Chapter Four
Making the Community
George Town in Social History

One of the things that surprised me when I began my research on Madras was how little the local organization of George Town had changed since the start of the eighteenth century. Early maps, such as the one commissioned by Thomas Pitt around 1707-8 (not reproduced here), when he was governor in council at Madras, and that of F. L. Conradi, "Madraspatnam," drawn in 1755, reveal this simple fact quite clearly (see map 3). True, in its early days the Town area had far fewer buildings. In those days, much of the area was garden and open land, a sharp contrast to George Town's density and near complete lack of open spaces today. But already in these early maps the division of the Town into eastern and western moieties is one of its dominant features. In both maps, the Town's two sections are clearly divided by a canal with gardens on either side. In the Conradi map, a line, straight as a ruler, divides the western gardens from those of the eastern section. This can also be seen in J. Talboys Wheeler's sketch map of Madras in 1733 (map 7). Later, Popham's Broadway replaces the canal and gardens as the dividing line between the two sections (map 8).

The maps reveal that even in these early times, the local organization of the Town reflects the division of castes into right-hand and left-hand moieties. This is a distinction that is no longer made in Madras today, although it still affects the Town's layout and the distribution of caste residences. And there are older inhabitants still living who can remember disputes over temple rights founded in the division. As we have seen, the left-hand division to which the Beeri Chettiars belonged lived pre-

Map 7.
Madras in 1733 (based on Subrahmanya Aiyar's enlargement of J. Talboys
Wheeler's map).

Map 8.
Contemporary central Madras City.

dominately in the eastern section of the Town, to seaside, while the right-hand castes, headed by the Komati Chettiars, lived in the western section. Today, should a person stroll the streets of the two areas, the division is still apparent in the location of temples. In the eastern section of Town, temples are Saivite, because the left-hand castes were predominately Tamils, the great majority of whom are followers of Siva. By contrast, Vaishnavite temples predominate in the Town's old right-hand section because its residents were Telugu speakers, a group composed largely of worshipers of Vishnu. But the right-hand/left-hand division was not sectarian based. There are Telugu-speaking Beeri Chettiars who are followers of Vishnu, and while the majority of the Telugu-speaking Komatis consider themselves Vaishnavites, nonetheless Komatis claim a Saivite goddess for their caste deity, Kanyaka Parameeswari. Her temple, located in Kothawal Chavadi market is the counterpart of the Beeri Chettiar's Kandasami temple.

On the basis of these observations and on the evidence of the maps and the stroll through the Town, it might, nonetheless, appear that the forces determining George Town history and local organization are primarily those of caste and religion. After all, this is what the maps and caste-based residential areas seem to reveal. One would have good company making such an assumption; the supposition that caste and religion are, in fact, primary determinants in Indian social history has long dominated anthropological and historical discourse. Yet, when listening to Bala and his Beeri Chettiar friends explain who they are, it is apparent that they stress the actions and motivations of individuals, not caste and religion, to explain why things are the way they are. To listen to Bala, George Town is organized as it is because leaders have made it that way and because ordinary townspeople have been motivated by self-interest to assist in that construction. Bala's explanation and interpretations that stress caste and religion as the primary agents in Indian history are, therefore, fundamentally contradictory. Why do Bala's and his friends' views contradict those of Western scholars? Might not Bala's explanation of agency be a product of the late twentieth century, when individual responsibility is much more stressed in law and in social life generally than it appears to have been in the past (e.g., Béteille 1987)? In this chapter, I explore the social history of George Town and the role that civic individuality has played in its construction. My aim is to see what explanations persons living in different time periods gave as motivations for their behavior, and why, from their point of view, the Town was organized in the manner that it was. Looking back in time

helps us, as observers of present-day George Town, to understand what the interrelationships between religion, caste, and individual interest were and why the community of George Town today is framed in the manner that it is.

The Social Setting

What follows, then, is an analysis of the character and role of individuality among the George Town Beeri Chettiars and its role in the construction of the Town during three time periods: 1652-1708, 1717-1816, and 1876-1890.^[1]

At the outset it is necessary to call attention to the fact that Madras City was officially founded by the British when they gained the right to locate Fort St. George at the site for the purposes of trade in 1639 (Arasaratnam 1986:21). It is wrong, however, to assume that from its inception Madras was socially a British city, or that it was framed by a dominant Western-style mercantile economy (Washbrook 1988). On the contrary, "Black Town," the Indian section of the city, was Indian in its organization and reflected the social character of the surrounding region (Lewandowski 1985). Similarly, the organization of trade and production was also Indian. The dominance of Indian ways is hardly surprising, given the small number of English East India Company servants, about twenty-four "exclusive of Apprentices and Soldiers" in the second half of the 1600s, the weakness of British forces, and the Company's policy of depending on local merchants to conduct their trade and manage production (Wheeler [1861-2] 1990, 1:38-39). During the reign of Charles II (1660-1685), for example, when the number of English soldiers in Madras was increased, they still numbered less than two hundred. Rather than imposing Western ways and economy, Company agents tapped into existing systems (Arasaratnam 1986:3; Washbrook 1988:62; cf. Wink 1990:4) and adopted local Indian customs of public interaction, patron-age, and display.

For example, during his stay in Madras from 1699 to 1704 Thomas Salmon described how temple dancers

make up part of the equipage of a great man when he goes abroad; for every man of figure in the country, I observed, had a number of these singing women run before him; even the Governor of Fort St George was attended by fifty of them, as well as by the country musick when he went out. (quoted in Love 1913, 2:75)

The Company Council also made donations toward the maintenance of priests, supported a "water choultry" (a roofed public well and rest place for weary travelers) within the Town, and contributed to ten to twelve temples, including particularly the Company Church, the "Town Pagoda" (Chennai Kesava Perumaal temple), and the Triplicane Pagoda (the Paartasaarati temple) (Love 1913, 2:578). Public giving of this sort marked the preeminent leadership roles Company officers sought for themselves within the local Indian community (see Mines 1984:149). But in these activities the British mimicked the many prominent Indians, whose model for displaying eminence they were following.

As I demonstrate subsequently, Company-Indian interaction had a characteristically dialogic quality (Irschick 1989:490; 1994). In the early years, the Company's main effect on local society was that it offered new opportunities for trade, and Company representatives clearly fanned competition for access to these by favoring different Indian merchants. Consequently, from the beginning competition among merchants was intense.

From the first, Beeri Chettiar merchants were one of the main trading castes of Madras City. Their arch-competitors in the early years of Black Town were the Balijas and the Komati Chettiars, who were the dominant trading castes of the surrounding countryside. This competitive opposition reflected the organization of castes into rival right-hand and left-hand moieties in this region of post-Vijayanagar influence. The Komatis and Balijas were both Telugu-speaking, Vaishnavite castes be-longing to the right-hand caste division, while the Beeris were predominantly Tamil-speaking Saivites, belonging to the left-hand section.

1652-1708

During the early period of Madras history, the East India Company relied on prominent Indian traders, called "Company merchants," to contract their trade.^[2] When a merchant was awarded the Company investment, or "Prize," his control of contracts and cash advances meant that he stood at the head of an extensive intercaste network of weavers, artisans, service castes, and traders, who produced, processed, and ultimately delivered the goods listed in the Company muster to the Company ships. Consequently, when the Company Council in Madras awarded a contract to an Indian merchant, the contract meant not only that such men stood to become wealthy, but that appointment singled these persons out as men of power who could deny or reward access to

trade to anyone wishing to participate. This sanction of denial enabled them to act as arbiters of trust within their communities (Rudner 1989). Essentially, such men were brokers and agents, who through their dispersal of the investment, controlled the logistics of trade from the point of manufacture through to the boatmen, who took the goods to the ships anchored in the Madras Roads (cf. Pearson 1988).

It is evident, therefore, that the mercantile-manufacturing sector of Madras society at this period contradicts a Dumontian interpretation of India on two grounds: first, because the society is integrated by market trade rather than cooperative distribution, which Dumont contends characterizes the Indian economy and is a concomitant feature of India's caste-based division of labor,^[3] and second, because intercaste relations are organized by key individuals in pursuit of self-interests. Dumont offers market trade no causal force in Indian history, arguing that economics remain "undifferentiated within politics," which is itself subordinated to religion (Dumont 1970a:164-6). What he means by this is that it is religion that determines the order of Indian society, not politics or economics. Yet in south Indian society the importance of trade is attested by its antiquity (cf. Hall 1980; Gittinger 1982), the receptivity of local polities to European trade, and the ready response of traditional Indian merchants and manufacturers to the opportunities created by the East India Company. Essentially, the Company tapped into what was already a highly developed manufacturing and trading culture, which was, of course, what attracted them in the first place (Arasaratnam 1986:3; Chaudhuri 1985:92-3; Washbrook 1988; Wheeler [1861-2] 1990, vol. 1). Further, the Indian merchant headmen exhibited an individuality that indicates that they cannot be dismissed as mere representatives of collective interests and so lacking real social significance as unique persons.

The individuality of these merchants was especially marked by their preeminence as the heads of intercaste constituencies that they formed around themselves in their capacity as the brokers of trade. Expressing the headmen's preeminent roles, the British referred to them as the heads of caste, commonly meaning by "caste" either the right-hand or left-hand moiety, and held them responsible for the behavior of their followers. The headmen's ability to control behavior depended on their pivotal roles as the contractors and financiers of trade, roles that enabled them to demand compliance from allies in exchange for their patronage in trade. In addition, individuality Was marked by achieved reputation , which depended importantly on the personal ability and successes of a merchant. Finally, individuality was distinguished by au-

tonomy , stemming from the headman's achievement of preeminence (he was responsible for who he was) and reputation as a broker-financier (he was responsible for what he did). Headmen exercised this autonomy in their relations with the British as well as in their intercaste and intracaste relations.

As we shall see, religion played an important part in the organization of Black Town society, but religion was not the cause of organization, competition for control of trade was. Relations between the two moieties were determined by competition for trade, and their relative positions in Madras society directly reflected the successes and failures of merchant-headmen, especially in their relationships with the Company.

Reputation, Achievement, and Individuality

For its own part, the Madras Company Council maintained its power over merchants by awarding contracts on an annual basis. The continuity of a merchant's power, therefore, depended on his ability to maintain good relations with members of the Council and in particular with the Council governor. By the early eighteenth century, such relations depended upon the merchant's ability to finance his own trade and also upon his entrepreneurial skills and reputation for being able to meet the Company muster. If a merchant was publicly accorded honors ("tasheerifes," from Arabic, tashriif , "honoring," conferring honor^[4] ) by the Council, and especially by the governor, then his reputation among his production and trade network remained strong. His ties with the Council were confirmed. Conversely, if in public a merchant failed to receive respect from the members of Council, it meant that the favor of the Council had shifted to his competitors. Thus, the standing of Indian merchants within their own communities depended on public knowledge of their individual relationships with the governor and his Council. Respect and ritualized honors singled out individuals and were the barometers of power that signified that their recipients had the connections that made for profitable trade.^[5]

Competition among leading merchants was fierce, and the propensity of the British on occasion to favor the lower-ranked Beeri merchants over right-hand Komati and Balija merchants led to heated disputes. The riots of 1652 involved all of these elements. The governor in Council, Aaron Baker, was on the beach embarking on a leave from Madras when he made public his preference for Beeri merchants by refusing the gift of fruit right-hand merchants offered him. Instead, Baker honored the

"principalls of the left hand," Beeri merchants, with "tasheerifes," and "after them the Bramanees also, and hee comforted said principalls of the left hand with the Bramanees, that they should have patience two yeares, in which tyme hee would take course to Content them" (Love 1913, 1:123). A Balija, who was agitated by Baker's favoritism toward the Beeris, called a Beeri to his face and in the presence of the English, a man not worth a "cash," and tit for tat, the Beeri labeled the Balija worth less than two cash. Incensed, the Balija went to Town and raised members of the right-hand to attack and plunder the left-hand community, cutting off the ears of two men in the process (Love 1913, 1:120). The Company had only twenty-six English soldiers at the time, and they were unable to prevent the fighting that ensued. Both sides brought in men to carry on their fight.

The aim of the Balijas was to drive the "Chettis" (the Beeri Chettiars) from Town (Love 1913, 1:122). Significantly, this was a trade dispute, although ostensibly the dispute was over "'who should be the more honnourable Cast and have Presidency of the other'" (Love 1913, 1:120). If Baker's public preference for the Beeri merchants were allowed to stand, it would have signaled that they were also to be given precedence in trade. Baker intimated as much at his departure (Love 1913, 1:123). The Balijas struck, therefore, with the aim of undoing all this.

In the end, as had also occurred in the 1640s, the dispute was settled by dividing the streets of the Town, assigning those in the east to the left-hand castes and those in the west to the right-hand. The purpose was to separate the moieties to prevent riots from occurring during ritual occasions, when the leaders of the rival communities claimed ritual honors that expressed their conflicting claims to precedence and public reputation, claims that would single them out, individualizing them as leaders (Dirks 1987; Presler 1987; Mines and Gourishankar 1990). Territorial separation was a standard Indian approach to settling such disputes (cf. Buchanan 1807, 2:268; Appadurai 1974; Mines 1984:45) and indicates that ritual precedence, far from encompassing politics and economics, was limited by these. Separation, however, was a temporary solution because the Company Council created an untenable situation when it contracted exclusively through the merchants of one alliance. Riots were to occur again when the right-hand Komatis were once more excluded from trade.

The next great dispute occurred in 1707.^[6] According to the right-hand Komati perpetrators of the riots, the point at issue was again one of ritual precedence. But the actual cause of this great conflict was the Com-

pany Council's decision to break off ties with "Sunca Rama and Iapa Chitty," head merchants of the dominant right-hand Komatis, and to award the year's "Prize" to two left-hand Beeri merchant-headmen, "Calloway and Vinkattee Chitty," the "best Chapmen [merchants]" (P.C., July 31, 1707). The Council's reasons were that the finances of the Komati men looked shaky, while Calloway and Vinkattee Chitty had the "money at command to carry on the buisiness [sic ]" (P.C., Aug. 9, 1707:92-3).

Discounting Komati complaints that the riots were caused by Beeri infringements on their rights to precedence, the Beeri merchant-headmen explained the reasons for the riots to the Company Council as follows:

The design of the Right hand Cast was no other thn to impede the dispatch of the Companys Ship for England Expecting there was not a sufficiency of Goods in the Godown [warehouse] to Load on thm, which they thought would occasion the Company displeasure against the Governor and councill and utter ruin to the Left hand Cast, as soon as it could come to their [the Company's] knowledge, and that was their [the right-hand caste leaders'] sole aim. (P.C., Nov. 6, 1707:152)

The importance of the Beeri Chetti contention is that it reveals that the Komatis are contesting ritual precedence as a political strategy, revealing that ritual hierarchy is not the cause of Komati-Beeri Chettiar intercaste relations, as a Dumontian analysis would lead one to expect, but that competition for control of trade is. Thus, ritual practice is made part of the politics of trade.

Dirks (1987:261) has criticized Dumont's contention that in India religion has always been a separate and superior force to politics. By contrast, he argues that religion was an integral part of political authority in the ancient regimes of India but became separated from politics during colonial times, when the authority of caste headmen, which had been invested by local kings, declined in the face of British rule. Under colonial rule, temple honors continued to signify local prestige, but the recipients no longer had any political authority. The result: religion was separated from politics. The disputes of 1652 and 1707 support Dirks's assessment of the political uses of religion and indicate that the East India Company was still too weak to force the separation at that time. In fact, as will become evident, one wonders whether at the local level this separation ever occurred fully.

It took the highly vexed British a year to settle the 1707 dispute. For the first several months riots disrupted the peace. At one time the leading Komatis led a withdrawal of right-hand castes from Madras City to

San Thome (P.C., Aug. 20, 1707), while members of the left-hand castes locked themselves in their houses (P.C., Aug. 22, 1707). Life was made extremely difficult for both the British and Indians of the city. Water carriers no longer brought water to Fort St. George. Parayah laborers refused to work, boatmen refused to carry passengers and cargo to and from the ships anchored in the Madras Roads, fishermen refused to fish, and artisans engaged in textile production refused to process cloth (P.C., Aug. 27, 1707). To top it off, the Council determined that one of their number, William Frazer, was in league with the rebel Komatis, trying to engineer his own trading advantage to the detriment of Governor in Council Thomas Pitt (P.C., Dec. 2-6, 1707; Wheeler [1861-2] 1990, 2:41-61).

The manner in which the right-hand traders had achieved all this mischief was straightforward enough. They paid or promised to pay the providers of services, the handicraftsmen, Parayah workers, boatmen, washermen and women (bleachers and preparers of cloth), and fisher-men, for the pay they would lose while they were on strike (cf. P.C., Aug. 27, 1707). In other words, society was organized by the market and self-interest—not by cooperative distribution, as Dumont would contend.

The response of the Company to the disputes was multiplex. First, it threatened to use force: "[T]he gov' propposd the attacking of St Thoma [San Thome] the 26[th] at break of day ... and [there to] put as many of them ['our Parriars'] as posible to th Sword, but no Inhabitants of any Cast else ..." (P.C., Sept. 24, 1707:128-9). But this "allarmd Severall" inhabitants of Madras, especially the Armenians and Moors, who feared the Company would not succeed and the "Parriars would flye" into the country (P.C., Sept. 25, 1707:129). Likewise, the "Pedde Naique," the big-man head of the western section of Town, pressed the Company Council not to attack, arguing that it should use milder means to achieve a settlement (P.C., Sept. 25, 1707). He said he knew the governor of San Thome and intimated that he would try to use his influence with him to persuade the "Parriars" to return to Madras. Notice in all these ploys the importance of connections and of key individuals in the organization of early Madras society.

Second, the Company sought to gain control over the loading and unloading of ships by contracting to build twelve of their own shore boats, and by recruiting boatmen from outside the Town, who were independent of the right-hand headmen. Third, they offered to finance the removal of service caste headmen, who had cooperated with the right-hand merchant-leaders, in order to make room for new headmen who

promised to show first loyalty toward themselves (P.C., Oct. 20, 1707). Next, they attempted to counter Komati tactics by offering Company support to service castes in substitution for the support the Komatis had provided or promised, guaranteeing employment and protection, in return for the promise of loyalty and a return to work (e.g., P.C., Dec. 2, 1707). Further, in order to control the Kaikkoolar weavers and the "Oylemen," who had been switching allegiances back and forth, causing trouble to both the right-hand and the left-hand castes, the Council required that these castes declare themselves for the left-hand and the right-hand respectively (Love 1913, 2:29). Here we see the British attempting to place lower-ranked castes under the headmen of the leading castes of the right-hand and left-hand moieties so that they could be controlled.

When, in January of 1708, the Council learned that Sunca Rama, one of the displaced Komati merchant-headmen, with the help of the Indian governor of nearby San Thome had coined money ("coin'd a parall of fanams and cash") to finance his efforts, they banned the circulation of his money in Madras, under threat of severe punishment (P.C., Jan. 15, 1707/8). Obviously, the British thought that the loyalty of the right-hand intercaste alliance was financed by the dispossessed Komati merchant-headmen. Much of the British effort to end the conflict, therefore, was directed at countering the financial power of the right-hand leaders. In effect, many Company efforts were recognizably counterbids designed to buy loyalty for the Company.

But the most effective policy of the Council was its use of the pivotal role of these leading individuals. The Company held the leading caste headmen of the right-hand directly responsible for the uprisings, citing them as the "Chief Instruments in raising the ... rebelion" (P.C., Aug. 27, 1707) and repeatedly arrested the headmen of both sections to force them to make a settlement (e.g., P.C., Aug. 25, 1707). Sunca Rama was prominent among the rebels of the right-hand, while Calloway and Vinkattee Chitty were two of the four headmen of the left-hand. In effect, while struggling to control these headmen, the Company was also attempting to rule indirectly through them—without great success, it might be added.

In the end, the headmen of the moieties themselves reached a settlement involving the redivision of Black Town into right-hand and left-hand sections. After 1652, the old residential division had gradually been forgotten and members of both moieties had come to live in the streets of the other. Now the streets of the moieties were redefined and the ownership of upwards of five hundred houses were transferred. As in 1652,

the purpose of dividing Black Town was to confine ritual activities, which expressed the ritual precedence of headmen, to the localities of each moiety. In essence the purpose of separation was to limit the significance of ritual precedence by dividing it equally between two separate but rival headman territories, reflecting competing domains of merchant-headman authority. It is this division that frames the local organization of the Town area to this day. Its continued importance attests to the renewal of the separation down to the twentieth century.

Like the earlier riots of 1652, this dispute and settlement reveal several features about the organization of society at this time. It reveals, as we have seen, that the headman-merchants had great social authority, and that the British relied on headman-brokers to manage their trade and to regulate society. The Company participated in establishing authority by awarding contracts to headmen, which in effect defined the strength of their political and economic influence. In turn, headmen created the local organization of Black Town, and they divided it into two domains as a compromise solution that allowed them to preserve their preeminence and so their reputations among their separate constituents. The separate domains of the moieties, therefore, reflect the merchant-headman basis of organization. It was not religious hierarchy, then, but competition and the broker system of trade and finance that were the causes of local organization and caste relationships. The acquisition of wealth, reputation, and power were key motives behind organization. Finally, the division of the Town into domains of precedence indicates that local organization centered around the pivotal role of headman-brokers, rather than around a single encompassing ideology of hierarchy. This is apparent because separation offers no solution to contested hierarchical caste rank. However it does offer a solution to headmen threatening each other's preeminence among their constituents because it distinguishes constituencies as distinct territorial domains. Under conditions of separation, conflicts would only arise in situations where headmen either usurped the precedence of their rivals within their domains, or where they attempted to penetrate their rivals' domains without acknowledging their preeminence (Mines and Gourishankar 1990). Indeed, as we shall see, these are precisely the kinds of causes of conflicts that characterize the Town through most of the eighteenth century.

To summarize, when the role of headmen is understood in the organization of society, the causes of disputes and the local organization of the Town become apparent. Disputes were generated by headmen competing to control production and trade for their own interests and re-

flected the pervasive influence of the market at all levels of society. Town organization was created by the headmen themselves, in order to perpetuate their own roles and reputations as key individuals among traders and producers. The headmen resolved the dispute of 1707 by demarcating exclusive constituencies for themselves, dividing the Town into distinct territorial units. Their aim was to give themselves permanent social arenas within which they would stand as the central figures. These territories formed their constituency domains, and it was within them that their individuality as the leaders of their communities was now to be defined.

1717-1816

Conflicts led by the headmen of the two moieties did not stop with the resolution of the 1707-8 dispute. Riots (Love 1913, 3:385; P.C., 391A, Mar. 6, 1812) or the threat of riots occurred again in 1716-17, 1728, 1750, 1752, 1753, 1771, 1789, 1790, 1795, and 1809, and then, throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century with less frequency. But from around 1716 the scope of disputes in Black Town changed. Altercations now arose for a variety of more limited reasons than those that had led to the all-out "wars" of earlier years. They occurred when members of one moiety threatened to enter the domain of the other with their ritual processions (e.g., the disputes of 1728, 1752-53), when the caste members of one moiety usurped the symbols or rights of a caste of the other (e.g., the caste flag disputes of 1771-90), or when members of one moiety created innovative ritual displays that were seen by their opponents as overreaching their own markers of preeminence (e.g., the dispute of 1790, occurring when the Viswakarmas created an innovative "brass disc" temple cart, and in 1809, when they introduced the grand pretension of using five calasams [pots] on their funeral biers). The instigators of all these disputes were the headmen whose reputations were threatened.^[7]

By eighteenth century's end, the role of the Company in local society had also dramatically changed. As a result of the Company victory in the Carnatic Wars, most of south India now came under its rule. In the early years of the nineteenth century, the Company consolidated its administration and developed bureaucratic principles that directly affected the role of headmen in society. When the riots of 1809 disrupted the peace of Madras City, the Company resolved no longer to mediate such disputes but to treat breaches of the peace as matters for the police (P.C.,

391A, Mar. 6, 1812:1444). This is the historical point at which the police, as a bureaucratic arm of Company policy, effectively disrupted the power of headmen to manipulate public peace for their own political ends in the name of caste tradition. Nonetheless, headmen continued to play important roles as brokers and arbiters of social trust among their own constituents.

Reflecting the importance of caste headmen, the eighteenth century was a period when a variety of leaders and their caste constituents built new temples in Black Town (Lewandowski 1985). Both Appadurai (1981) and Dirks (1987) attribute this proliferation to the displacement of Indian kingly political authority by the Company. They reason that ritual honors received during temple events are important public expressions of the relative status of local leaders. Therefore, as an extension of their own authority, kings would have prevented the proliferation of temples controlled by different castes in order to avoid confusing the ladder of local authority.

It is possible, however, that Appadurai and Dirks have misread the reason for the proliferation of temples in Madras when they take it to indicate the fragmentation of governing authority. True, temple honors did single out individual merchants and establish their relative dominance within a temple community. But the goal of merchants who controlled honors was not political rule, it was to use temples to establish their own public reputations and influence in order to facilitate their en-terprises (Haynes 1987; Rudner 1989; Mines and Gourishankar 1990). The division of the Town into moieties and of the moieties into caste locales, each with its own set of temples, created limited constituency do-mains, as we have seen. This enabled a different set of prominent individuals to lay claim to temple honors in each domain. Opportunities for establishing reputations by building temples and public works, sponsoring festivals, and administering community occasions were consequently multiplied. Indeed, the multiplication of temples in urban settings is characteristic of south Indian commercial towns prior to the coming of the British, and the division of towns into right-hand and left-hand sections is also well known.

In Madras, therefore, the proliferation of temples represented several things: the replacement of what had been a small number of Company merchants by a much larger number of men of diminished prominence, the narrowing of social domains so that they corresponded more closely to caste domains (Bayly 1984), and the decreased reach of headman constituency networks. Therefore, what the proliferation of caste temples in

Black Town indicated was less that central political authority was diminished, than that the number of merchants and prominent individuals seeking to establish public reputations had increased.

The Company Merchant system was abolished in 1771. Its function was divided among several types of prominent men. Primary among these were merchant-headmen, who organized around them constituents drawn from their own trading castes; "dubashes," who were powerful personal agents usually drawn from non-trading castes and employed by British individuals and enterprises to mediate interaction with Indians (Neild-Basu 1984), and "shroffs" (sarrafs ), the cashiers of banks and companies, and the financiers of Indian and often British enterprise. Shroffs and dubashes were influential both among Indians and the British. For Indian entrepreneurs, they were the points of access to business with the English, while for the British, they brokered and guaranteed the Indian merchants and businesses with whom English companies contracted.

Should an Indian merchant fail to fulfill his obligations, the Indian dubashes and shroffs could and did deny further contracts. In this manner, these key individuals monitored the reputations and achievements of individual merchants and enforced public trust. For each of these types of pivotal figures, maintaining good public relations with the English was an important determinant of his influence. Nonetheless, since dubashes (Irschick 1989:477-8) and shroffs served competing interests, the British considered their loyalty highly problematic and used a variety of techniques designed to encourage them to make British interests their first priority, including requiring sizeable bonds, holding out to would-be miscreants the threat of dismissal for life, and guaranteeing to those who loyally served them the employment of a son upon retirement. The link-age, therefore, between individual identity and the trust or predictability upon which business exchanges necessarily depended is obvious, as is also the fact that social relations depended on individual reputations and achievements. Among merchants, dubashes, and shroffs individuality was expressed in the importance of who one was and what one did and was a determinant of social relations both within the British and Indian communities.

Both the increased control of the British over Indian society and the displacement of Company merchants narrowed the scope of authority and influence of merchant-headmen. Headmen were no longer responsible for maintaining law and order within their moieties, but as merchant-headmen they retained the power of patronage. For example,

if a caste member sought employment or a merchant sought a loan, then the word of one of these men was sufficient to establish his trustworthiness or credit or the lack thereof. Consequently, in their roles as broker-guarantors headmen continued to establish among their constituents the conditions of social trust needed to conduct business.

In sum, during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries headman-broker leadership continued to be important, and authority, though continuing to be equated with ritual status within caste communities, was closely linked to the quality of relationships a headman established with the British. If a headman were able to claim the respect of the British, his ability to do business was enhanced; he was in a position to claim apical ritual status within his own caste community, and his influence consequently earned him immense authority and power among his caste fellows. The actions of Collah Singana Chetty, the great Komati headman of the early nineteenth century, are illustrative.

Collah Singana Chetty (alias Rownappa Chetty) was the brother of Collah Moothoorama (d. 1804), the founder and head trustee of the Sri Kanyaka Parameeswari temple and Kothawal Chavadi, Madras City's wholesale vegetable market. On 22 February 1816, Collah Singana made a permanent loan of Rs. 40,000 to the Company Government for the maintenance of four choultries (rest houses) in return for a suitable show of appreciation—that is, an expression of public honor—from the Company. The Company Board of Revenue agreed to Collah Singana's wishes, reasoning that accepting the gift might encourage others to make similar "benefactions" and that the offer publicized the honorable reputation of the Company among locals. Notice the dialogic nature of Indian-British interaction. Both needed the other. The Company needed the recognition of big-men like Collah Singana to establish its reputation, and Collah Singana needed the Company to establish his eminence and prestige. The symbolic forms for initiating and expressing this public recognition were, given the context, necessarily Indian: Collah Singana's generous gift and the governor in council's public giving of honors.

In appreciation of Collah Singana's gift, the Board of Revenue recommended that he be given "some approbation of the Right Hon'ble the Governor in Council" (Madras District Records). And on 13 September 1816, the Company publicly honored him with gifts of a gold medal and chain, a palanquin, and a "cowle" (from Arabic, kaul ; an Anglo-Indian legal term meaning a "lease or grant in writing" [Hobson-Jobson 1986]), the latter framed and still preserved by his descendants in Kanchipuram (field notes, 23 Mar. 1986). Later, he was made the suroodiriyamtaar of

Enadur; that is, he was given the right of management and maintenance of temple land in Enadur. Honor received and a strong relationship established, the Company seems subsequently to have facilitated Collah Singana's purchases of land in Madras, while among his own community he established himself over a rival faction as head trustee of the caste temple (field notes; Madras District Records).

The continued importance of the headman model of preeminence also remains evident in the behavior of some English Company officers at about this time. In other words, rules for establishing identity and individuality as a leader are still Indian. Thus, during the 1790s, Lionel Place, the Company collector of the district surrounding Madras City, commanded great pomp at major festivals in nearby Kanchipuram. Adopting

the role of an indigenous king ... Place would call for "all the dancing girls, musicians ... elephants and horses" attached to the temple at Conjeevaram, a temple city in Chingleput District. "Attending in person, his habit was to distribute clothes to the dancing girls, suitable offerings to officiating Brahmins, and a lace garment of considerable value to the god." He also used Company troops and sanctioned the prayers of Brahmans "to propitiate the deity for a good harvest or for good trade." (Irschick 1986:12)

Place's purpose in acting the role of a headman was to establish his public reputation as the preeminent figure of the district that he administered as collector. He sought a public identity both as commander and patron of the people.

1876-1890

In the mid-1870s the headman-centered organization of Beeri Chettiar caste leadership came under attack from within. This occurred when some of these men, whose personal interests were no longer served by the merchant-headman system of organization, were outcaste for breach of caste codes. In defense, the outcastes responded by setting out to destroy the dictatorial autonomy headmen enjoyed as the arbiters of public trust and conduct within the Beeri Chettiar caste.

Between 1876 and the first years of the twentieth century, these rebels successfully undercut the headman system of authority and administrative style. They did this by limiting the autonomy headmen enjoyed as administrators of caste affairs. The rebels used the civil court to circumscribe with law the power of headmen to enforce caste behavior codes with outcasting; they made offices in caste temples and institutions contestable by election, thereby weakening the hold caste headmen had

on the institutions of leadership, and public reputation. And they made headmen accountable under law for their management of institutional funds and assets—the community's resources—in effect substituting audits for reputation as a determinant of trustworthiness. In other words, the rebels forced a redefinition of leadership which curtailed it and made it conform to limits set by bureaucratic standards of administration. Here again we see individuals, motivated by their own self-interests—in this case the desire to relax caste conduct codes—initiating actions that led to the transformation not only of caste leadership, but also of the organization of the Beeri Chettiar caste.

In the 1870s the Town Beeri Chettiars were divided into "18 or 20" named endogamous subcastes, which informants today call gumbuhal (clusters), each headed by one and in some cases two headmen (ejamaanan ) (ILR, 150). According to Beeri Chettiars today, the member-ship of each gumbu was small, numbering a few hundred to a few thousand families. Gumbuhal were named after village-centered locations (e.g., Poonamallee gumbu , Illatuur gumbu ), after the headmen who founded them (e.g., Periyaswamy Chetty gumbu , Kasappa gumbu ), after their relative status (Koruvu Viidu [lowly house] gumbu ), or after a trade specialization (e.g., Tin-Sheet gumbu , Araca-Nut gumbu , Tobacco gumbu , Kasukaarar gumbu ). The gumbuhal were ranked by wealth, and the headmen of wealthy clusters, such as the Poonamallee gumbu , were the most prominent among the Beeris.

Numbering twenty-one or twenty-two in 1876, the headmen of the gumbuhal met to administer the affairs of the caste in the council called the Periyagramam (ILR, 135). These council meetings were held at the caste madam , the Abanatha Dharma Siva Acharya Madam. Headmen also conducted separate subdivisional meetings to decide the affairs of their own cluster constituents, but the Periyagramam meeting held the power to override divisional decisions. Gumbu headmen enforced caste codes for behavior but rarely expelled anyone from caste before the 1870s. They had no need to because, as the monitors of public behavior, headmen ensured that the cost of deviating from caste norms was high: loss of reputation. Therefore, incentives favored compliance with headmen in return for the benefits of a good reputation vouched for by one's headman. Without the word of headmen attesting to their reliability, individuals were at a definite disadvantage in economic and social ex-changes. For example, people would hesitate to employ such a person, give him credit, or arrange a marriage with him or his family members.

The Indian Law Reports (ILR) describe the clusters in 1886 as very much like guilds and the Periyagramam as like a federation of guilds. In the ILR, the Periyagramam is described as "concerned at least as much with enforcement of social observances and of conduct deemed to be for the good of the community—and possibly for regulation of its trade ...—as with the punishment of ceremonial offenses" (ILR, 150-51). The comments of the judge here reflected his awareness, gained from witnesses, that by monitoring public behavior headmen played an important role, ensuring a high level of public trust within the George Town Beeri Chettiar community.

Prior to 1876, only two cases of outcasting among the Beeri Chettiars of the Town were known, one in 1864 involving the son of Mylapore Kandasami Chetti, who was expelled when he became a Christian, and one in 1874-5 involving Pakam Sabapathi Chetti, expelled for an illicit sexual relationship with a low-caste woman (ILR, 138). The absence of prior outcasting suggests that the customary sanctions wielded by headmen were sufficient to punish deviants without resorting to expulsion.

By 1876, these circumstances had changed and the first of a series of outcastings occurred. In that year Ratnavelu Chetti, a member of the Madras Civil Service, was outcaste upon his return to Madras for having travelled to England. Overseas travel was still an outcasting offense at this time. But opinion about the outcasting was divided. Ratnavelu's father, Ramasami, a headman of his cluster and a member of the Periyagramam, opposed the outcasting, causing a division within his cluster between those who supported readmission to caste and those favoring the outcasting. The split quickly spread to members of other clusters, and the headmen of the caste were soon divided among themselves.

The first casualty of the dispute was the caste guru. From court records and modern informants it can be surmised that proponents saw the out-casting as legitimated by the caste guru, who was employed in part to interpret the religious basis of caste codes (O.S., 12). Opponents, it seems, countered that the guru had no authority in the decision. Caught between the two factions, his position as a servant of the Periyagramam was untenable. He left the caste madam and site of Periyagramam meetings on pilgrimage. He never returned and the Beeri Chettiars of the Town were never to replace him, although they continued to maintain the madam building as a caste institution. Informants today explain why the guru position has been left vacant: they oppose a priestly definition of caste codes.

Next, in January 1877, Ramasami, Ratnavelu's father, was expelled from caste for associating with his son, then readmitted, and reexpelled in 1878 and 1881 respectively. In 1879, Subraya Chetti, the headman of the Periyagramam, considered twenty-eight men outcaste (ILR, 138-9). Suits and countersuits in the civil courts followed.

There are a group of court decisions in particular that unraveled the authority of the Beeri Chettiar headmen. The allies of Ramasami brought suits to gain control of the caste madam , which as the site of the Periyagramam and the dwelling of their spiritual teacher, represented both the spiritual identity of the George Town Beeri Chettiar caste and their corporate center. This identity was expressed in part by the caste codes for conduct sanctioned by the Periyagramam under the spiritual aegis and teaching of the caste guru. The aim of the suits was to force

an account being taken of properties constituting the endowment [of the madam ], for their being secured for the benefit of the institution, for a scheme of management being settled for plaintiff No. I [one of Ramasami's outcaste allies, Krishnasami Chetti] and other competent persons being appointed trustees, and for adequate provision being made for the due administration of the endowment [of the madam ]. (ILR, 135)

The plaintiffs' purpose was, of course, to control the administration of the madam . Control meant it would be they who were first honored during madam events, and they who scheduled Periyagramam meetings and defined who was invited. Imposing the madam management scheme, therefore, was designed to upstage the moral authority of the conservative headmen and to nullify their efforts to exclude the rebels from participating in caste assemblies.

In 1883, as an outgrowth of these suits, the High Court framed a new administrative scheme for the madam in which the rebels had a role (O.S., 4, 11-12). This was challenged by the conservatives, who argued that the rebels had no right to bring the suit because they were outcaste. But in 1886, the outcasting was itself invalidated by the court on the principle that the rebels had been absent from the Periyagramam meeting that had expelled them and so had been unable to face their accusers as was their civil right, under the maxim, aude alteram partem (ILR, 145). Western law here defined the civil rights of individuals set against the legal corporate right of a caste to expel members.

By wresting control of the madam from their opponents on the Periyagramam and eliminating the caste guru, the rebels were in the position to validate their own more liberal codes and to successfully challenge the prerogative of the conservative headmen to enforce caste codes of be-

havior. Reflecting on these events today, aged informants recall their elders' attitudes and put the matter bluntly: educated men were no longer willing to accept the reactionary authority of uneducated caste headmen (field notes).

These lawsuits mark the end of the headman system of caste organization among the Beeri Chettis in Madras City, but they do not mark the end of caste leadership nor the end of the role leaders as individuals play as a cause of caste organization. In chapter 6, I continue the story of these issues and the changing nature of individuality in Madras society.

In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the rebels had achieved a rapid and fundamental shift in social organization from a headman-centered system of caste, well suited to a mercantile lifeway that benefited from a high level of social control, to a caste society organized by general bureaucratic principles of law, better suited to a more open, less personal society. For educated civil servants and professionals the head-man system of organization had become too restrictive.^[8]

The degree to which the caste organization of the Beeri Chettis has been that of headman sodalities is made clear by the fact that the demise of headmen has also meant to a considerable extent the end of the overall corporate organization of the caste within Black Town. This demise should not be surprising, since the institutions of corporation were the Periyagramam and the clusters, which were orchestrated by headmen. Today, caste members still have rights in the skeleton institutions through which headmen once implemented their leadership: the caste madam building, the one remaining caste temple—the Kandasami temple-the caste funeral rites tank, and the endowments associated with these. These legally constituted rights are the legacy of the bureaucratic management schemes the rebels and their associates implemented at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. But no one considers that either these institutions or their elected officers rep-resent the identity of the Beeri Chettiar caste as a community today.

Conclusions

Do individual uniqueness and achievement play a role in the history and organization of Indian society? The history of the Beeri Chettiar caste strongly indicates that they do. During each of the time periods considered, key individuals play a primary role in determining the organizational form that caste society takes. Further, recognizing the importance of individual achievement in Indian society allows the highly competi-

tive and pragmatic nature of much Indian interaction to find its rightful place in the portrayal of Indian public life. Thus, the role of achievement is readily apparent among the Beeri Chettiars when the highly competitive nature of intercaste and intracaste relationships is recognized as stemming from the competitions of merchant-headmen spurred by individualistic desires to achieve wealth, power, and prestige.

In the pursuit of these goals, headmen created the organization of Black Town society, and as circumstances changed, modified old organization and created new. This appears to have been true to such a degree that one might contend that among the Beeri Chettiars at each period of history caste organization was identical with the organization that headmen created in the course of their leadership. During the period 1652-1708, the moiety division of castes reflected the primary competition of individual headmen-brokers, each of whom stood at the apex of an intercaste production and trade network that he organized as a trader-financier. This headman-broker system of organization was set against a legacy of Vijayanagar rule that gave social precedence to its chiefly allies, the right-hand castes, and subordinated in social esteem the traders of the left-hand. During the period 1717-1816, headman-traders segmented the Town into constituency domains. This enabled the heads of the moieties to compete within their own territories for economic and social preeminence, while to a considerable degree avoiding the issue of relative precedence between the two main trading castes, the right-hand Komatis and the left-hand Beeri Chettiars. Finally, during the period 1876-1890, their interests no longer served by the headman system of maintaining social control and spurred by their expulsions from caste, leading men garnered allies and forced a restructuring of the Beeri Chettiar caste, curtailing the autonomous authority of headmen in the civil courts and imposing bureaucratic standards of administration that deflated their power. The history of the Beeri Chettiars, therefore, directly contradicts Dumont's characterization of Indian society as ignoring the individual. On the contrary, individuals are the agents of organization and their interests and achievements play clear roles in the transformation of Madras society.

How then are we to understand and characterize individuality in Indian civic society? Certainly throughout the history under consideration, Beeri Chetti headmen have striven for and have achieved a type of socially significant individuality based on preeminence. Equally clearly, this has been an individuality unsupported by the values of equality and liberty that Dumont stresses in his characterization of Western individual-

ism. What Beeri Chettiar history has illustrated is that individuality may take a different form than Western individualism, involving, nonetheless, a mix of traits, some of which Western notions of individuality also share, notably: (1) individualistic social identity that is recognized, evaluated, and considered instrumental within the context of groups, a contextualized individuality that is spatially defined; (2) an identity defined by eminence within groups, an individuality of inequality; (3) uniqueness marked by public reputation; (4) achieved identity associated with a de-liberate striving after one's own gain, dominance, and prestige; and (5) autonomy marked by responsibility for who one is and what one does. Because context defines the spatial dimension of a person's individuality, and it is within particular contexts that features of identity are known, as noted in chapter 1, I have proposed the label "contextualized individuality" to characterize this particularly Indian type of politically significant individuality.

Recognizing the essential role individuality plays as a cause of organization and as an integral feature of leadership greatly affects how Indian society is conceptualized. The societal order that individual pursuit of advantage begets, while it exists within the context of castes, expresses a distinctive form of traditional organization in which the paradigm of society is not caste hierarchy, nor conceptualizations of purity/impurity, nor even priestly versus kingly modes of behavior, but that of constituencies , which form around dominant individuals and their patron-age. It is these groupings that I have labeled "leader-centered" or "head-man associations." Throughout history and at every level of Indian society leaders have achieved public recognition as individuals. It is they who have created, managed, and transformed the institutions that give Indian society its corporate frame and Indian history its political and economic drama.