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  • 2 - Banking in the Bazaar: The Nattukottai Chettiars

  • Edited by Ajay Gandhi, Universiteit Leiden, Barbara Harriss-White, University of Oxford, Douglas E. Haynes, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, Sebastian Schwecke, Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta
  • Book:
    Rethinking Markets in Modern India
    Published online:
    24 September 2020
    Print publication:
    01 October 2020, pp 29-53

  • Summary

    Under colonial rule, the Nattukottai Chettiar or Nakarattar caste organized themselves into a complex, segmentary network of interdependent family merchant-banking firms. Each firm traded individually in commodities trading, money lending, domestic and overseas banking operations, or industrial investment. But beyond this - making possible every other commercial venture in which it engaged - each family firm operated as a commercial bank: taking money on deposit and drafting hundis and other financial instruments for use in the transfer of loanable capital to branch offices and to other banks. As a result, every Nakarattar firm was tied together with all of the others to form a unified banking system, playing a major role in the credit markets of South Asia and the Indian Ocean rim.