THE GREAT BANIYA COMMUNITY

A very very interesting story on India ‘s caste issues

Forbes magazine has put out a list of the world’s 1,210 billionaires.

Fifty-five of them are Indians. A billion dollars is Rs. 4,480 crore.

A Baniya is a member of the Vaish caste, 

They are approx. 15% of India ‘s population. Yet, 26 of the 55 are baniyas! & some of them from sub vaishya caste.

India ‘s richest man is a Baniya (Lakshmi Mittal, world’s sixth richest with $31.1 billion),


India ‘s second richest man is a Baniya (Mukesh Ambani, $27 billion),


India ‘s third richest man is a Khoja (Azim Premji, $16.8 billion) a converted baniya.


India ‘s fourth richest men are Baniyas (Shashi and Ravi Ruia, $15.8 billion),


India ‘s fifth richest person is a Baniya (Savitri Jindal, $13.2 billion),


India ‘s sixth richest man is a Baniya (Gautam Adani, $10 billion),


India ‘s seventh richest man is a Baniya (Kumar Mangalam Birla, $9.2 billion),


India ‘s eighth richest man is a Baniya (Anil Ambani, $8.8 billion),


India ‘s ninth richest man is a Baniya (Sunil Mittal, $8.3 billion).


India ‘s 10th richest man is a Parsi (Adi Godrej, world’s 130th richest with $7.3 billion).

Score: Baniyas 9, Rest of India 1. If we consider the Gujaratis Godrej and Premji (from the Lohana bania caste) as coming from mercantile communities then actually Rest of India wasn’t playing this match so far.

India ‘s 11th richest man is K.P. Singh of DLF ($7.3 billion). He is thefirst departure from our trend of mercantile castes. Singh is a peasant, the most populous caste grouping of India,
about 50% of our population.

From numbers 11 to 20, there are seven Baniyas. They are Anil Agarwal of Vedanta ($6.4 billion),

Dilip Shanghvi of Sun Pharma ($6.1 billion), Uday Kotak ($3.2 billion), and Subhash Chandra Goel of Zee, ($2.9 billion). The non-Baniyas are Shiv Nadar of nadar caste a sub vaishya caste, HCL ($5.6 billion),

Malvinder and Shivinder Singh of Ranbaxy ($4.1 billion), Kalanithi Maran of Sun TV ($3.5 billion), Mukesh Jagtiani of Landmark ($3 billion) and Pankaj Patel of Cadila ($2.6 billion) both of them from vaishya baniya caste

Between 21 and 30, there are 8  Baniyas. They are Indu Jain of The Times of India ($2.6 billion),

Desh Bandhu Gupta of Lupin ($2.1 billion), Sudhirand Samir Mehta of Torrent ($2 billion),

Aloke Lohia of Indorama ($2 billion) and Venugopal Dhoot of Videocon ($1.9 billion).

G.M. Rao of GMR ($2.6 billion).

Mumbai builder Rajan Raheja ($2.2 billion).(a khatri sub vaishya caste)

Gautam Thapar of Avantha ($2 billion)( a khatri saub vaishya caste). 

Between 31 and 40 are two Baniyas: Rahul Bajaj ($1.6 billion) and Ajay Piramal ($1.4 billion).

The non-Baniyas include three Brahmins: Nandan Nilekani ($1.8 billion) and

S. Gopalakrishnan ($1.6 billion) of Infosys, and Vijay Mallya ($1.4 billion).

Three of the others are from mercantile our sub vaishya castes: Chandru Raheja ($1.9 billion),

Brijmohan Lall Munjal of Hero Motors ($1.5 billion) and Vikas Oberoi ($1.4 billion).

The last two are K. Anji Reddy ($1.5 billion) (from Andhra’s dominant peasant community) and Ajay Kalsi of Indus Gas ($1.7 billion).

Between 41 and 50 are five Baniyas. They are R.P. Goenka ($1.3 billion), Rakesh Jhunjhunwala ($1.2 billion), Brij Bhushan Singhal ($1.2 billion), B.K. Modi ($1.1 billion) and Mumbai builder Mangal Prabhat Lodha ($1.1 billion). Baba Kalyani of Bharat Forge ($1.3 billion), Keshub Mahindra ($1.2 billion) are fro sub vaishya caste. Non baniya are  K. Dinesh ($1.2 billion) and S.D. Shibulal ($1.1 billion) of Infosys, and Yusuf Hamied of Cipla ($1.1 billion).

The last five, from 51 to 55, include two Baniyas: Mumbai builder Mofatraj Munot of Kalpataru ($1 billion) and Ashwin Dani of Asian Paints ($1 billion). Two of the others are

from mercantile sub vaishya castes: Parsi Anu Aga of Thermax ($1 billion) and Khatri Harindarpal Banga of Noble ($1 billion). Delhi builder Ramesh Chandra of Unitech ($1 billion) ends our list of Indians with a billion dollars or more.

The list has three Parsis, two Muslims and Sikhs in one spot (shared by the Ranbaxy Singhs).

Banga is also a Sikh name but Harindarpal is clean-shaven. All of them, except Poonawalla, have inherited their wealth, though in the case of one (Premji), he took a small firm and

made it global. There is nobody from the scheduled tribes or castes.

India ‘s large peasant castes have some representation (Singh, Patel, Reddy), but not much.

There are 46 Baniyas on our list. Many of them inherited their wealth, but just as many (Mittal, Ruias, Adani, Dhoot among others) are self-made.

The list has 16 Rajasthanis, and 13 Gujaratis. Every single Rajasthani is from one caste, Vaish, though they are from two faiths: Hindu and Jain.

Only Gujarat is capable of producing billionaires drawn from four different faiths-Hindu, Parsi, Jain and Muslim-and three different castes: Baniya, Khatri and peasant.

This is unique in India and there is something about this secular mercantile culture that produces great men across communities. What is it? Three out of the four biggest leaders of the subcontinent under British rule were Gujarati, and they were drawn from these three castes: Gandhi, Jinnah and Patel. Only 5% of India ‘s population, Gujaratis don’t have the numbers to dominate its democratic politics. But businesses are not run in

democratic fashion. And to rise, you need quality, not quantity.

The heartland of India , where our quantity resides, is missing from this list. Bihar, Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh have little or no representation and this does not surprise us.

On the list are 10 south Indians, in proportion to their 20% share of India ‘s population.

The famous five from Infosys are obviously self-made. Of the others, four are first-generation wealthy. This is a good indicator for the future, and it restores some balance in favor of Rest of India.

Two final observations. India ‘s greatest businessman is not on this list.Why is that?

It is because Ratan Tata owns less than 1% of Tata Sons. He is exceptional in every way.


SAABHAAR : SRI DINESH VORA