BANIYAS

 

Introduction The banians as a class emerged in the mid seventeenth century. They were native brokers attached to business houses or were the agents of the European merchants till the first half of the nineteenth century. Banians had played the leading role in communicating business information between the foreign merchants and the local traders of Bengal. They proved themselves as essential collaborators of the European and American merchants. European merchants had a deep sense of appreciation for banians, as being the source of money and goods supply. Those people had adequate knowledge about the real market. Their business intelligence and skills of capital handling, trading and labor management are regarded as the pillars of success of personal businesses, developed over the years, in the name of European merchants. Banians were capable to run and supervise various aspects of open and confidential business deals in Bengal. Because of this, it is very necessary to analyse the banian economy. The subject of banian has been dealt with partially or touched incidentally by historians. Historian N.K Sinha has dealt with the banians of Bengal elaborately. However his works do not focus the long history of banians. Historians like Sushil Chaudhuri, P.J Marshall, Bhola Nauth Chunder, Dilip Basu, Sirajul Islam and some other scholars dealt with the banians. Benoy Ghose, Sushil Chaudhuri and P.J Marshall also provide a brief picture on eighteenth century’s banians. Dilip Basu wrote about the nineteenth century banians and Sirajul Islam discussed specially on banians connected with 9 American traders. However none of them has taken the trouble to offer a comprehensive picture of the emergence and development of banians throughout the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. There is little debate about the studies of the above mentioned scholars. However, confusion remains among the historians about different intermediary groups such as broker, banian, dadny merchant, gomasta-dalal. Some scholars argue that after the Plassey the banian class established by the influence of Maharaja Nabakrishna and Krishna Kanta Nandy. Other scholars think that the importance of banians was losing day by day after the establishment of the Agency Houses. Finally after the Permanent Settlement they totally engaged themselves into land. It is a fact that when the colonial rulers got more and more power, banians gradually lost their position steadily. But it seems unrealistic that after the Permanent Settlement all the banians gave up their trade and invested their capital in land. Basically Bengali banians engaged themselves completely into land after the fall of Union Bank in 1847. In my research work I have tried to give a clear picture on banian class; it’s rise and development; relation with European and American merchants and it’s influence on the society of Bengal. The thesis also attempts to seek the causes of the decline of the banian class. The thesis is divided into five chapters. The first chapter seeks a definition of the banian. Here I tried to identify who were banians and what were their activities. In the second chapter I discuss that how the banians did their services to the Europeans. In this chapter I presented the diversified activities of banians in the whole of the eighteenth to the first half of the nineteenth century. American came to Bengal in the last decade of the eighteenth century for trade. They mostly depended on Bengali banians. The third chapter throws light on 10 banians interaction with the American merchants and their role in the American trade from Bengal. Chapter four analyzes the influence of banians in the society of Bengal. In the concluding chapter I analyse the causes of the decline of the banian class. In this thesis I have used both the secondary literatures and published and unpublished primary archival sources. I have used various archives and libraries in Bangladesh and India, particularly West Bengal. The study admits limitations too. It would be great if I could do a comparative study on banian capital. We are still very ignorant of the size and use of the banian capital. We have no complete records on the quantum of exports made through the mediation of the banians. Chapter One Formation and Activities This chapter defines the term banian, discusses about the formation of banians, presents various figures that fall under this term and traces the development of the banian. Banians, being the closest associates of the European and American merchants, collaborated with these foreign merchants to penetrate the nerve centers of every economic sector of Bengal. Their activities helped the East India Company to establish a firm command over all aspects of monitory benefits ranging from land revenue to every profitable commodity of internal trade. In fact, banians laid the foundation of European and American trade in this country. Definition The word banian comes from Sanskrit vānija, Hindi baniyā, 1 Bangla banik2 , which means merchant. The lexicographical meaning of ‘Banian’ is shopkeeper. In other words it means a person having keen intelligence in trading.’3 In the Bengal Magazine, the word banian occurs as a corrupt form of the term banik, which also means a merchant.4 The term ‘Banyan’ or ‘Banian’ as it is otherwise written, evidently comes from the Banias5 , the hereditary 1 ‘Bania.’ Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 2010 (CD Version); Oxford Online Dictionaries. 2 ‘Banian.’ Banglapedia- National Encyclopedia of Bangladesh (CD Version). 3 Dr. Sirajul Islam, Bangladesher Bhumi Byabasta o Samajik Samassya (The Land System and Social Problems of Bangladesh), 2nd Edition, Katha Bicitra, p. 68. 4 Shubhra Chakrabarti, ‘Collaboration and Resistance: Bengal Merchants and the English East India Company, 1757-1833,’ Studies in History, 1994, vol. 10, No. 1, p. 107. 5 The term ‘Bania’ also applied to Hindu and Jain merchants in Western India. It is Indian caste consisting generally of moneylenders or merchants, found chiefly in northern and western India; strictly speaking, however, many mercantile communities are not Banias, and, conversely, some Banias are not merchants. In the fourfold division of Indian 12 mercantile and banking class from ancient times, possessing invariably heavy purses, with extensive credit and influence in the community.6 According to the Hobson-Jobson dictionary the definition of the term is ‘In Calcutta banyan is (or perhaps rather was) specifically applied to the native brokers attached to houses of business, or to persons in the employment of a private gentleman doing analogous duties (now usually called sircar). The word was adopted from Vaniya, a man of the trading caste (in Gujarati vaniyo), and that comes from Skt. vanij, ‘a merchant.’ The terminal nasal may be a Portuguese addition (as in palanquin, mandarin, Bassein), or it may be taken from the plural form vaniyan. It is probable, however, that the Portuguese found the word already in use by the Arab traders....’7 Dilip Basu also wrote that the term ‘banian’ is a pidgin version of the merchant caste name banya. It seems to have first gained currency among the Portuguese traders on Indian West Coast during the fifteenth century. Bengalis however, emphasize the non-caste character of the term, interpreting it as a state functionary (mutsuddi).8 Some of the Hindu appointees of Murshid Quli Khan were called Ahal-i-kar and Mutsuddi. Bengalis in the employ of East India Company’s servants continued to call themselves mutsuddis while the British followed the subcontinental practice of calling them banian.9 In the south part of India such agents and brokers were called Dubash. In Myanmar they were called Linguists and in China, Comprador. These banians played very significant role to introduce foreign trade in the eighteenth and nineteenth Century Bengal. society, the innumerable Bania subcastes, such as the Agarwala, are classed as members of the Vaishya, or commoner, class. In religious affiliation they are generally Vaishnavas (worshippers of the Hindu god Vishnu) or Jainas and tend to be strict vegetarians, teetotallers, and orthodox in observing ceremonial purity. The Indian leader Mohandas Gandhi belonged to a Gujarati Bania caste. Encyclopedia Britannica. 6 Bhola Nauth Chunder, ‘The System of Banyanship’, Nineteenth Century Studies, No. 8, October 1974, p. 461-475. 7 Hobson-Jobson, Online Dictionary. (Hobson-Jobson: Glossary of Colloquial AngloIndian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive was a dictionary of Anglo-Indian terms used during British colonial rule in India. Henry Yule and Arthur C. Burnell published it in 1886.) 8 Dilip Basu, ‘The Banian and the British in Calcutta, 1800-1850’, Bengal Past and Present, vol. 92, No. 1, 1973, p. 159. 9 Narendra Krishna Sinha, The Economic History of Bengal- From Plassey to the Permanent Settlement, Vol. I, Firma KLM Private Ltd, Calcutta 1981, p. 4. 13 In Anglo-Indian society and among the natives too, a banian was one who was engaged by an individual European merchant to work for him as a broker and agent. William Carey had noticed that the native manager of an English agency house, or a ship captain was popularly known as a mutsuddi by his countrymen and as a banian by the Europeans.10 According to William Bolt: A banian is a person (either acting for himself, or as the substitute of some great black merchant) by whom the English gentlemen in general transact all their business. He is interpreter, head book-keeper, head secretary, head broker, the supplier of cash and cash keeper, and in general also secret keeper. He puts in the under clerks, the porter or door keeper, stewards, bearers of the silver staves, running footmen, torch and branch light carriers, palanquin-bearers and all the long tribe of under servants for whose honesty he is deemed answerable; and he conducts all the trade of his master, to whom, unless pretty well acquainted with the country languages, it is difficult for any of the natives to obtain access. In short, he possesses singly many more powers over his master, than can in this country be assumed by any young spendthrift’s steward, money-lender and mistress all together; and farther serves, very conveniently sometimes, on a public discussion, to father such acts or proceedings as his master dares not avow. There is a powerful string of connections among these banian, who serve all the English in the settlements of Bengal, as well in all public offices as in their private affairs.11 Warren Hastings discussed the definition, characteristics and nature of the banian in a letter to Sir Elijah Impey dated 12 October, 1774. He wrote, “you may consider such a servant only as a steward, or one who you may usefully