Four
The Inner Politics of the City

Given the elements of economic continuity in Surat, it is perhaps not surprising that key forms of local social life also tended to reproduce themselves over time. The economy certainly did not determine the character of urban society, but everyday economic practice under colonialism bolstered preexisting social structures such as the extended family, caste, and mahajan. Long before the establishment of colonial rule, social organization in the city had adapted to, and proved compatible with, an indigenous form of merchant capitalism. The slow contraction of the city's economy, without sharp discontinuities in its basic character, was hardly sufficient to effect a full-scale transformation of society during the late eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries. Nor did the British legal system provide a shattering blow. On the one hand, indigenous institutions often successfully resisted being overwhelmed by the law; on the other, the courts and colonial policy generally affirmed rather than undermined relations based upon caste, male dominance, and social deference.^[1]

From the seventeenth century into the twentieth, Surat was composed of diverse groupings defined chiefly by descent. Members of these sometimes intimate communities tended to congregate in distinct neighborhoods, to have their own forms of ritual life, and to form and maintain their own social institutions. For most residents, the affairs of these communities continued to be the most important domain of social action and their chief source of psychic satisfaction well into the twentieth century. Colonialism did not destroy the primacy of the inner arenas of urban life.

A major preoccupation of politics in these inner arenas was family reputation and community integrity. The social and economic well-being of every family depended upon preserving acceptance and re-

spect within the larger grouping or groupings of which it was part. Each such group, to use anthropological parlance, constituted a "moral community"—a set of individuals prepared to make judgments about one another and sharing a language and vocabulary for doing so.^[2] Ordinary Surtis obtained status by observing and upholding essential group norms. Leadership often required a further step: active involvement in setting and enforcing these norms.

The idiom for making assessments about authority and respectability in the inner domain was, for most groupings in the city, one of precolonial origin. To make this point is not to suggest an unchanging culture. Though local residents thought of themselves as maintaining a stable system of values, they often in fact reinterpreted group traditions and norms in the course of everyday life. Nevertheless, the symbolic equipment which informed their decision-making—the "vocabulary of motive" in which they expressed their solidarity and made and judged claims to authority—was usually derived from traditions that predated colonial rule.^[3] Colonial law and administrative policy contributed to this continuity by freezing certain indigenous principles as the critical standards of each collectivity, sometimes at the expense of others.

Unevenness in the available records makes any effort to reconstruct the languages of day-to-day politics in the inner arenas an extremely difficult one. Much of these politics took place outside any formal political institution, and even when such institutions existed, they rarely had the regular procedures for taking minutes or recording speeches that existed in local public organizations. Local newspapers are also generally silent on these issues since their editors' understanding of what constituted news remained largely confined to the affairs of the civic arena. We can, however, reconstruct indigenous political idioms by examining certain unwritten "statements" implicit in more general styles of leadership and organization. This chapter offers a sketch of the social organizations and the idioms of authority operating within the city's various communities around the turn of the twentieth century. It begins in the central areas of the city, then moves to the urban periphery.

Society in the Urban Core

A fundamental dividing line of urban society in Surat lay between the neighborhoods in the urban core and those in the outlying neighborhoods, or pura s (see map 2). The core areas, clustering around the castle and the city chok (square), were peopled principally by high-status Hindu and Jain families employed in business, government service, and the professions, along with dependents who provided personal

Map 2.
Surat in 1877

services to these families. The pura s, by contrast, consisted largely of cohesive collectivities of artisans and petty traders and a few, even more self-contained communities of more prosperous residents such as the Parsis and Daudi Bohras. Until the 1860s, a wall had stood between the inner and outer city, roughly demarcating the bounds of the two types of society. But this basic pattern of social organization survived after the municipality leveled the wall for sanitary reasons.

The dominant families living in the central areas of Surat belonged to a category of high-caste jnati s (subcastes) known as the Brahman-Vaniya.^[4] Included were a variety of Brahmans such as the Nagar, Anavil, and Audich; as many as forty-one subdivisions of Hindu Vaniyas; Jains (who were considered Vaniya by caste and who were also characterized by numerous jnati s); Kayasthas; and Brahma-Kshatriyas, all caste groupings associated with either commerce or government service. Together, these high-status families composed almost one-fourth of Surat's population.^[5]

Residents of Brahman-Vaniya background maintained wide social ties across the boundaries of their various subcollectivities. Members of different endogamous units could belong to the same occupational mahajan, dine with one another, worship alongside each other in the same temples, and participate in the same festivals. In some cases, marriage alliances between families of distinct jnati s of the same broad caste grouping (e.g., the Vaniyas) were possible if proper arrangements were made ahead of time and if small fines were paid.^[6] High-caste jnati s rarely segregated themselves from each other but lived together in localities in the urban core, such as Vadifalia, Sonifalia, Gopipura, Nanavat, Chok Bazaar, and Haripura.^[7] Sectarian divisions also failed to preserve rigid boundaries. In their religious practice, Jains and Vaishnava Hindus employed Brahmans in domestic ceremonies, performed worship in each others' shrines, and honored the same holy men. Intermarriage was possible in some cases, especially since some jnati s included both Jain and Hindu families.^[8] In contrast to most South Asians, the Brahman-Vaniyas placed little emphasis on the ranking of their internal subgroupings. At the same time, they generally kept a great social distance from peoples of low or middle caste. Descent thus remained critical for inclusion in this community.

Patterns of economic life among those employed in trade and the professions no doubt contributed to the diffuseness of Brahman-Vaniya organization. Because high-caste society was fluid, participation in most lucrative forms of trade was rarely preordained by heredity. Often survival in commerce necessitated abandoning the occupation of one's father and taking up some new business; the involvement of individual families in a single line of commerce for more than two or three

generations was more the exception than the rule.^[9] Merchants could grow prosperous from quite modest beginnings during their own life-times.^[10] And as we have seen, there was no rigid barrier obstructing Vaniyas from entering administrative positions or Brahmans from becoming merchants. Such considerable mobility kept social boundaries from hardening around narrower social groupings such as the endogamous unit.

The necessity of economic cooperation between families of different castes or sects in commerce also promoted relatively broad group affiliations. Vast and complex networks of trade based on trust and the need for interaction between traders and those involved in the literate professions nourished a larger community of mercantile and service-oriented families in which members shared a language for assessing each other's worthiness as persons.

For high-caste Surtis, and particularly for the city's merchants, the maintenance and improvement of reputation have always been central concerns. Members of the community employed a number of words for referring to their reputations: man, pratishtha, ijjat, and abru (all roughly translatable as honor, reputation, or prestige). The most significant of these was the term abru, perhaps because it conveyed both senses in which reputation was critical to the Brahman-Vaniyas: as the economic credit of the family firm and as its perceived status in local society. This conflation of meaning was no coincidence. Western Indian traders, like their counterparts in northern India studied by Chris Bayly, viewed social prestige and creditworthiness as inextricably related. Integrity in business dealings contributed to a merchant's or banker's social standing. Conversely, a firm's ability to mobilize capital and to carry on transactions without exchanges of cash often depended on a family's general image of respectability.^[11]

Abru in both its interlinked meanings was an extremely fragile quality. High-caste families often built up local respect and honor over long periods of time, even generations, yet could easily dissipate their social standing by a single act of indiscretion such as an improper marriage, questionable business practices, meat eating, alcohol consumption, or contact with low-caste persons. Such uncertainty sometimes led to an extreme fastidiousness in pursuing and guarding reputation. Rival families competed with each other in the satisfaction of community norms, for instance, by attempting to marry their daughters to the sons of prestigious sheth s or by spending lavishly on wedding feasts and religious festivals. "Poor Surati," lamented one late nineteenth-century critic of local life, "his highest ambition is to celebrate the marriage of his children with 'abru.' Abru, what a wonderful thing [it] is, that you can not understand if you are not a Surati."^[12]

Key to the acquisition and sustenance of abru was adherence to dharma, the sacred moral obligations that the community considered incumbent upon all of its members.^[13]Dharma, as any work on Hinduism will confirm, is a code of conduct inherent in a person's gender, caste, or age group. In practice, however, the term refers not to some timeless notion; rather, its meaning has been reinterpreted and transformed over time and in various social contexts. In the dynamic culture of high-caste Gujaratis, the sources of dharma were located in three religious traditions, traditions that were theoretically and textually distinct but that actually had colored each other through interaction over the centuries. From Brahmanical Hinduism came concerns with ritual inclusion and exclusion and with social ranking based upon relative levels of purity and impurity.^[14] Jainism, derived from the teachings of non-Vedic spiritual preceptors—the most prominent being Mahavira, a saint of the sixth century B.C. —contributed an emphasis on ahimsa (nonharm to living creatures), the importance of self-abnegation, and the tradition of performing austerities (tapas ) by monk and layman alike.^[15] Finally, Vaishnavism, spread through Gujarat after the fifteenth century by a series of Hindu saints, stressed the importance of devotion (bhakti ) to Rama and Krishna, the mythical heroes of the great epics the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Vallabhacharya (1478–1521), the most popular of these saints, rejected tapas as a path to salvation, advocating instead seva (devotional service) to Krishna. Such service could be rendered by personal worship, singing hymns (bhajan s) written by the saints, or offering food and clothing to the deity. Vaishnava religion in theory had a distinctly egalitarian flavor, emphasizing the capacity of all to achieve spiritual fulfillment through devotional surrender.^[16]

High-caste families established their reputations through enduring patterns of social action grounded in a vocabulary drawn from these religious traditions. To a Western eye at least, high-status Hindus and Jains lived lives of considerable personal restraint, practicing vegetarianism, abstaining from alcohol, maintaining simplicity in dress and in housing, and refraining from overt expressions of sexuality.^[17] They manifested their concern with the protection of living creatures, particularly the cow, by sponsoring panjrapol s (hospices for sick and aged animals).^[18] They observed pollution strictures and social rules governing the selection of acceptable marriage partners for their offspring. And they engaged in worship of Jain and Vaishnava deities. Women particularly assumed the responsibility of upholding family honor by presenting offerings to images in temples, singing bhajan s, participating in religious festivals, and occasionally embarking on pilgrimages to holy sites.^[19]

Leaders within high-caste society came from families that had built

up their abru through often painstaking efforts and that promoted the collective respectability of the larger community. Local conceptions of authority fit imperfectly with British notions that pictured India as dominated by hereditary community headmen. In Surat men attained leadership positions only by actively and continuously espousing, interpreting, maintaining, and defending dharma in ways that group members found satisfying. Throughout the city's history, the most prestigious of Brahman-Vaniya leaders usually came from among the city's wealthiest magnates. Around 1900, a handful of great merchants held particular sway. Among Hindus, the Mahajan Sheth (the leader of the chief Vaniya organization), the cotton merchants Ishwardas Jagjivandas Store and Thakordas Modi, the banker Gangaram Bharatiya, the sugar merchant Viththaldas Khandwala, and the piece-goods dealers Tribhuvandas Popawala and Motiram Reshamwala were especially prominent. Among Jains, the most significant were the families of the Nagarsheth (head of the chief Jain organization) and the pearl merchants Naginchand Jhaverchand and Hirachand Motichand. Some of these men came from families that had enjoyed high status in the city for generations; others had risen to prominence only during their lifetimes. But all had successfully cultivated special reputations through their efforts to safeguard and promote community integrity.

Within their jnati s, the sheth s often were involved in setting and enforcing ethical standards that preserved and enhanced the prestige of the ritual unit. Through organizations known as panchayat s they regulated the conduct of jnati members in matters such as commensality and marriage, thus upholding the position of the group in the larger community. The most powerful magnates, however, had established their authority far beyond the confines of their jnati s. Two kinds of roles seem particularly critical to their prominence in the locality: that of religious patron and provider of community needs, and that of leader within collective institutions known as mahajan s.

Religious Giving

For the wealthiest merchants, following the dharma perhaps first and foremost meant giving. Evidence from the seventeenth century to the twentieth suggests great continuity in the importance of social spending to the development of elite status. The ideal sheth was one who scrutinized his books closely but who sacrificed large amounts of his wealth in sacred causes rather than accumulated capital or spent his resources to maximize his personal comfort; "Gifts by the lakh, accounts by the penny," went one Gujarati saying.^[20] While this ideal may never have been realized perfectly, it was common for the greatest magnates to live in quite modest homes with sparse furnishings yet to expend vast

amounts in forms of giving regarded as meritorious. Status-generating gift giving took a multiplicity of forms: furnishing jobs and other forms of patronage to relatives and community fellows; providing food in times of distress; building wells, rest houses, and temples; and sponsoring substantial communal feasts. At Divali time, the great sheth s regularly made gifts to relatives, dependents, brokers, and Brahmans. Colonial accounts, no doubt a bit exaggerated, claim that merchants sometimes exhausted their entire savings in the celebration of single festivities.^[21]

Religious giving was especially critical to the achievement and maintenance of places of special esteem. The sacrifice of considerable wealth to Hindu or Jain deities epitomized the ascetic values of local religion. Adherents of both sects regarded the sponsorship of festivals, shrines, and saints as the dharma of persons with substantial fortunes. In the vocabulary of Vaishnava belief, the commitment of worldly belongings to Krishna was a particularly meritorious form of seva. In Jain terminology, merchants gave concrete expression to the principle of ahimsa through patronage of panjrapol s. In effect, sheth s translated through religious giving some of their financial capital, to which a stigma might be attached if it were either allowed to accumulate visibly or exchanged for personal possessions, into symbolic capital valued throughout high-caste society, thus generating personal authority.^[22]

Because of the importance of sacred giving in high-caste society, temple building tended to cluster in the core neighborhoods of the city. In 1935, for instance, there were forty-eight Hindu temples and eighteen Jain temples in Gopipura alone. Vadifalia had thirty-eight. In the outskirts of the city, Sagrampura, Salabatpura, and Rampura, by contrast, had ten, ten, and three, respectively.^[23]

It would serve little purpose here to reconstruct the entire gift-giving activities of specific Surti firms. There has not been a substantial businessman in the history of the city who has not left some evidence of his generosity on behalf of his family's deities. What is important to note, however, is the tremendous diversity and the vast geographic range of some merchants' gift-giving patterns. The Chakawala family, which maintained a banking firm in Surat during the late eighteenth century, apparently saw no contradiction in building a temple to Shiva in the village of Katargam while donating thousands of rupees in seva to Vaishnava deities.^[24] The Travadi family, wealthy Brahman bankers around the turn of the nineteenth century, built shrines scattered across India and a major temple to Balaji in Surat, which still stands today.^[25] Manekchand Jhaveri, a Jain jeweller of the late nineteenth century, built rest houses for pilgrims and hostels for Jain students in Surat, Bombay, Kolhapur, Ahmedabad, Ratlam, and numerous other

centers where Jains traded and worshiped.^[26] Even merchants who began to develop an interest in secular philanthropy rarely abandoned sponsorship of diverse religious causes.^[27] At the onset of World War I, Vaishnava and Jain religion remained a sphere of activity largely outside the control of the colonial state, one very much shaped and controlled by local sheth s.

Mahajans and Shethia Roles in Surat

While such patterns of religious munificence are common to Hindu commercial communities all over India,^[28] merchant culture in Gujarat distinguished itself by the importance given to collective institutions known as mahajan s.^[29] In Brahman-Vaniya society, these organizations constituted a form of corporate activity that far surpassed the endogamous unit in importance. They proved resilient in the face of late nineteenth-century conditions, surviving shifts in the world economy and the imposition of the British legal order. For Hindu and Jain sheth s alike, the mahajan s were often critical arenas in which authority was generated and perpetuated.

Mahajan s are known to have existed in Gujarat for at least eight centuries.^[30] They apparently developed anywhere in the region the problems of commercial interaction and social control became too complex for individual jnati s to handle. In Surat the first mahajan s formed early in the city's history. East India Company records from 1669 refer specifically to a "councill" of local Vaniyas known as the "Mahager," which organized eight thousand traders to leave the city in protest against the proselytizing activities of a Muslim qazi (judge).^[31] Unfortunately, the English were not sufficiently concerned with the internal workings of Gujarati society to provide us with much understanding of the structure and day-to-day activities of mahajan s during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Yet from the occasional references available, mahajan s appear to have been important institutions around which merchants repeatedly organized themselves.

While historians of Gujarat have tended to agree that mahajan s are significant to study, there has been little consensus about the actual nature of the organizations. Ashin Das Gupta has insisted that mahajan s were essentially social organizations whose membership was confined to narrow groupings (such as castes or religious sects) and whose functions were primarily sociocultural rather than commercial.^[32] Michael Pearson, Dwijendra Tripathi, and M. J. Mehta have viewed these institutions as business organizations whose main purpose was to secure the commercial interests of a body of traders.^[33] The evidence from Surat suggests that both approaches draw a distinction between economic and cultural institutions that did not exist in practice; each ignores the

extent to which commercial and social preoccupations interpenetrated and reinforced each other in the culture of high-caste Hindus and Jains. The main concern of mahajan leaders was with minimizing threats to abru in both its interlinked senses—social honor and economic credit. Each organization attempted to manage the collective integrity of the group by formulating, then enforcing, codes of behavior that covered a broad spectrum of Brahman-Vaniya life. Each restricted behavior that could prejudice the position of the whole, thus promoting a more stable sociocommercial environment in which individual families could pursue greater security, profit, and prestige. In short, mahajan s, like other high-caste institutions, were enmeshed in the politics of reputation.

Occupational Mahajans

There were two types of mahajan s in Surat. First, there were occupational mahajan s, guild-like structures of all the traders in a single line of business. Second, there was the Samast Vanik Mahajan (the mahajan of all Hindu Vaniyas), also known as the Hindu Mahajan by the early twentieth century.

Occupational mahajan s existed in most prestigious lines of commerce. During the late nineteenth century, the city's sharaf s, jhaveri s (silver dealers), merchants in cotton, grain, and sugar, and numerous other sets of traders each possessed their own organizations. Some apparently had existed for many decades, while others formed when businessmen in a specific trade felt the need for organizational structure. Ghee merchants, for instance, formed a guild in 1913 in order to control commerce in adulterated ghee, most probably in response to new municipal measures which threatened to punish sellers of the inferior product.^[34] Existing records are not sufficient to judge the lifespan of the average guild. A few may have been impermanent bodies whose vitality depended on the initiative of individual leaders or the perception of some threat to the collective interests of a set of traders. Rather than see each guild as an entity lasting many generations, it is probably more profitable to view the mahajan as an organizational model that leaders of the mercantile community invoked repeatedly in generating formal institutions to manage problems of business.

Membership in most occupational mahajan s crossed the lines of caste and sect. In 1899 even some Muslim merchants belonged to the guilds of the sugar and cloth traders, though they were a distinct minority and had little voice in decision making.^[35] Generally a few sheth s dominated the affairs of the organization. Formal leadership often belonged to the head of a specific family, who often passed the title on to a son. When the son was not of sufficient financial and moral standing, how-

ever, members might replace him with someone more worthy. Usually several other reputable merchants also exercised influence over the decision-making process. In most cases for which there is evidence, members deferred to this informal "council" of magnates by backing proposed measures unanimously in meetings.^[36]

Occupational mahajan s certainly performed a wide range of commercial functions. Perhaps their primary purpose was to control who could practice a certain trade. When the ghee merchants' guild formed in 1913, its sheth s issued written notices to merchants outside the city that they should trade only with guild members, they warned that members might be expelled or otherwise reprimanded for dealing with nonmembers, and they set up rules requiring approval of all new members.^[37] In some guilds, a fee was required of new applicants, perhaps as much as 300 or 500 rupees.^[38] Obviously such restrictions provided a certain degree of security to participants in a guild against excessive competition. The organizations rarely tried to control prices, though they did attempt on occasion to check wages paid to artisans. E. Washburn Hopkins, an American Sanskritist whose study is a rich though not unproblematic source on Gujarati mahajan s, suggested that an employer who wished to entice craftsmen to work for him by offering higher wages had to "ask the guild about it and abide by their decision."^[39]

Sheth s of the mahajan s set holidays and established and enforced standards of business practice, threatening violators with fines and even expulsion. Each guild kept steady pressure on its members to uphold their business agreements. When a merchant failed in business, the guild might investigate his business dealings to determine the reason for failure. According to Hopkins, "If it is found that he has failed dishonorably, he is dropped [i.e., expelled]; if honorably, the creditors accept a part of the debt and help him to tide over his difficulties when he repays all."^[40] The public knowledge that a guild might bring its sanctions to bear on unscrupulous dealers or offer financial help to members who had fallen into debt contributed to the integrity of the entire body of traders.

The guilds also settled trade disputes, sometimes in efforts to prevent potentially embarrassing conflicts from spilling over into the courts. Since abru depended so greatly on maintaining the secrecy of business dealings, traders were anxious to avoid having their disputes settled by outsiders—particularly in public forums beyond the community's control—and regularly resorted to the mahajan s for arbitration. Refusal to accept the sheth s' decision—for instance, by refusing to make payments to an aggrieved party—could result in ostracism.^[41] In effect, the mahajan s tried to protect the economy of trust from being over-

whelmed by a commerce based on contract and courtroom. The possibility of filing bankruptcy in British courts probably made some inroads into the ability of the mahajan to enforce its judgments, but guild involvement in dispute settlement was still the norm at the turn of the century.

But while occupational mahajan s were critical to the maintenance of commercial morality, they also played a vital role in the promotion of local religious life. Every guild linked itself publicly with some sacred institution of importance. Each collected a cess, called lago, on the trade of their members and passed the proceeds on to the important Vaishnava and Jain shrines. In Surat, guilds controlled by Jains tended to forward their proceeds to the city panjrapol.^[42] The sugar traders' mahajan sent its cesses to Mota Mandir, the leading Vaishnava shrine in the city, and compelled even its Muslim members to contribute.^[43] In fact Hopkins asserted that the system of collecting cesses was so "perfect" in Surat that members of mahajan s rarely gave money to any charity directly.^[44] This was no doubt an exaggeration, but the cesses of the mahajan s were a major source of income for many religious institutions in the city.

The powers mahajan s possessed were indeed formidable. In mild offenses, such as the nonobservance of a guild holiday, a mahajan' s leaders might impose a fine of several hundred rupees. In more serious cases, a member could be expelled, an action that was economically ruinous and socially catastrophic. According to Hopkins:

When a member is . . . cut off from the guild, he may be ostracized from the caste. In the latter case he becomes a social pariah, more wretched than a village dog. But even if one is only cast out of the guild, one is often ipso facto, outcasted. In the country, such an outlaw is debarred from all social recognition. No man will work with him or for him, nor will anyone serve him, no broker will act for him, no servant will remain in his house. The carpenter, the baker, the confectioner, the blacksmith, the tile-maker, the very potter, lowest of the lowly, refuse to take his orders, deliver goods to him, or perform any service for him at any price. Caste here has yielded entirely to the guilds.^[45]

Thus, through expulsion, a family could even lose its identity as a member of the community. Such steps were potentially drastic, yet apparently members considered them necessary to protect the integrity of the whole trade. Only with this necessary collective base of reputation acquired through participation in the mahajan' s affairs could the merchant family firm cultivate its own individual prestige and credit in the community through such actions as temple donations and prestigious marriages.

The Samast Vanik Mahajan

Like many other Gujarati cities, Surat also had a greater mahajan which embraced families belonging to a wide range of occupational groups. Scholars have often referred to this as a "city" or "city-wide" mahajan. Hopkins even suggested the analogy of a chamber of commerce.^[46] But if Surat's larger body is at all typical, such terminology is of limited usefulness. This organization certainly enjoyed a broader authority than the individual guilds and could organize large numbers of traders to act collectively, but it did not cut across caste or religious boundaries in its membership. Descent rather than occupation appears to have been the chief criterion for inclusion. The institution was entirely a Vaniya organization, composed, according to one account, of forty-one Hindu Vaniya jnati s.^[47] Though most families who participated in its affairs were involved in trade, a number of educated professionals and government servants belonged as well. Jains and non-Vaniyas, on the other hand, did not belong. The Jains, however, had their own multi-jnati organization, similar in many respects to the Hindu Mahajan, known as the Jain Sangh. The hereditary leader of this later organization was the head of the Parekh family of Nanavat, and was called the Nagarsheth.^[48]

The formal leader of the Samast Vanik Mahajan was the Mahajan Sheth, a great magnate who acted as a headman in all meetings of the organization. In the late nineteenth century, the position of Mahajan Sheth had been held hereditarily for at least several generations, perhaps back into the seventeenth century, in the family of Bhagubhai Dwarkadas.^[49] The only other formal office was that of a priest or clerk (gor ), whose chief function was to invite the Vaniyas to collective gatherings. But a few wealthy and respected sheth s with no hereditary position were also prominent leaders in the organization. Among the more notable participants in early twentieth-century sessions were the Mahajan Sheth, Ishwardas Jagjivandas Store, Thakordas Balmukandas Modi, Vithaldas Khandwala, and Tribhuvandas Popawala. Decisions were generally arrived at by the consensus of these great sheth s, then unanimously approved by the larger body of members.^[50]

In Gujarat such greater mahajan s tended to play a role in handling community issues that single guilds and jnati panchayat s were unable to manage. Because of the breadth of their authority, they were particularly valuable in settling conflicts outside the bounds of guild and jnati. They regularly arbitrated trade disputes between members of different guilds.^[51] They were also involved in resolving tensions with artisans. According to Hopkins, high-caste merchants lived in fear that craftsmen, who had their own guilds (panch s), might band together against individual traders. Such conflicts with low-status persons could produce both economic harm and social humiliation. But by joining together with Vaniyas practicing many different trades, businessmen could usu-

ally thwart such resistance with a counterboycott that would prevent the artisans from receiving their daily necessities. The threat of such action, Hopkins reported, was usually sufficient to cow most craftsmen into submission.^[52]

On the basis of the evidence from Surat, however, the regulation of inter-jnati social intercourse (vahevar ) among the Vaniyas was as significant a function of the Samast Vanik Mahajan as the resolution of trade disputes. The organization attempted to enforce rules of appropriate Vaniya behavior by controlling such matters as commensality, marriage, and participation in its own affairs. The Hindu Mahajan particularly sought to limit vahevar with those of inferior status or doubtful integrity. In 1900, for instance, a faction within the Dasha Jharola Vaniyas protested that some members within their jnati had eaten with the Pancha Vaniyas, with whom the mahajan did not allow social intercourse. The sheth s of the mahajan fined the offenders 751 rupees, compelled them to undergo a purification ceremony, and warned that refusal would mean that no true Vaniya could ever eat with them or marry their daughters. In the short run, this step assured the complainants that they would not be stigmatized by the actions of their caste fellows.^[53] In the long run, it produced greater compliance with group norms among all the families concerned. The mahajan also considered the applications of local merchants to sponsor communal feasts, taking into account the moral character of the potential sponsor and the satisfactoriness of the arrangements he proposed for the occasion.^[54] In 1911, after members of untouchable castes entered the rows of feasting Vaniyas during a communal gathering, in effect polluting all present, it was the leaders of the mahajan who took precautionary steps to ensure that similar incidents did not recur.^[55] Occupational mahajan s would have been ill-suited to the regulation of these ritual matters, since no single guild embraced the full range of persons affected by such decisions.

Like the occupational mahajan s, the Samast Vanik Mahajan was closely linked with local religious institutions. The Mahajan Sheth, for instance, served as trustee of the panjrapol. Many of the organization's activities revolved around devotional service to Mota Mandir and its maharaj, the leader of the Vallabhacharya sect in the city. The mahajan organized feasts to honor the maharaj on religious holidays and on other special occasions, such as his marriage and sacred-thread ceremonies.^[56] Vaniya families often vied among each other for the honor to host the mahajan' s celebration. In the early twentieth century, when a succession struggle in Mota Mandir threatened to divide the local sectarian hierarchy, leaders of the mahajan stepped in as arbitrators to prevent the conflict from spilling into the courts.^[57]

Leaders of the mahajan viewed themselves as upholding a consistent

set of ethical standards for the Vaniyas. But because they were constantly involved in adapting the dharma to new contexts, they in fact often reinterpreted principles of collective morality. One example of this is the organization's treatment of overseas travel. In the eighteenth century, Vaniyas had settled as far away as the Persian Gulf.^[58] But during the nineteenth century, high-caste Hindus throughout western India had come to treat travel overseas as permanently polluting. When Mohandas Gandhi, a Modh Vaniya and the future leader of the nationalist movement, announced his decision to go to England for higher education in 1888, the sheth of his caste in Bombay informed him: "Our religion forbids voyages abroad. We have also heard that it is not possible to live there [England] without compromising our religion. One is obliged to eat and drink with Europeans."^[59] Gandhi defied the order and was "excommunicated." But as the number of Vaniyas wishing to go abroad grew, community leaders were forced to reconsider their position. In 1906 the Samast Vanik Mahajan of Surat reached a formal compromise: those who had gone overseas could resume vahevar with other Vaniyas if they would undergo a ceremony of purification upon their return.^[60] Vaniya organizations elsewhere in western India soon followed suit. At a time when the issue was creating disabling conflicts in some castes, the mahajan' s ability to adapt to changing realities without seeming to abandon a dharma that community members regarded as immutable certainly contributed to its continued vitality.

Records of the activities of Hindu sheth s during the famine of 1899–1900 provide a different sort of evidence about the adjustment of the mahajan' s leadership to the danger facing the community and its values. The famine, perhaps the most severe in the region since the seventeenth century, posed a serious short-term crisis for high-caste residents, threatening to destabilize the social order and to undermine critical Brahman-Vaniya concerns. The price of grain rose sharply, and reports of riots in other western Indian cities raised the specter of unrest in Surat. In the countryside, hunger and disease killed many and left thousands of children without parents. Christian missions began to take large numbers of orphans into their care, thus arousing concern among Hindus about losing ground to the religious creed of their rulers. The scarcity of water and fodder caused the death of many cattle.^[61]

The mahajan adopted several measures to meet the crisis. It founded a Hindu orphanage that competed with the Christians for homeless children. It augmented the activities of the panjrapol in order to care for the growing number of sick and starving cattle. Perhaps most significant, it pressured the grain merchants to stop all exports from the city. Even merchants with previous agreements to sell to agents out-

side Surat were ordered to break their commitments under the threat of mahajan sanctions. This measure checked further inflation in grain prices and defused the potential for serious urban unrest.^[62]

The ethical conceptions which informed merchant action in this instance have strong parallels with the notion of "moral economy"—the idea that needs of local consumers must be met before those of the market—that E. P. Thompson discovered in his studies of eighteenthcentury England.^[63] The mahajan, in bringing a halt to grain exports, took on a responsibility that in precolonial times had been assumed by the state but that the British had abdicated in the interest of free trade. The motivations for this action were clear: the famine was a threat to high-caste society and to the identity of the Brahman-Vaniya traders as persons who placed dharma above their personal profit. Interference with the free operation of the market effectively confirmed the ideal that wealth should not be pursued at the expense of the community's integrity.

The most dramatic context for mahajan action was that of resistance to government policy. In precolonial times, there are repeated references to its ability to organize social protest among the Vaniyas, most dramatically, in 1669, when it attempted to prevent the Muslim qazi from interfering with Hindu religious practice and in 1795, when it took similar actions to pressure the British into providing the community with protection against Muslim rioters. In the nineteenth century the mahajan' s sheth s organized local Vaniyas to protest imposition of Bengal Standard weights and measures on the trading community in 1848, to oppose the establishment of a license tax on local businesses in 1878, and to petition the government of India in 1892 against the Age of Consent Bill prohibiting marriages of children under 12.^[64] In each case merchants associated with the mahajan resorted to group action when they perceived a common threat to the security of the community and its values. In all but the last instance, they imposed sanctions against those who failed to follow mahajan directives, thus ensuring nearly universal compliance.

One strong theme running through many of these activities by both forms of mahajan is conflict management. As men who handled large sums of money and as members of families that enjoyed a privileged position in local society, merchants may have been especially susceptible to involvement in disputes—disputes with each other, disputes with lower-status persons, and disputes with state officials. But open conflicts could undermine the image of simplicity, austerity, and discretion so critical to maintaining their image of social respectability. By managing disputes before they became serious, a mahajan could hope to preserve the low profile of all its members, combatants and noncom-

batants alike. The effectiveness of mahajan s in accomplishing this end may account for the willingness of local merchants to submit to the often-severe forms of discipline that these organizations gave out.

Given the fragmentary character of evidence before the 1880s, it is difficult to estimate whether the authority of mahajan s eroded over the course of the nineteenth century. Existing documentation clearly demonstrates, however, that these organizations remained important politically in Surat up through World War I despite the growth of global capitalism, the colonial legal system, and the municipality. Through these bodies, high-caste Hindus and Jains were to a great extent successful in preserving some autonomy from the demands of the British Raj. Political discourse in the inner arena of mahajan activity continued to focus on questions of dharma, familial abru, and community integrity. Public and colonial discourse, by contrast, proved to be a very poor vehicle for articulating most key Brahman-Vaniya concerns well into the twentieth century.

Society in the Outlying Neighborhoods

Hindu Communities of Middle and Low Status

Outside the central areas of the city in neighborhoods such as Begampura, Sagrampura, Navapura, Salabatpura, and Mahidharpura were Hindu communities of artisans and petty traders collectively known in Gujarat as "Ghanchi-Gola."^[65] Together with noncaste Hindus—the so-called untouchables—these communities constituted more than 50 percent of the city's population. Included in this category were a number of caste groupings such as the Golas (traditionally rice pounders by profession), the Ghanchis (oil pressers), Khatris (weavers), Darjis (tailors), Suthars (carpenters), and Kanbis (who worked mostly as artisans). Many of these collectivities contained within them several distinct jnati s. Harry Borradaile, a British official who compiled caste rules for the whole of British Gujarat in 1827, reported more than two hundred distinct endogamous units living in Surat. Most of these were groups of middle-and low-caste background who lived in the pura s.^[66]

Members of Ghanchi-Gola communities often had a rather ambivalent relationship to the high-status merchants and government servants. Many of their families had established clientage ties with individual Brahman-Vaniya, Parsi, or Daudi Bohra families as dependents who performed services such as washing and stitching cloths, pounding rice, or repairing furniture for their high-caste patrons; as artisans who obtained their raw materials and sources of finance from the merchants to whom they sold their finished goods; or as petty traders who borrowed heavily from Vaniya moneylenders. Such ties often led to the

development of long-standing affective relationships in which patrons provided their clients important services—loans, gifts on special occasions, small jobs during periods of business slump—in return for the labor or interest payments of the client. The Ghanchi-Golas also participated to a certain extent in a common religious life with the upper castes, celebrating the same festivals and worshiping in some of the same temples. But there were also serious tensions in these relationships. High-caste residents tended to regard the Ghanchi-Golas collectively as beyond the pale of respectable society, and they worried about the threat to the local moral order which they believed these communities posed. Members of the lower and middle castes engaged in a variety of non-Brahmanic practices, such as meat eating, alcohol consumption, and widow remarriage, that served implicitly to contest and mock high-caste normative standards. As a whole they acquired a reputation for unsavoriness and unruliness that evoked upper-caste disdain and anxiety.^[67]

In contrast to high-caste society, where elaborate social networks developed beyond the ritual unit, Ghanchi-Gola society assumed a somewhat cellular quality. The tight corporate character of its social organization appeared quite clearly in residential patterns. Often members of individual jnati s clustered in small, well-defined localities. The Golas (who today prefer the name of Ranas), composed of three different jnati s, lived in exclusive enclaves in Navapura. Tailors, washermen, basketmakers, and potters all had their own streets where they lived and plied their wares. Khatris and Kanbis also tended to live among their jnati fellows, though often their houses were interspersed with those of people belonging to two or three other castes.^[68] In moments of crisis, such as the salt tax riots of 1844 and the license tax riots of 1878, members of the different communities joined together in protest involving violence, suggesting perhaps a latent consciousness of class that was not apparent in everyday social and institutional life.^[69]

Small, closely-knit corporate groupings, often the jnati s, served as the most important basis of political organization in the outlying neighborhoods. Almost every collectivity possessed its own panch (caste organization), which often performed both as a regulator of ritual affairs and as a craft guild. The panch occupied a far more vital place here than did the panchayat s of the upper-castes. Its leaders, the patel s, were often hereditary headmen, who set codes of conduct within the group and acted as intermediaries with other groups. Early twentieth-century religious reformers who attempted to propagate vegetarianism and abstinence from alcohol regarded the conversion of the patel s as a first step to the success of their movement.^[70] British civil servants, who tended to view the Ghanchi-Gola communities as remote and impene-

trable, relied almost exclusively upon the patel s to maintain social order.^[71] Colonial recognition of these headmen strengthened their dominance in middle- and low-caste society as well as the salience of caste to social organization in the outlying localities.

The corporate character of Ghanchi-Gola communities was also reinforced in economic practice. Many of these groups were associated with one or two occupations, or a limited number of them, which might be termed the group's "traditional" occupations. The Ghanchis controlled oil pressing, milk selling, and trade in firewood. Most Kumbhars were engaged in the manufacture and sale of pottery. The Golas were commonly involved in rice pounding. Even in the more complex industries, such as the manufacture of silk and jari, specific communities concentrated on processes involved in the production of a single commodity. The traditional occupation was rarely the exclusive source of employment for all members of the group, but it was quite common for a single community to monopolize a specific trade or craft. This tendency toward group control of certain occupations was not always undermined by economic change. During the early twentieth century, the Golas, who had been displaced by the mechanization of the rice industry, began to move into winding jari. By 1930 they had attained near total control over winding operations, displacing the once-dominant Muslims, in effect establishing a new "traditional" occupation. By building such monopolies, artisans and petty traders could limit competition from outsiders and develop relatively stable and dependable relationships with the few laborers they hired from among the ranks of their caste fellows.^[72]

The traditional occupation often assumed a dharmik character for its members, though the sources of Ghanchi-Gola dharma relied less on Sanskritic scriptures than on the oral traditions of individual groups. Many communities had collective myths justifying their control of their craft. The Golas, for instance, claimed to have originally been Rajputs from Mewada who adopted the name gola (menial servant or slave) in order to protect themselves from the fearsome god Parashuram. In hiding, Shiva, their protector, gave them the mortar and pestle of the rice-pounding trade with which to make their livelihoods.^[73] Since this myth established a time when the community had had higher ritual status than the present, it implicitly contested high-caste attempts to attribute to the group's members an inborn inferiority.^[74] At the same time it attributed a sacred quality to rice pounding.

One responsibility of the community panch was to preserve this dharmik trade for group members. Often the organizations set strong rules preventing the communication of artisan secrets to outsiders and reinforced these with caste sanctions.^[75] They also attempted to spread

work among members during times of depression, thus regulating competition and ensuring the survival of as many family firms as possible. The patel s of the panch could go so far as to set wage rates and working hours for artisans and to order which days would be observed as holidays in the traditional occupation. The panch also settled occupational disputes.^[76] On occasion the organizations acted as craft unions, pressuring merchants to accept certain payment levels and employment practices.

Ritually the panch and its headmen were involved in enforcing marriage and commensal rules essential to group integrity and solidarity. patel s levied fines against violators of group norms and had the power to ostracize those who engaged in especially offensive behavior.^[77] They also raised funds for regular communal feasts, which, among some middle-caste groupings, could surpass the dinners of the Vaniyas in conspicuous expenditure.^[78] The patel s often retained control of the caste vessels employed on such occasions and the right to use them.^[79] Little collective money was apparently spent on seva to religious shrines. The British legal system, which had codified caste laws for dozens of local jnati s, tended to confirm the authority of the patel s over community funds in the courts.

Headmen of artisan and petty-trading communities did not simply uphold static codes of behavior, but like the Hindu Mahajan, reinterpreted their group's dharma over time. Frequently the sense of community solidarity derived from cultural practices that implicitly denied Brahmanical norms. Nevertheless, attempts to raise status within the social hierarchy by adopting high-caste practices were common in many of these communities. Such "Sanskritizing" efforts inevitably depended upon the support of group leaders. In 1906 headmen among the Khatris and Golas made bandobast (enforcement of moral codes by threat of social sanctions) against the consumption of alcohol.^[80] Only four years later a Gola leader organized a meeting to promote temperance, compassion for animal life, and general "improvements of morality" among his community. Those present at the meeting sang bhajan s composed by bhakti saints and listened to the preaching of holy men on abstinence and vegetarianism.^[81] Once the patel s abandoned their backing of such ventures, however, the movements tended to fall apart.^[82]

The periodic rise and fall of Sanskritization efforts among pettytrading and artisan communities suggest that headmen were continually involved in balancing the specific traditions and preoccupations of their groups against Brahman-Vaniya values. High-caste ideology provided certain ethical standards that middle-caste groups might choose to espouse in attempts to contest their positioning in local society. But even in the midst of such patel s exhibited a concern for

maintaining the distinctiveness of their community, insisting that all members subscribe to new behavioral norms. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there were few signs of the weakening of group solidarities among middle-caste communities. The jnati s of middle and low status thus continued to retain a cohesiveness absent in the organization of the higher castes.

Muslim Communities of Surat

Surti Hindus constituted less a unified community than a series of subcultural groupings that drew upon a partially shared idiom as they defined their separate identities. The social distance between Brahman-Vaniya and Ghanchi-Gola proved a major barrier to any form of concerted behavior by local Hindus as a whole. At no point during the nineteenth century did various Hindu groups come together in any communally based action. The same could also be said of the local Muslim population. Though only about one-fifth of the city's population, the Muslims of Surat possessed a diversity that rivaled that of Hindus. Muslims, too, belonged to a large number of kin-based communities, most of them demarcated not only from non-Muslim groups but also from each other. Different Muslim communities lived in distinct pockets scattered around the city, usually in the outlying pura s.

One general line of differentiation in local Muslim society was that between "immigrant" Muslims—that is, Sunni Muslims claiming origins in West Asia—and "convert" Muslims, who acknowledged descent from indigenous Hindu communities.^[83] The immigrants included the families that had once been associated with the top ranks of the Mughal administration. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Muslims from Turkey, the Red Sea, and Persian Gulf had been among the wealthiest of Surat's traders.^[84] With the decline of Asian shipping, some abandoned Surat, while others took up less lucrative professions. Families belonging to the old Mughal nobility, on the other hand, retained much prominence under colonialism. In 1900 some of these families were still known by the titles of their late eighteenth-century ancestors: the Nawab of Surat, the Nawab of Bela, the Kazi (judge), and the Bakshi (army paymaster).^[85] These families survived for the most part on land-holdings and pensions granted by the government in exchange for their continued loyalty.

Many of the convert Muslim communities, by contrast—most notably the Patani Bohras, who were Sunni Muslims, and the Daudi Bohras, who were Shia—continued to play important mercantile roles, some among them managing firms with considerable international business. There were also communities of Muslim petty traders, such as butchers

and cart drivers, and groupings of Muslim artisans, such as the Momnas and the Tais, both of whom did weaving. Most of these collectivities recognized indigenous, non-Muslim forebears. Many were as tightly corporate in character as their counterparts among Hindus of middle caste. Some even had their own neighborhoods or streets, where the majority of their members lived.^[86]

The leading immigrant families retained a strong collective identity as the former ruling group and attempted to keep alive the memory of their past prominence through preserving at least the illusion of the old sharif culture, a syncretic style of life that had developed out of the interaction between foreign Muslim and indigenous Hindu elites in the Mughal courts during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.^[87] The sharif ideal which they sought to emulate stood in stark contrast to the austere traditions of the Brahman-Vaniyas. Members of the old nobility lived in palaces often beyond their means to maintain; they secluded female family members, spent considerable sums on clothing and jewels, patronized Urdu poets, and organized public displays with great military pomp.^[88] They also maintained a tradition of patronizing Indian Islamic institutions, such as mosques, dargah s (shrines to Sufi saints), madrasa s (centers for Islamic learning), burial grounds, and festivals. Particularly important for their "symbolic investments" were the shrines of the Edrusi Sayyids, Muslim spiritual leaders who had migrated to Gujarat from West Asia during the sixteenth century and who had maintained a hereditary influence in the region ever since. The Edrus family had a reputation for Islamic scholarship and the ability to perform miracles. Its headmen offered personal and spiritual advice to the families associated with them and were important in mediating local conflicts. Their ties with the old Mughal nobility, occasionally bolstered by marriage, remained close into the twentieth century.^[89]

The old Mughal elite did not, however, develop an identity as leaders of the Muslim community until the later nineteenth century. In 1795, after rioting had broken out in the city, the local nawab essentially disclaimed any responsibility for restoring order among his coreligionists, asserting to the Surat chief, "You will be pleased, Sir, to reflect that the excesses of a riotous mob are not to be controlled at pleasure by anyone. In the case of a person committing violation of what they deem sacred, the Mussalmans assemble of themselves and consider themselves as subject to the will or authority of no person."^[90] Such a rhetorical position stands in sharp contrast with that of men from the same families a century later, when their status in colonial circles depended upon casting themselves as "natural" leaders able to control their coreligionists. The nawab' s appraisal, however, was certainly a realistic one.

The immigrant elite carried little weight among the majority of Muslims in the city, particularly among those who did not trace their origins to the Islamic territories outside South Asia.

Structurally, many of the nonimmigrant Muslim groupings were not unlike Hindu jnati s; in fact many were caste groupings that had converted to Islam en masse in pre-Mughal times. A few like the Patani Bohras, a convert group which had migrated to Surat from northern Gujarat, had an organization known as a jama't, a functional equivalent of the Hindu panch. The sheth s of this organization, mostly substantial merchants by occupation, sponsored communal feasts on wedding occasions and religious holidays and closely supervised community morality, punishing violators of group norms with fines and social ostracism.^[91] They also acted as trustees of the community's charitable property, which included a mosque, some land, several burial places, and a hall for group feasts. The butchers too had a particularly strong organization. On special holidays, it auctioned the right to keep a single shop open and used the funds to finance its own Muslim shrines.^[92] Though the leaders of Muslim communities were not as concerned with retaining control over commensality or with enforcing absolute endogamy as their Hindu counterparts, they clearly shared an interest in maintaining the ritual boundaries of their descent-based groupings. Islam no doubt provided much of the repertoire of symbols critical to group identity in all these communities. But in each case, this was a specific form of Islam, often colored by the group's pre-Islamic traditions and by continuing contact with non-Muslims.

The wealthiest and most tightly organized of all Muslim communities in Surat was the Daudi Bohras. The Bohras were descendants of Hindu petty-trading groups who had been converted to Islam by Shia Ismaili preachers after the eleventh century. Their prosperity grew during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as many built successful businesses through intracommunity networks of trust and shared resources. By the late nineteenth century many had established comfortable livings as shopkeepers dealing in commodities such as hardware, books, spices, sweets, groceries, and hides throughout western India. Some were extremely wealthy dealers in piece goods, with businesses stretching to Thailand, China, Arabia, and South Africa. Very few attained high proficiency in English or moved into the literate professions.^[93]

The Bohras were sharply set apart from the other Muslims. Both men and women wore clothing and maintained appearances which distinguished them from all other residents of the city. Almost all lived in a single large neighborhood in Navapura. The most critical marker of the Bohras' ethnicity was their special form of religious practice. They

continued to observe many "Hindu" traditions such as the holding of community feasts and the observance of Divali as the beginning of their accounting year. Their faith was an esoteric doctrine, distinct from the beliefs of other Islamic groupings. A small, clearly defined set of religious specialists alone had access to the scriptures of the community, which were written in a Gujarati laced with Arabic words. At the apex of the religious hierarchy was the da'i, the spiritual head of the community. The da'i was believed to be inspired directly by the Imam-inseclusion, whom the Daudis considered to be living in a place of concealment. Each da'i appointed his successor before death, in theory through revelation from the Imam.^[94] Mastery over the scriptures and other ritual qualifications proved more critical than heredity in determining succession, though sons well educated in community tradition often did assume their fathers' places. Since the office of da'i carried with it tremendous authority over the laity, disputes about the legitimacy of succession sometimes led to bitter conflict in which the losing factions, ostracized for their dissent, founded offshoot communities. The British courts usually backed the cause of the established da'i and his followers against these challengers.^[95] As a result the authority of the religious hierarchy may have been stronger under colonial rule than ever before.

The powers and social responsibilities of the da'i and the priesthood were indeed considerable. They controlled a vast charitable administration that touched the life of every Daudi. Each member of the community had to pay seven different types of taxes to maintain this establishment; particularly wealthy individuals often made additional personal donations of great value.^[96] With these funds the Bohra leaders built and kept up mosques, madrasa s, burial places, and community halls. They also provided social welfare services for the poorer Bohras and the families of previous da'i s.^[97] The tight control of the Daudi establishment generally left members little room to develop independent giving patterns; it insisted that all donations be channeled through the collective leadership.

The priesthood also closely regulated the social behavior of group members. Every Daudi tied him- or herself personally to the da'i by taking an oath of allegiance at the age of puberty.^[98] The oath articulated the doctrines by which the oathtaker was supposed to live, stressing particularly loyalty to the Imam. Approval of the religious specialists was essential to holding any critical ceremony in the life cycle, particularly marriage. The leadership enforced a rigid endogamy, certainly as strictly as any Hindu community. Those who violated community law were punished with fines or, in extreme cases, with social ostracism as well, much as in the Hindu jnati s.^[99]

A few wealthy merchants also exerted considerable authority within the community. Daudi sheth s, however, built up their positions largely through close association with, and patronage of, the religious leadership. It was commonplace for sheth s to hold community banquets to honor the da'i on important ceremonial occasions—for instance, important weddings or his return to Surat from his frequent travels.^[100] As among Hindu merchants, sheth s with a history of giving to community charities enhanced not only the social position of their family but also their capacity for raising credit. In a grouping that often managed to contain economic transactions within its collective boundaries, one's reputation within the community assumed great significance.

For the Bohras, Islam provided the vocabulary of motive critical to attaining and maintaining authority. Their Islam, however, was a special product, one that had been given a unique shape by leaders of the community over the centuries. In a sense, the Daudi Bohras exemplified the pattern of boundary maintenance among Muslims of Surat. Muslim groups in the city had forged many distinct subcultures by integrating their own traditions with universalistic Islamic symbols such as the mosque and burial ground. In effect each had its own Islam which group leaders employed more to sustain the separateness of their community than to participate in an international religious brotherhood. Muslims, like Hindus, were a series of communities in which membership was based first and foremost on shared descent.

The Parsis

A final but critically important community in Surat was the Parsis. Though numerically small—Parsis were only 6 percent of the city's total population in 1872—members of the group exerted great influence in urban affairs because of their wealth and, in the nineteenth century, their education. Most lived together in relatively exclusive neighborhoods located in Ranitalav, Nanpura, and Rustampura, outside the core of the city.^[101]

Followers of Zoroaster, a religious teacher in sixth century B.C. Persia, the Parsis had migrated to the Indian subcontinent from Persia to escape incorporation into Arab Islamic polities after the seventh century. They apparently lived in western India as agriculturalists for hundreds of years before moving into Gujarati cities to take jobs as artisans and traders during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. During the early eighteenth century a few established large fortunes by working as brokers for the East India Company and its officers.^[102] As company activity shifted to Bombay, Parsis were among the first to emigrate to the new port, where they often became successful as compradors of British firms, as independent merchants, and eventually as industrialists.^[103] Of

those who remained in Surat, some continued as merchants, petty traders, and artisans. The most successful, however, were those who took up positions in the early British administration and the new professions.^[104]

In India the Parsis had always formed an extremely cohesive community, characterized by forms of religious belief drawn from the teachings of Zoroaster, an ethos of philanthropy, and strong communal organizations. Parsi religious behavior may have been highly affected over the centuries by patterns of Hindu worship, yet it retained its distinctive character. To European observers, its most exceptional features were the special place of fire in religious observance (usually mistaken for fire worship) and the practice of leaving the dead in dokhma s—open towers exposed to the elements and to scavenging birds—practices which had no parallel elsewhere on the subcontinent. Early travelers were also impressed with the charitable traditions of the group. John Ovington, who visited the city during the mid-seventeenth century, remarked of the Parsis, "They shew a firm affection to all of their own sentiments in religion, assist the poor, and are very ready to provide for the sustenance and comfort of such as want it. Their universal kindness, either in employing such as are needy and able to work, or bestowing a seasonable bounteous charity to such as are infirm and miserable; leave no man destitute of relief, nor suffer a beggar in all their tribe; and herein so far comply with that excellent rule of Pythagoras, to enjoy a kind of community among friends."^[105] Though the ideal was never realized as fully as Ovington supposed, public giving did assume a very prominent place in Parsi culture and in generating community leadership. Forms of giving regarded as particularly auspicious were the building of Atash Beherams, where the Parsis performed their religious rites, and of the dokhma s, both of which were essential to the sustenance of any Parsi grouping.^[106] Also important was the patronage of dharmashala s, where poor, elderly, and sick community members could acquire food and other care; wells, where all members of a Parsi neighborhood could obtain water; and dispensaries.^[107] Much is unclear about how these early institutions were administered. Though the Parsis of the early eighteenth century had their own panchayat, modeled in part after Hindu panch es, it is not known how extensive the authority of this organization had become.

Under British rule, however, preexisting forms of communal life became increasingly institutionalized. During the late eighteenth century, prominent Parsis in Bombay, eager to eliminate customs that smacked of Hindu influence and to extend control over their community fellows, began to press the East India Company to acknowledge the legitimacy of a formal community leadership. In 1818 the leadership of the

Parsi Panchayat was fixed in the hands of eighteen community members chosen in a public meeting. A few select families quickly moved into positions of special influence in the Panchayat. At first the organization tended to be very active, when the interest of these families was at a peak, followed by great lulls, when their interest flagged. The Panchayat never did develop the importance of Hindu communal institutions in regulating the social conduct of group members and had lost this function altogether by the 1860s. But the organization remained an important focus of community politics since it controlled a large and growing charitable establishment. By sponsoring hospitals, educational institutions, and academic scholarships, the Panchayat and other Parsi institutions won for the group a progressive image among British civil servants, while community identity grew increasingly sharp. Many of the old Parsi families continued to exert authority in the Panchayat into the twentieth century.^[108]

Early in the nineteenth century the Bombay Panchayat was responsible for supervising charitable funds in Surat. In 1841, however, the funds had grown so large—especially after Parsis donated huge sums in response to the fire of 1837—that the Bombay organization decided to appoint a local panchayat of nine leading notables from Surat to act as trustees for communal properties. Institutionalization of Surat's Parsi leadership continued in the years that followed. In 1865 the provincial administration established the Parsi Matrimonial Court for Gujarat to advise the judges of district courts in all matters concerning marriage and succession, whose members were chosen by the government on the recommendation of leading Surti Parsis.^[109] By the turn of the twentieth century, the Parsi Panchayat had come to control communal properties worth many lakh s, and the number of community organizations in the city had further multiplied. Those who enjoyed influence in Parsi society invariably participated in one or more of these formal institutions. Often the families which had been prominent before the establishment of the Parsi Panchayat were able to preserve and even to enhance their authority by becoming trustees in the new organizations. The Modi, Vakil, Cooper, and Taliyarkhan families enjoyed positions either on the matrimonial court or Panchayat virtually as an hereditary privilege.

One family that attained informal recognition both within the community and among the British as enjoying a sort of headmanship of the Parsi community by the nineteenth century was that of Rustomji Khurshedji Modi. This family claimed the position of davar, or spiritual leader of the Parsis, and traced its descent back to kings of Persia. In the mid-seventeenth century a leading figure in the Modi family had built a dokhma in Surat and had financed a number of other charitable

institutions. His successors continued his philanthropic legacy. In the early 1700s the Modis acted as representatives of the Parsis in negotiations with imperial authorities, a role they continued to enjoy for the next two hundred years. Both the nawab s of the eighteenth century and the British during the nineteenth recognized the status of davar and consulted the Modi on matters affecting his community. By the nineteenth century the family head also served as chair of the meetings which nominated new members of the Panchayat and Parsi Matrimonial Court, using this position to ensure that his own candidates won appointments. During the 1890s, rising figures within the community tried repeatedly to challenge the position of the family but found the way blocked by the Modis' continued prestige as well as by their close ties with British civil servants.^[110]

Imperial rule had much to do with the growing formality of Parsi organization. More than any other group, the Parsis had a history of close interaction with the British, a history that antedated colonial rule in the city. A bureaucratic structure to administer Parsi affairs was one product of this interaction. Some Englishmen, observing the great strength of formal institutions devoted to community welfare in the community, came to the conclusion that the Parsis were the most westernized of the Gujarati communities. But the process of institutionalization was not simply an outgrowth of Western norms and organizational structures. Parsi leaderships had developed these institutions not to merge themselves with their rulers, but rather to maintain and enhance their control over community affairs and to preserve a distinct Parsi identity. The hardening of group solidarity in the nineteenth century was as much a product of the continuing Parsi concern with maintaining the well-being of community members as it was of a British drive to regularize administration. The Parsis remained a collectivity where membership was defined by birth and where leaders came from a relatively small number of prestigious families who commanded the deference of lesser families. Indeed, reviewing the historical record, one suspects that the inner, community-oriented domain of Parsi politics expanded in significance with the growing wealth of individual families and the increased resources of communal organizations.

Conclusion

Any attempt to make universal generalizations about processes of social continuity and change over three hundred years applicable to all local communities is bound to founder in a city as diverse and complex as Surat. But with the evidence presented in this chapter and the last, we can dismiss one set of hypotheses that could be offered as an explana-

tion for the emergence of public culture in the later nineteenth century: that the development of capitalism, the colonial administration, and the British legal order had produced so fundamental a transformation in local society as to create an entirely new class system in the city, and that the new classes that had formed as a result embraced public politics as a means of expressing their newly emergent class interests. Such a model for understanding the development of civic politics makes sense only if one set of relationships ill-suited to capitalism steadily gave way to another, more functional set. Yet in the inner domain of local politics, the Surtis continued to reproduce a social order in which men and women remained concerned primarily with questions of family status and reputation, in which older idioms of authority met the challenges posed by changes in the larger world, well-established leadership styles such as that of the Hindu sheth continued to carry considerable weight, and collectivities based upon descent often retained the cohesion necessary to enforce a wide range of group norms. Most people located their own preoccupations in these various inner arenas, not in their wider religious communities and certainly not in the almost anonymous civic arena. The structures and idioms of local social life persisted, not because of any inherent intransigence or reluctance to change among the Surtis, but because these social forms remained relevant to the material and psychic needs of the population.

Before World War I, the civic arena grew not so much at the expense of preexisting economic and social forms as in addition to these forms. It formed another layer of politics—an outer domain—governed by a different terminology and moral principles, one that existed above and outside the inner sphere. To account for this puzzling development, we need to explore the political and symbolic interactions between indigenous elites and their rulers and the context of domination by outsiders to the city. The next chapter begins this process by looking at the relations between subject and ruler before the emergence of British colonialism.