on the Nakarattars of South India, at least for the present. There remains much left undone. As I write these comments, an anthropology student at the London School of Economics is completing her Ph.D. dissertation on women and the domestic economy of the Nakarattar, another anthropologist in Japan is exploring their rela-

tionship to the goddess cults of Chettinad, and Nakarattars themselves continue to chronicle their past history, exploring the propects for creating a Chettinad museum and seeking insights into modern business tactics by exploring old business successes. My study stops in 1930, just when Nakarattars began their return from Southeast Asia. I did not explore the impoverishment of the majority of Nakarattars since that time, nor the massive investment of their elite in the full range of South Indian industry, from leather to films, and from textiles to engineering. What I have tried to do is to examine aspects of their business practice and social organization in colonial India in order to carry out a critical revision of standard Western conceptions of caste and capitalism. For the Nakarattar do not fit well with these conceptions.

Many students of India will argue that the case of the Nakarattar requires no modification to the standard view since they represent a unique exception to general patterns that the standard view accurately captures. This, it seems to me, is an unfortunate perspective. Every caste in India forms a unique case. The Nakarattar divergence from the Western concept falls well within the range of variation that exists in Indian society. Indeed, the Western conception generally has more to say about Western essentialism and orientalism than it has to say about India. In particular, it is imbued with a normative vision of Western political and economic destiny so powerful that it renders non-Western forms of capitalism invisible and inconceivable, even while depending on those forms for the pursuit of its political and economic dreams.

The last few decades have witnessed what may be the beginning of a serious internal deconstruction of Western normative visions. But the outcome of this deconstruction is far from clear. It is still largely restricted to a few small intellectual circles, and it may well prove a passing fashion. Moreover, it is still in its infancy. Most of the critical efforts directed at the standard view are precisely that: critical. No new way of conceiving India has yet emerged. And, as this study demonstrates for study after study, the old ways still prevent an appreciation of even such major players as the Nakarattar of South India. The research on which the present book is based has been possible only because of the Nakarattar themselves, who remain the people most responsible for remembering and transforming both their past and their future.