The Dubashes of Madras Author(s): Susan Neild-Basu Source: Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 18, No. 1 (1984), pp.

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Modern Asian Studies, I8, I (I984), pp. 1-31. Printed in Great Britain.

TheDubashesof Madras
SUSAN NEILD-BASU Rochester,New York IF Calcutta of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was a city of 'banians,' can Madras of the same period be called a city of 'dubashes'? The parallels in the early history of these two port cities, and particularly in the emergence of similar groups of Indian collaborators, are not hard to find. Nor are they especially surprising in view of the common goals and needs of the English traders who founded them. The need for intermediaries and collaborators was built into the very economic and political structures of these towns. In turn, these groups inevitably had a tremendous influence on the development and environments of these colonial urban centers. The issue to be examined here is how comparable were the Bengali banians and the Madras dubashes? How similar, or different, were their social origins and identities, their functions as intermediaries, the extent of their influence and of their involvement in the commercial and political life of their cities? The answers to such questions cannot yet be fully given, for there is still much to be learned about such matters as the dubashes' financial relationships with British officials and traders, the variety and extent of their commercial and landholding interests, their family networks and local political ties. In this analysis I have relied upon the work done on Calcutta and its banians by Dilip Basu and Peter Marshall.1 My understanding of the dubashes derives primarily from my own study of the history of Madras. The fresh English civilian or military arrival in Madras in the late 700oos could easily have assumed, at least initially, that Madras was indeed a city largely populated by what one officer called a 'tribe of
For comments on this paper, which was presented at the 34th Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies in Chicago, 2-4 April 1982, I am indebted to S. Arasaratnam, David Washbrook, Peter Marshall, and Dilip Basu. 1 in Bengal Past Dilip Basu, 'The Banian and the British in the Calcutta, I800-I850', and Present, 92, I (January-June 1973), 157-70; and Peter Marshall, 'Masters and Banians in Eighteenth Century Calcutta', in B. B. Kling and M. N. Pearson (eds), The Age of Partnership: Europeansin Asia beforeDominion (Honolulu, 1979), pp. I91-213. oo26-749X/83/o608-o6oo$02.oo ? I984 Cambridge University Press I

SUSAN

NEILD-BASU

dubashes,'-or later in his narrative, a 'gang ofdubashes.'2 Contemporary descriptions of Madras abound with stories of the boatloads of robed and turbaned Indians boarding the ships anchored in the Madras roads in order to negotiate for the purchase of the ship's unassigned cargo or, more emphatically, to press their services upon the still sea-dazed passengers. The disembarking voyager on the Madras beach could find himself surrounded by scores, or, according to Hamilton's account, even hundreds more.3 For the Englishman (or woman) in late eighteenthcentury Madras, the dubash represented his first view of India, and in all too many cases continued to be his primary source of contact with non-European society. Coping with dubashes ranked high among the shared experiences of European colonial life in Madras-one of the more predictable and non-controversial topics of conversation in the drawing room or at the dinner table. In reading these accounts one senses as well that the dubash came to represent something deeper in the colonial psyche of the period. In the repeated complaints about harassment by dubashes searching for employment and, when hired, about their chicanery and susceptibility to bribery or petty larceny,4 one feels the latent ambivalences, frustrations, and even fears inherent in the colonial situation. The palpable unease about handing over control of a large part of their lives to these assertive strangers surely accounts for episodes of public mockery of dubashes in newspapers and for other attempts to demean them in at least European eyes.5 In Calcutta, Europeans had similar relationships to their banians. But the term 'banian' did not seem to acquire the almost ominous ring which 'dubash' possessed by the close of the eighteenth century. Revenue reports, particularly those of Lionel Place, the Collector of the Jaghir, increasingly spoke of the 'intrigues' of 'this diabolical race of men.'6 Collusion among the vaguely entitled 'Madras Dubashes' was suspected whenever land settlement plans in the neighboring districts were subverted, when low castes rebelled, when investigations into
2 Innes Munro, A Narrative of the Military Operativeson the CoromandalCoast (London,

1789), PP. I9, 30. 3 Walter Hamilton, A Geographical,Statistical, and Historical DescriptionofHindoostan and the AdjacentCountries(London, I820), p. 410. 4 Elisa ed. by E. M. Forster (London, Fay, Original Lettersfrom India (i779-i85), 1925), p. I62. 5 See letter from an 'Observer' in the Madras Courier,26 April I 792. 6 Madras Board of Revenue Proceedings (hereafter M.B.R.P.) I July 1799: Report of Lionel Place, Collector, on the Jaghir.

THE DUBASHES OF MADRAS

allegations of corruption involving Company officials were thwarted, or when the Mayor's Court's decisions seemed clearly biased against particular individuals.7 Governor Macartney felt compelled to insist that he was not 'dubashed' or under the thumb of his chief Indian servant, as many of his predecessors were thought to have been. But he added that he found little difference among the leading dubashes 'as to incorruptibility'.8 This derogatory view of the late eighteenth-century dubash found its way into nineteenth-century reports on Madras. Drawing almost entirely on Place's reports on the Jaghir, the House of Commons' Fifth Report of 1813 echoed his words about the 'evil' of the 'Dubash influence' and their 'dominion' in the Jaghir.9 The District Manual of Chingleput of I879 perpetuated this assessment of dubashes.10 The very word 'dubash', like the other eighteenth-century label, 'Nabob', lost its original meaning under a mantle of disrepute. Although Lionel Place's almost paranoid suspicion and distrust of dubashes were regarded as extreme by his superiors in the Madras government, his sense of their possible challenge to the effective establishment of Company rule seems to have been widely shared. It is this vaguely threatening aspect of dubashi influence-this impression of a class of men essentially created by the Company but now possessing an authority of its own-which appears to have distinguished them from the banians of Calcutta.11 The atmosphere of implied partnership and mutual dependence which marked banian-British relations in Calcutta was less pronounced in Madras by the close of the eighteenth century. Dubashes by then were accepted as almost a necessary evil, to be eliminated (as in fact they subsequently were from many arenas) as Company rule was consolidated and its administrative machinery put into order.

7 Attorneys' dubashes in the Mayor's Court were considered among the most corrupt and opportunistic of all. For example, see M.B.R.P. 3 December I795: Letter from Lionel Place, 6 October 795. 8 C. Colin Davies, The Private Correspondence Lord Macartney, Governorof Madras of (178i-85) (London, I950), pp. 63-4. 9 Great Britain, Parliamentary Papers (House of Commons), Fifth Report of the Select Committee'on the Affairs of the East India Company. Irish University Press Series, vol. 4 (Shannon, I968), pp. 195, I97. 10 Charles S. Crole, The Chingleput,Late Madras, District: A Manual (Madras, 1879), p.

1 To quote Place, 'I fear there are many more instances of the interests of government being most injured and opposed by those who have been most cherished in the bosom of its affections, because they rather than itself have been too long in the habit of ruling its subjects', M.B.R.P. 3 December 1795: To Bd. from Place 6 October 1795.

242.

SUSAN NEILD-BASU

The Role of Dubashes

within the Company

The activities of the early dubashes were nearly indistinguishable from those of the banians in Calcutta. The word 'dubash', or more properly 'dubashi', literally means a man of two languages or an interpreter and connotes the role of a go-between or broker. His linguistic skills as interpreter and translator were essential to his role, but the usefulness of the dubash, like that of the banian, extended far beyond his knowledge of languages. In the households of the higher ranking Europeans in Madras, a dubash served as the head steward. For new arrivals to the town, he functioned as a kind of advisor, guide, broker, and inevitably moneylender.12 For the settled Company servant or military officer, he took charge of his patron's private investments, often advancing his own funds for the purpose of augmenting his employer's meager official salary. Nearly every European had his personal dubash. Even a temporary resident found his services indispensable.13 The description of the eighteenth-century Calcutta banian as an 'interpreter, head bookkeeper, head secretary, head broker, the supplier of cash and cash keeper and in general also secret keeper,' fits with little alteration the Madras dubash as well.14 Dubashes functioned in other areas besides personal service to Europeans. Most departments of the Company government and the courts had their own dubashes. These performed varied duties as interpreters, translators, secretaries, supervisors, and mediators between Indians and Company officials. The Head Dubashes in these departments had essentially managerial responsibilities and were the direct forerunners (often in terms of personal ancestry as well as function) of the office bureaucrats of later years. By the early i 8oos the term dubash had nearly disappeared from official nomenclature (except in some private businesses and households), owing as much perhaps to its negative associations as to its unspecified meaning in an age of greater administrative complexity. Many of the jobs which had been performed in fact by a single dubash in the more loosely structured eighteenth-cenSee Letter to the Editor in the Madras Gazette, 7 February 1795, from a 'David Sanguine' for a detailed description of the financial troubles of a young arrival in the city and his relationship with his dubash. 13James Waltham, Journal of a Voyagein s18I and i812 to Madras and China (London, I814), pp. 26-7. 14 Marshall, 'Master and Banians', p. I93, and Basu, 'The Banians and the British', p. i6i.
12

THE

DUBASHES

OF MADRAS

tury Company government were now more precisely labeled as 'interpreter', 'accountant', 'secretary', or 'manager'.15 Certain of these positions possessed more inherent possibilities for personal gain than others. All, however, provided good opportunities for nepotism, but that was taken for granted in the eighteenth and even in the early nineteenth-century context. In the absence of fixed standards for government employment or even of much of a fixed administrative structure, personal influence, family connections, and the support of Company patrons were the accepted means of recruitment into the service of the Company and its officials. As a result one discovers within the ranks of dubashes, as was the case earlier with the Company's Indian merchants,16 various clusters of family groupings. In some cases, certain departments or positions apparently became almost the private and inherited preserve of particular families-almost their mirasi holding, to use a term which denotes inherited village or temple rights in South India. In many other instances, descendants of early Indian associates of the Company continued throughout the eighteenth century to serve the Company but in a number of different capacities.17 The central role of family linkages with the Company is easily documented both for the early and later years of the eighteenth century in Madras. In one case, the association of a single Brahman dubash family with one particular job with the Company spanned a period of two-thirds of a century. Rayasam Papaiya held the position of Chief Dubash and Translator to successive governors of Fort St George from 1697 until his death in 727. His successor in both jobs was his brother. The latter, in turn, was succeeded by Rayasam Papaiya's son, Vyasam Venkatachalam, who held the position up to the year 1746. 18 The fall of Madras to the French at this time occasioned a shift in the balance of dubashi influence from the Brahman Rayasam family to that of the Nal
15 For an example of these new bureaucratic terms see Madras Public Consultations (hereafter M.P.C.), 27 December 1831: Petition from P. Kistnama Naick. 16Joseph J. Brennig, 'Chief Merchants and European Enclaves of Seventeenth-Century Coromandel', Modern Asian Studies, I, 3 (July I977), 321-40. 17 To take the example of the prominent Madras Bandla family of the Perike weaving caste (also known as Percavers), Beri Timmana was an early Chief Merchant with the Company in the mid-seventeenth century, as was his brother. Ibid., pp. 334-9. One Bundla Mootal served as a political agent for the Company in Madras in the mid-eighteenth century, Records of Fort St George, Country Correspondence, Public Dept, 1748 (Madras, I908), pp. 2-13. The most prominent nineteenth-century member of this family was Bandla Ramaswamy Naidu, the author of the I820 'Memoir on the Internal Revenue System of the Madras Presidency', published in the Journal of theRoyal Asiatic Society, I (I834), 292-306. 18 H. D. Love, Vestiges of Old Madras (London, I913), I: 70; 2: 36, 52, I26, I37.

SUSAN NEILD-BASU

Vellalar Manali Muttukrishna Mudaliar-a family which was to play a leading role in Madras from the mid-I7oos through the early i8oos.19 In spite of his temporary eclipse, Vyasam Venkatachalam Papaiya later was able to reassert his claim to the status of Company's Translator with some success. Company records reveal that his successor, Manali Muttukrishna, had to share some of the influence and duties of a chief dubash with Vyasam Venkatachalam in, for instance, meetings with caste heads and translations of important documents.20 Old and durable ties with the Company had thus enabled Venkatachalam not merely to recover to some degree his family's old employ, but to pursue as well the economic advantages associated with dubashi status. Like other top dubashes of the period, he acquired considerable economic influence as a tax farmer and merchant in the mid- I 700s.21 Here clearly was a man whose family history and personal achievements were inextricably bound up with the fortunes of the East India Company at Madras. There were many other such dubashi families which were no less dependent upon both the Company's patronage and the colonial urban center for their livelihood and their social and economic status. One Tuluva Vellalar family from Ellambadu village in the district of Ponneri controlled the office of Head Dubash in the Company's Military Secretariat for more than seventy years. Ellambadu Mootia Mudaliar's father held that post for about forty years up to the year 1793. After his retirement his first son and later his second son, Ellambadu Mootia, took over the job. In the reorganized Political and Military Department of the early I8oos, Ellambadu Mootia was given the updated title of 'Principal Native Manager and Record Keeper' and earned a reputation as one of the most highly respected Indian officials of his time. Upon his departure in 1819, his son continued the family tradition of
19 Manali Ramakrishna Mudaliar, a descendant of Manali Muttukrishna, identified his family as Nal Vallalar mirasdars (personal communication, 15 July I97 I). Yet in a narrative prepared by the great grandson of Manali Muttukrishna in the late 8oos, a family relationship is claimed with Kasi Viranna, Chief Merchant of the Company at Madras from I669 to I680. (Manali Chinna Kesavarao Mudaliar, 'First Settlement of the English on the Coast of Coromandal', Madras, 1882, p. 2.) The problem here is that Kasi Viranna belonged to the Telugu Komati merchant caste (Brennig, 'Chief Merchants and European Enclaves', pp. 335-6). This discrepancy implies some ambiguity over the caste origins of the Manali family, an ambiguity which is heightened by that family's disdain for the established Right Hand caste organization in the early I8oos and by the very few references to Nal Vellalar community in the old records of the city. 20 Love, Vestiges, 2: 277, 288; Records of Fort St George, Diary and Consultation Books, 78 (I749-50): 167; 8I (1753): I8; 83 (1756): 63, 81. 21 Records of Fort St George, Diary and Consultation Books, 89 (1759): 95-6, 201.

THE DUBASHES OF MADRAS

service with the Company and was appointed Assistant Manager in the Chief Secretariat.22 As was the case with other Indians having good Company connections, the enhanced economic and social standing this family earned from their prestigious employment was reflected in their elevated status within their caste as its headmen.23 One further family biography will illustrate again the importance of family connections among the Madras dubashes and the extent of their ties with the Company. In the early I8oos a Kanakkapillai dubash, Vandalur Venkatachalam Pillai, wrote a memorial extolling his family's years of service to the Company, while lamenting at the same time his own distressed position.24 He was able to trace his family's association with the Company at Madras to the early decades of the settlement, when his great-grandfather left the South Arcot village of Vandalur and came to Madras. In I687 he became dubash to Governor Elihu Yale. His son in his time served Governor Morse as dubash in 1740. The family tradition of Company employment was continued into the later I700s. An uncle of the memorialist was dubash to two governors in the 176os and 70s, as well as to Warren Hastings during the latter's stay in Madras in the late I76os. This Venkatanarayana Pillai also developed close ties with Nawab Mohammed Ali and may have played a significant role in the scandalous usurpation of the Madras government from Lord Pigot in I776, which was led by his Company patron and encouraged by the Nawab. It was probably no coincidence that another relation by marriage, Paupa Pillai, was appointed during the late 176os to the lucrative post of renter of the Company'sJaghir. Paupa Pillai arrived in Madras after the fall of Pondicherry in 1762, where he had functioned as an ally of Mme Dupleix and an enemy of Dupleix's dubash Ananda Ranga Pillai.25 Venkatachalam Pillai's own father was dubash to various Councillors of Fort St George and served one as an attorney. The memorialist himself served Englishmen in lesser positions and claimed he was defrauded by one of his patrons in a joint purchase of one of the Nawab's bonds. Venkatachalam's most famous dubashi relation in the late I 700s was
22 T. L. Strange, Casesin the Courtof theRecorder theSupremeCourtat Madras (Madras, and I816), 2: 333-9, 364; M.P.C. 31 May I819; M.P.C. 27 December 1831. 23 Tondaimandalam uyartuluva vellalar sarittira surukkam (The Short History of the Superior Tuluva Vellalars of Tondaimandalam) (Madras, I91 1), p. 7. 24 S. K. Govindaswami, 'Some Unpublished Letters of Charles Bourchier and George Stratton ( 1771 to I802)', Madras Tercentenary Commemoration Volume(Madras, 1939), pp.

26-3I.
25 The Private Diary of Ananda Ranga Pillai, ed. by Sir Frederick Price and H. H. Dodwell (Madras, 1904-28), 8 (1751-53): 434, Ranga Pillai therein refers to Paupa Pillai as having come from Madras, 'begotten of generations of beggars'.

SUSAN NEILD-BASU

Venkataranga, or simply Ranga Pillai, a holder of many influential positions within both the city and the more distant territories of the Company. It was his name, among others, which later became a symbol of alleged dubashi corruption and power. The notoriety ascribed to the late eighteenth-century Madras dubashes arose largely from their active participation in the freewheeling political intrigues and financial dealings of the era. In this they were only following the lead, and often the explicit directions, of their English patrons. But the expanding territory then coming under the Company's authority, the atmosphere of political fluidity, the persisting need of the Company, the Nawab, and both European and Indian merchants for cash opened new avenues for direct personal gain for astute and well-connected dubashes. The influence and power of highly-placed dubashes in the early I70os had already been considerable. In many cases the Governor's dubash was the defacto governor of the Indian town, left to his own devices as long as order and favorable trading conditions were maintained. Charges of oppression and extortion of merchants were commonly laid against them, but only after their patrons had departed and their cloak of invulnerability removed.26 Such leading dubashes also frequently served their patrons in a political capacity as emissaries to Indian rulers or intermediaries in negotiations (or exchange of favors) with other regional powers.27 The power of these dubashes was limited, however, by the countervailing influence of the Company's Indian merchants, who controlled the trade of the settlement and managed the Company's textile interests, as well as by the restricted political and territorial concerns of the Company in the early
I7oos.

After the mid-eighteenth century, with the ascending political role of the Company in the Carnatic, the relative position of the dubashes among the dominant Indian groups in Madras shifted more in their favor. Wartime disruptions had hurt the textile trade and thus the economic and social power of Indian merchant groups.28 Fluctuating profits in trade, moreover, now had to be divided among a growing number of competitors, by then including new groups of private European traders and increasing numbers of civil servants and military officers brought in to manage the expanding political and military
James Talboys Wheeler, Madras in the Olden Times (Madras, 1882), 2:69-84: 3: 365. See, for instance, Records of Fort St George, Diary and Consultation Books (Public Dept) 82 (I755): 307-8. 28 For a discussion of these changes, see S. Arasaratnam, 'Trade and Political Dominion in South India, 1750-1790: Changing British-Indian Relationships', Modern Asian Studies, 13, I (February I979), 24-5.
26
27

THE DUBASHES OF MADRAS

involvements of the Company. Trade still remained the primary means of augmenting official salaries and of remitting funds back to England. But the real sources of wealth for ambitious Europeans and Indians now lay in other directions, most notably in revenue farming in the Company's new territories, banking (essentially moneylending), contracting with the Company for the supply of provisions and military goods, and innumerable forms of illicit activities (such as bribery, illegal commissions, extortion, to name a few). Since these activities were all related either directly or indirectly to the Company's new political interests, those Indians who worked most closely with British officials were in a position to profit most from them. This meant in most cases the more highly placed dubashes, for by this time the former collaborative relationship between the Company and Indian merchants had been dissolved. More often than not, merchants now found themselves on the paying rather than the receiving end of illicit gratuities in order to obtain valuable brokerage and trading contracts with the Company.

Dubashi

Caste Origins

and Social Identities

The distinction between broker and merchant implied by this shifting balance of influence and of evident wealth in late eighteenth-century Madras was considerably sharper than seems to have been the case in Bengal. The difference in Madras between merchants and dubashes was one not merely of functions but of social origins as well. The very term 'banian', derived from the merchant caste title of banya, implies a connection with trade. In Calcutta, the banian (as understood in the colonial context) may not have belonged to a merchant caste but his primary interests were commercial. Trade and banking on behalf of an English patron or a European business house continued throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to be the most conspicuous functions of the Bengali banian. The banian was distinguished from the local merchant, at least in the eighteenth century, by his personal relationship with Europeans. Such a relationship constituted a major distinction between dubashes and merchants in Madras as well. But the term in Bengal also seemed to exclude those Indians holding official positions with the Company who in Madras would have been called dubashes.29 The closer identity between banians and commerce in Bengal thus derives in part from a more narrow definition of their functions than was the case in Madras, and in part from their actual
29

Marshall 'Masters and Banians', pp. I92-5.

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SUSAN NEILD-BASU

importance in the trade of Calcutta. This link was reinforced by the caste origins of many of the earlier banians. While Brahmans and Kayasthas gained increasing prominence as banians from the later 7oo00s,a substantial proportion of this group even in the early i8oos came from traditional Bengali trading castes.30 In eighteenth-century Madras it was rare to find, at least within the more prominent dubashi circles, a dubash with the caste title of Chetti or Naik which would indicate a mercantile or martial caste affiliation.31 It is possible that more Chettis and Naiks quietly performed the functions of dubashes than is apparent from the records. Certainly by the early I8oos, there were a number of Chettis and Naiks holding government positions as writers, accountants, managers, and even translators-all jobs which might have carried the title of dubash in the late I7oos. Although they were definitely outnumbered in these office jobs by Brahmans and Vellalars, their very presence indicates a connection with the Company outside of trade which may have begun much earlier. Individuals from the traditional trading castes also worked in British mercantile concerns by the early I8oos, bearing the title of dubash and performing duties comparable to those of banians in mercantile houses in Bengal.32 By far the greatest number of dubashes in late eighteenth-century Madras, however, came from castes not traditionally associated with trade or banking in South India. This is not to say that they were entirely foreign to the world of commerce or finance, or that they could be labelled 'new men' in the sense of rising from humble economic or social backgrounds. The father of Ananda Ranga Pillai, the Yadava dubash of Dupleix in Pondicherry, was a substantial merchant in Madras at the start of the eighteenth century before he moved to the French enclave.33 One of the most powerful dubashes at the close of the
Dilip Basu, 'The Banians and the British', p. i60. One exception was S. Venkatachella Chetti, a Komati, who left his family's diamond and coral trade in charge of his brother to become dubash to an Attorney of the Mayor's Court in the 1780s. He was banished from Madras for his role in drawing up false property deeds and in other illegal acts in collusion with Court's Attorneys. His brother, also a dubash, was likewise accused of illicit practices. M.P.C. 5 May 1786: Petition of S. Venkatachella Chetti. 32 This connection of Chetti dubashes with business houses was a more common feature of the nineteenth century. Susan Lewandowski, 'Merchants and Kingship: An Interpretation of Indian Urban History,' (unpublished paper, 1980), p. 21. By this period, the term dubash was used almost exclusively, in fact, for these Indians working with European agency houses as interpreters and brokers. Not all, however, were Chettis. Binny's first dubash was Chellappa Vencatachellum Mudaliar. His descendants remained employed with the firm throughout the nineteenth century. N.A., The House of 33 Diary Ananda Ranga Pillai, i: vii. Binny (Madras, I969), p. 4. of
31 30

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II

century-and one whose name came to epitomize even a century later the Brahman Avandhanam 'the wily wickedness of dubashes'-was This Papaiya moved to Madras from Nellore to work first as Papaiya.34 an ordinary clerk in the Sea Customs office, but he was only following the lead of other relations and caste brethren who had become well known in the city for their commerce and shipping interests. Avandhanam Papaiya himself, in addition to his varied activities as a major creditor to the Nawab, dubash to a governor, owner of extensive urban property, revenue farmer in Tinnevelly district, and during the brief period of permanent settlement in the Chingleput district in the early I8oos, one of its principal zamindars, also was involved in trade.35 His was among the few names of Madras Hindus which at that time appeared as owners of ships in the 'country trade.'36 The majority of the late eighteenth-century dubashes can be identified with four castes: Vellalars from the region of Tondaimandalam which surrounded Madras City, Brahmans primarily from Telugu sub-castes, Kanakkapillais from the Tamil caste of village accountants, and Yadavas (more commonly known during that period as Idaiyars) from the upper levels of the large Tamil pastoral caste. These castes, like those of most Bengali banians, were ranked relatively high within the local social hierarchy. They combined, for the most part, landholding with an interest in education, involvement with religious institutions, and frequently administrative service under indigenous rulers. Large numbers of Vellalars, particularly from the long-established village landowning or mirasdar families of Tondaimandalam, took up the occupation of dubash. Some may have already had experience working as officials under indigenous regimes. Certainly education was already valued by this caste, which often rivalled Brahmans in its support of temples, religious orthodoxy, and patronage of Tamil and Sanskrit learning and the arts. Their individual reasons for leaving their
34 A. V. Venkatarama Ayyar, 'Dubash Avandhanum Paupiah and a Famous Madras Trial', Indian Historical RecordsCommission,Proceedings,12 (December 1929), 35. 35 For details about his career and property see C. G. H. Fawcett, 'The Two Hollands of Madras and their Dubash', Journal of Indian History 5, 2 (August I926), I89-97: C. G. H. Fawcett, 'The Forged Bonds of the Nawab of the Carnatic', Journal of Indian History 6, I (April I927), 88-95; Ramaswamy Naidu, 'Memoir on the Internal Revenue System of Madras,' p. 305; Madras Courier,29 May I805. 36 Strange, Casesin the Court theRecorder, 55. Among some other Hindu ship owners 2: of were Kola Singana Chetti, the Komati caste head, and Vembakkam Krishna Aiyar, who was known as 'Kappal Krishna' for his work as a dubash and shipping agent, grain merchant, and participant in the salt trade with Masalipatnam in the I82os. His son, Vembakkam Raghavachariar became the highest ranked Indian official of the Madras government, a Deputy Superintendent of Police, in I834.

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SUSAN NEILD BASU

villages and coming to Madras probably differed from case to case, but certainly proximity combined with opportunity were major considerations. Some may have formed ties with the Company's merchants and their agents in the local textile manufacturing villages. Others may have been pushed by economic factors, having experienced a decline in their portion of village profits as mirasi shares became subdivided among growing families or as political change forced a decline in cultivation (or required larger bribes to revenue officials). For those who came to Madras, village ties were never severed. In fact, the interplay between high rural status and wealth and influence acquired in the colonial urban context became an important feature of the growing prestige and authority of the late eighteenth-century dubashes, both in the city of Madras and in its hinterland. Owing to the firmly entrenched village mirasdar system around Madras as well as to the efforts of officials like Lionel Place, F. W. Ellis, and later Thomas Munro to preserve the village system, there occured no massive transfer of rural property to urban landowners from Madras. In any case, however, rural links did not have to be created for many dubashes as a means of authenticating the power and wealth attained in the colonial environment. They needed only to be preserved and reinforced. These goals could be achieved by frequent visits to ancestral villages, often within only a day's journey from Madras, to perform and to confirm their mirasdar status by receiving customary dues from tenants and their share of the produce from the villages' taxable lands.37 Wealth gave them the means to purchase land as well as to acquire additional mirasi shares from impecunious shareholders in their natal villages, thereby expanding their local economic control.38 Through their endowments of land or money for the support of religious activities, many were able to acquire or purchase the meritorious and socially valued position ofdharmakarta or temple manager. We need only look at the activities of one highly influential and wealthy Poonamallee Tuluva Vellalar of the late I 700s. As if to emphasize both his power and local prestige, this Kesava Mudaliar (who was reviled by Lionel Place for his key role in leading local opposition to the new revenue settlement policy in the Poonamallee district) conducted frequent lavish festivities at the family managed temple in his native Tottikkalai village.39
37 See V. Raghavan, The Sarva-deva-vilasa (Madras, 1958), for a description of some of these activities. 38 This was apparently how the Poonamallee Tuluva Vellalar dubash family of Subbu Deva Nayaka Mudaliar extended its influence over Nungambakkam. Raghavan, Sarva-deva-vilasa, pp. 27-9; Madras District Records, vol. I029, 6 June I820. 39 Lionel Place, in referring to the role of dubash Tottikkalai Kesava Mudaliar as

THE DUBASHES OF MADRAS

I3

Many dubashes were able to expand their rural authority far beyond that implied by their inherited mirasdar status by becoming shrotriumdars, or inamdars, that is holders of tax-free or tax-reduced grants of villages. Many such grants were made under the rule of the Nawabs and relinquished the whole or a part of the government's revenue claims in particular villages to the grant holder and his descendants in perpetuity. The original purpose of these shrotrium or inam grants had been to provide permanent endowments of village revenue to temples and other religious institutions. Under the British, the Nawabs' practice of granting shrotriums to individuals as rewards for their services was expanded to the extent of becoming a substitute for pensions rewarding long and faithful service to the Company.40 Frequently, these shrotrium villages were the ancestral mirasi villages of the recipients, as in the case of the Ellambadu Vellalar dubash family. Sometimes they included several neighboring villages as well, forming a kind of estate which elevated the mirasdar-dubash almost to the equivalent of a zamindar, as appears to have been the case of Tottikkalai Kesava Mudaliar. In other instances, perhaps where ancestral ties were weaker, as among the non-Vellalar dubashes, shrotrium holdings were scattered in various localities. Vayalur Kulandi Viraperumal Pillai, dubash to Governors Rumbold, Macartney, and Campbell (spanning a period from 1778 to 1789) refers in his will of I793 to his large estate at Sriharikota, in addition to shrotriums in five other localities.41 For many these shrotriums provided a regular and often considerable personal income, ranging from a few hundred rupees per year for a small village up to several thousands of rupees. Many less prosperous descendants of eighteenth-century dubashes subsisted on the returns from these holdings during the nineteenth century.42 Brahmans, as indicated above, played an important role as dubashes, and indeed as other kinds of agents and associates of the Company, throughout the early history of Madras. Their influence, however, seems to have been disproportionate to their actual number in service with the Company or its officials. Most appear to have been Marathi and Telugu
dharmakartaof his village temple, called it 'the most gratifying [office] that a native can hold, which but for his wealth he could not have obtained'. This position, Place argued, should have made Kesava more responsible and conciliatory in dealings with the government. M.B.R.P. 3 December 1785: Report of Place 6 October 1785; Raghavan,
Sarva-deva-vilasa, pp. 23-7. 40 M.B.R.P. 5 September 800o;M.P.C. 27 December 1831. 41 Strange, Cases in Courtof the Recorder,I: I4I-8. 42 M.P.C. 27 December i831, M.B.R.P., 9 April 1804: Petition from Dubash Ponna

Pillai.

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speakers, some with former trading ties with Europeans, others with family histories of service to the former Muslim regimes in South India. In fact, the long association of these Telugu and Maratha Brahmans with the revenue administration of the Carnatic, together perhaps with the reluctance of some Brahmans to enter into personal service with Europeans, seemed to direct members of this caste more towards certain bureaucratic or scholarly positions with the Company than to dubashi activities. Like Vellalars, Kanakkapillai and Yadava dubashes were Tamilians. Kanakkapillais belong to the Tamil caste of accountants found mainly in the districts close to Madras. They served both on a village level as record-keepers and in bureaucratic positions under indigenous rulers. The Yadava dubashes were associated with the higher division of the Tamil caste of cow-herders which had long since distanced itself from the traditional caste occupation and become landholders and administrators.43 It is difficult to trace the exact routes followed by these dubashi families into service with the Company. It does seem clear, however, that their caste backgrounds-ones which all emphasized high rural social status, literary skills, and close ties to dominant political them with talents and expertise of great value to authorities-endowed the British at Madras. In fact, it was this dual identity with the dominant agrarian castes of the region and with former local bureaucracies which made these dubashes such effective and valued associates of the Company at a time when its political and administrative interests were beginning to overshadow its commercial involvements. The Company's own standing was lifted by its association with members of the more respectable local castes. And the advancement of its political interests was substantially helped by its dubashes' intimate knowledge of social and political networks in the region. As Company rule expanded throughout the Tamil country, furthermore, the Tamil identity of the bulk of the dubashes (in contrast to the Telugu background of the major mercantile castes in Madras) strengthened its position. The caste link, helpful in providing access to Europeans, was seldom a sufficient impetus by itself for building a successful career as a dubash. An important prerequisite for an ambitious dubash in the eighteenth century was individual mobility combined with a multiplicity of skills. Before serving as dubashes to English officials of the highest rank in Madras, many first developed their skills as servants to lower level officers or traders, often in a variety of places distant from Madras. In fact, it was such knowledge of different regions of the south and of many
43

Edgar Thurston, Castes and Tribes in SouthernIndia (Madras, I909), 3: 1 I9: 2: 367.

THE DUBASHES OF MADRAS

I5

facets of administration including finance, revenue, supply of commodities and diplomacy which made them so indispensable to Company authorities. Nedavaiyal Narayana Pillai, the Yadava dubash of a member of the Madras Council, the patron of Pachaiyappa Mudaliar, dharmakarta of the great Parthasarathi temple in Triplicane, creditor and advisor to both the Nawab of Arcot and the Raja of Tanjore, advanced his career as a dubash to a military officer in the mid-i75os. Entrusted with conducting delicate negotiations involving the Raja of Tanjore and other southern powers, Narayana Pillai won the esteem of Council members at Madras. At the same time he created a personal base of influence in Tanjore and served the Raja as dubash for a period of time.44 Pachaiyappa Mudaliar can be considered in many ways the archetypal dubash. He was one of the most successful, and one of the few whose name is still widely recalled in Madras City (because of a college bearing his name which his fortune helped to establish). He diverged from the usual pattern, however, by belonging to the lower ranking cultivating caste of Agamudaiyars and bearing the taint of reputed illegitimacy.45 His fatherless family had come to Madras from a village to seek a benefactor. Under the patronage of Nedavaiyal Narayana Pillai, Pachaiyappa was educated for the profession of dubash, learning English, methods of accounting, and the craft of skillful trading. For a while he served as an apprentice dubash for the wholesale merchants of the city. Pachaiyappa soon acquired some capital of his own, working as a dubash in the 1770s to an English merchant who gathered cloth in the districts south of Madras for export to Europe. From this financial base he entered into tax farming in the Jaghir, first under the Nawab and then with the Company. He gained skills as a paymaster for the Nawab and as an important paddy contractor with the Company. Barely thirty years of age, he then became dubash to the Secretary in the Company's Military Department and acted as a principal intermediary between the Company and the Nawab in matters regarding the latter's debts and the Company's military support. In the I78os Pachaiyappa shifted his
Records of Fort St George, Diary and Consultation Books (Public) 1755 (Madras, 85: i, 307-8, 350-3; Records of Fort St George, Country Correspondence, I758 (Madras, I915), p. I07; C. S. Srinivasachari, 'Pachaiyappa-His Life, Times, and Book (I842-1942) (Madras, Charities', Pachaiyappa's College CentenaryCommemoration 1942), pp. 7-8, M.B.R.P. 3 January 1822; M.P.C. 28 August I832; M.P.C. 12 May I826. 45 Strange, Cases in the Courtof theRecorder,I: i8. Pachaiyappa's own two wives were of different castes from his, causing a considerable scandal during his time.
I942), 44

SUSAN NEILD-BASU

activities to Tanjore, where he became banker and dubash to the Raja, receiving commissions often to twenty percent on the payments made as tribute by the Raja to the Company. Though he lived in Tanjore, the Company continued to call upon his skills as a political negotiator with the southern poligars and, under Governor Campbell, as the manager of revenue collections in Tanjore. He died in I794 while still serving the Raja of Tanjore.46 Pachaiyappa's personal history illustrates the close ties and sense of common identity which emerged among the leading dubashes of the late eighteenth century in Madras and which cut across caste origins. Narayana Pillai assisted Pachaiyappa in establishing his career. In turn, Pachaiyappa secured a lucrative dubashi post for his patron's son, Ayya Pillai. In Tanjore, Pachaiyappa worked closely with Manali Chinnia Mudaliar, the son of Manali Muttukrishna, dubash to Governor Pigot. During his years in Madras, he evidently developed lasting friendships with such other prominent dubashes such as Munniya Pillai, whose son Srinivasa became Pachaiyappa's biographer and trustee of his charities, and Vayalur Kulandi Viraperumal Pillai, the dubash to a succession of governors. Together with some of these friends, Pachaiyappa helped develop the small suburban hamlet of Komaleswaran Kovil on the banks of Cooum River into an elite residential neighborhood during the late 70oos.47 Although his name is not mentioned in the Sanskrit Sarva-deva-vilasa,which appears to have been written in I8oo after his death, Pachaiyappa was an integral part of that elite group of Madras notables described there as patrons of religion and orthodox Hindu culture. Their wealth, their political influence, their ostentatious life-style and their lavish religious charities and support of the arts distinguished them as the gentry class of Madras.48 As a class, however, the dubashes of Madras were not long-lived. In spite of concerns about their apparent independent spheres of influence, their power depended upon their relationship with the Company. Ultimately it rested upon the Company's perception of its own authority and the purpose of its dominion in India. What was considered acceptable or tolerable behavior by English officials and their Indian agents in the mid to late eighteenth century had become disreputable by
Srinivasachari, 'Pachaiyappa', pp. 7-17. 'Historicus' (A. K. Venkatarama Ayyar), 'Swamy Naick and His Family' (Madras, 195), Appendix by C. S. Srinivasachari, p. 42. 48 Sarva-deva-vilasa, passim, and V. Raghavan, 'Madras City and Sanskrit Learning', The Journal of Oriental Research (Madras), 27, I-4 (1957-58), I 7-21. This very term 'gentry' was used by Governor Macartney in his comments on dubashes. Davies, Private of Correspondence Macartney, p. 63.
47

46

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the end of that period. The Company's dependence upon a group of powerful Indians, moreover, was seen as a liability in the establishment of its authority. It was at this time, the close of the eighteenth century, that the clamor over dubashi influence and corruption became more strident. The substantial commissions received by some in dealings with Indian authorities, the influence they commanded as creditors, and their access to large amounts of cash as tax farmers made them natural targets of suspicion and envy. Charges of corruption and oppressive behavior at the hands of dubashes became rife.49 In times like those the term 'corruption' was always subject to redefinition, often along certain partisan lines. The Company's increasing need to disassociate itself from the now discredited activities of many of its European officials and Indian dubashes culminated in some well-publicized cases of the turn of the century. Avandhanan Papaiya figured prominently in two of them. In one he was tried for conspiracy to accuse a member of the Board of Revenue, and an opponent of his own Company patrons, of inciting a riot. For this he faced imprisonment and a heavy fine while his patrons, the Holland brothers, merely left the country to enjoy their fortunes in England with little apparent penalty. In the second case, this concerning the forgery of bonds of the Nawab of the Carnatic valued at millions of pagodas, Papaiya was deeply implicated. He died before judgment was passed, his estate already heavily encumbered.50 In another case, the Company brought charges of embezzlement and collusion in bribery against Venkataranga Pillai, of the Vandalur family referred to earlier in this essay. The charges were upheld in a hearing, and Ranga Pillai was penalized with a large fine and the loss of his shrotrium estate and dharmakarta title. Impelled by his severe losses and sense of injury, and bolstered by his good connections, Ranga Pillai contested the judgment in the Madras Supreme Court, which then overturned the Company's ruling. The Company next took the case up
49 Pachaiyappa had to defend himself against charges of usury and extortion. Srinivasachari, 'Pachaiyappa', p. I6. Manali Chinnia Mudaliar faced an extensive suit for misuse of power brought by a Tanjore resident, M.P.C. 2 April, 8 April, 12 May, 27 July 1785. Even the comparatively upright Viraperumal Pillai was not immune to such accusations. Davies, Private Correspondence Macartney, pp. 63-4; M.P.C. 19 May I780. of 50 Fawcett, 'Two Hollands of Madras', p. I93; 'Forged Bonds', p. 94. At the peak of his power, Papaiya was believed to have possessed a fortune of three to four lakhs of pagodas. Venkatarama Ayyar, 'Dubash Avandhanum Paupiah', p. 28. By 1805 much of his property, jewels and bonds (including a Nawab's bond for 2 lakhs of pagodas) had been sold. Madras Courier, 29 May and io July I805. The period of his tenure as Governor's dubash was described by Indian inhabitants as 'the government of Paupiah', M.P.C. I8 February I791.

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to the King-in-Council in London, which confirmed the Madras Court's decision. Ranga Pillai did not entirely deny his part in the revenue embezzlement cases or his role in drawing up a genealogy of a poligar family which was latter proved to have been fabricated (though he denied knowledge of its falsity). However, he did vehemently protest against the Company's seizure from him of 18,000 pagodas, the amount of a large bribe paid by the ruler of Sivaganga to Ranga Pillai's English patron, the Collector of Ramnad. Although the actual bribe-money went with the former Collector to England, Ranga Pillai had been forced to forfeit an equivalent sum to the Company because of his alleged complicity in the transaction.51 In commenting on this case, which after five years of litigation was settled largely in Ranga Pillai's favor, the Court of Directors expressed surprise 'at the irregular and arbitrary conduct observed towards Ranga Pillai by the Board of Revenue'.52 Ranga Pillai, in fact, seems to have been chosen as a scapegoat for the frustrations felt by the Board in asserting its control both over its jurisdiction of revenue matters and over the conduct of its own officials. In retrospect, this case, which was finally closed in 1805, signalled the decline of the Madras dubash as he was known in the eighteenth century. By this time the original functions of the dubash as interpreter and personal agent for Company officials were rendered obsolete under new rules prohibiting private trade by Company servants, and their economic usefulness declined with the rise of European agency houses in Madras. Linguistic training provided to junior civil servants in Madras reduced the need for interpreters. Reorganized administrative departments and revenue settlements abolished the crucial roles of political intermediaries and tax farmers. The former office dubash by the early nineteenth-century was given another title (such as manager or record-keeper) and now found his authority and duties divided among several office functionaries. The domestic dubash was now viewed more as a chief servant than advisor or private agent. He was not quite so indispensable in the life of early nineteenth-century colonial Madras, with its improved network of roads extending from the Black Town and Fort to the suburbs, its English shops and marketplaces, and its commercial center in Black Town's Muthialpet. A colonial political and social order was then
M.B.R.P. 4 and 15 September 1800; Strange, Cases in the Court of the Recorder, I: M.P.C. 7 October I807. 52 Correspondence of Fort St George: Abstracts of Letters sent, I792-1809, Public Dept 23 October I805.
I74-209; 51

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emerging which was more self-contained and less dependent in all its facets upon the services of intermediaries.

The Economic

Role of the Madras

Dubashes

This examination of the origins, identities, and functions of dubashes in Madras already suggests many parallels with the banians of Calcutta. Their relatively high caste status and often prosperous family backgrounds, their identity as an elite group within the colonial context, their often ostentatious support of religion and cultural activities, their essential role in both the private and public affairs of Europeans in these settlements during the eighteenth century characterized both banians and dubashes. Even more fundamental was the fact that in both cases the wealth and power of these intermediaries depended upon their relationships with Europeans. Similarities in many of the activities and careers of some dubashes and banians also occurred. Manali Muttukrishna Mudaliar and Pachaiyappa Mudaliar might be compared with Clive's 'political banyan' Nobkissen. Late eighteenth-century banians, like Madras dubashes, invested heavily in revenue farming and received hearty commissions for their services to local Indian authorities.53 Even the shrotrium villages acquired by many dubashes had their counterpart in the zamindaries held by some Bengali banians. Nevertheless, those who have studied the banian institution of Calcutta stress the primary importance of its commercial and financial functions. Not merely did banians fund and manage the private trade of Company officials and private European traders. During the early nineteenth century, they became the chief financial support and often controlling voice in many of the European business houses in Calcutta.54 Their later entreprenurial activities, as exemplified by those of Dwarkanath Tagore, have been well documented.55 From all appearances, however, the Madras dubash did not play as central a role in the commercial life of his city. His prominence was derived more from his political influence and managerial responsibilities (helped, of course, by his financial resources) than from his commercial interests. Part of the reason for this difference lies in the far more limited commercial activities of Madras during the late 17oos and particularly the early
53 Marshall, 'Masters and Banians', pp. I96-7, 199-200, and 201-6. 54 Basu, 'The Banian and the British', pp. 162, I65-7. 55 Blair Kling, Partner in Empire: Dwarkanath Tagore and the Age of Enterprisein Eastern

India(Berkeley, I976).

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i8oos. Other kinds of investments and activities at that time seem to have been more attractive to both Europeans and Indians than commerce. Some sons of leading dubashes, in fact, became known as merchants, such as Manali Chinnia Mudaliar and Tottikkalai Vedachalam Mudaliar. Deeper enquiry into family histories, court archives, and the records of agency houses may yet disclose further commercial interests among dubashes. But the evidence at hand strongly suggests that while these dubashes were undeniably a very important financial power as well as political and social influence in late eighteenth-century Madras, they did not appear to invest heavily in trade. By the early I8oos, a time of resurgent banian economic influence in Calcutta, the wealth of the Madras dubashes, together with their status in general, seemed to decline or find expression in non-economic investments. The financial power of many Madras dubashes in the late 700oswas, nevertheless, formidable. Pachaiyappa Mudaliar had sufficient resources to loan the Raja of Tanjore one lakh of pagodas (or more than 350,000 rupees in the Madras currency of the day) to help repay the Raja's debts to the Company.56 At the time of his death his fortune was estimated at five lakhs of pagodas (or I.7 million rupees).S7 Tottikkalai Kesava Mudaliar, Lionel Place's adversary in Poonamallee affairs, was reputed to be worth two lakhs of pagodas.58 At the time of his death in I793, Viraperumal Pillai's estate, comprising his various urban and rural properties, his jewels, his banking house and other financial interests, had a value somewhere between two and three lakhs of pagodas.59 From what we know of the wealth acquired by various Europeans in Madras, however, these were not extraordinary fortunes. Avandhanam Papaiya's employers, the Holland brothers, were alleged to have received just in bribes alone from the Nawab over four lakhs of contractor for the Company, pagodas.60 Paul Benfield-architect, court favorite in the Nawab's Chepauk palace, and above all banker to the Nawab-held a promissory note from the Nawab for six lakhs of on the revenues of Tanjore. There was also the case of pagodas payable the Englishman who arrived in Madras as a private soldier and earned from various speculations and other activities during the late 70os a
Srinivasachari, 'Pachaiyappa', p. i6. Komaleswaran Kovil Srinivasa Pillai, Kanchipuram pachaiyappa mudaliar sarittiram (The History of Conjeevaram Pachiyappa Mudaliar) (Madras, 91 I1), p. 34. 58 M.B.R.P., 3 December I795: From Lionel Place 6 October 1795. 59 Strange, Cases in Courtof the Recorder, I: 9I. 60 Fawcett, "Forged Bonds', p. 95.
S7

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fortune of more than two lakhs of pagodas.61 Some English merchants who entered Madras a few decades later and apparently followed a straighter path in their quest for wealth also did quite well. John Binny, the founder of Binny and Company, who arrived in Madras in 1797, died in 1824 with an estate worth almost two lakhs of pagodas.62 His contemporary, Thomas Parry, had earned and lost several fortunes during the fluctuating business climate of the late 17oos and early i8oos. By the I82os, however, he considered himself comfortably off with a capital of one lakh of pagodas (or 360,000 rupees) invested in his Madras firm, in addition to his fixed properties and other interests.63 From this comparison we see that the resources of the Madras dubashes, though substantial in terms of the Indian population of Madras, did not match those of many of the English 'Nabobs' of the era. They even appeared far more modest than the fortunes of many Bengali banians.64 Yet the fact of their comparative wealth and their use of it to extend their influence evoked an ambivalent response from the Company government. The Company clearly valued their many skills and services and rewarded many dubashes with shrotriums in hopes (which echoed those of the creators of the Bengal Permanent Settlement) both of cementing their loyalty and of improving cultivation (and thereby the government's revenues).65 But it remained obviously wary of the effects of their power, which had the potential to subvert British policies, especially those which worked against dubashi interests. The Company's unease with the influence of their dubashi collaborators was heightened near the close of the century by its own sense of continued political vulnerability and financial insolvency. One trusted dubash, 'related to the most respectable families in the Coromandal Coast' and 'brought up from early infancy among the English', had betrayed military secrets to Tipu Sultan.66 The fear of a resurgent Muslim power in the south obsessed many Europeans in Madras at the turn of the century and put the associations of some dubashes with the Nawab's court under suspicion.67 And if it was not their supposed links with
61 Love, Vestiges, 3: 85; Hilton Brown, Parry's of Madras: A Story of British Enterprisein India (Madras, I954), p. 7. 62 House of Binny, p. 34. 63 G. H. Hodgson, Thomas Parry: Free Merchant of Madras (Madras, 1938), p. I96. 64 Marshall, 'Masters and Banians', pp. 196-8. It is useful to note that some of the earlier chief merchants of Madras had fortunes comparable to those of the later dubashes. Brennig, 'Chief Merchants', p. 326. 65 M.B.R.P. 6January I820. 66 Memoirs of William Hickey, ed. by Alfred Spencer, 4 (I790-1809) (London, 1925), I8-I9. 67 Nawab Umrat-ud-daulah had a Vellalar dubash, Mootoo Mudaliar, in the I 790s.

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deposed Muslim rulers, then it was their alleged ties with messianic Hindu revivalism which fed fears among other Europeans of dubashi betrayal and rebellion.68 Responsible officials were probably less concerned about any overt resistance to Company rule from dubashes than about a more subtle erosion of British administrative control caused by the financial power and social influence of these wealthly Indians. The Court of Directors, for instance, became alarmed at the Madras government's practice of calling for loans from affluent Indians at Madras to be repayed by bills drawn upon the district revenues. One such loan in 1803 for two lakhs of pagodas had nineteen Indian subscribers, five of whom-Munniya Pillai, Manali Chinnia Mudaliar, Rama Naik, Tottikkalai Kesava Mudaliar, and C. Arunachala Chetti-offered amounts of more than twenty thousand pagodas at the attractive interest rate of twelve percent. The Yadava dubash, Munniya Pillai, was even willing to provide a total loan of 9o,ooo pagodas in return for bills on the revenues specifically of Tinnevelly or Trichinopoly districts, where he had a network of agents ready to collect the payments.69 Although the Madras government was desperate for funds, the Court was even more fearful of the effects of mortgaging its revenues to its Indian creditors and quickly ordered the practice to be stopped. In another instance, officials in Madras were less than enthusiastic when Manali Chinnia Mudaliar, the son of Muttukrishna, took it upon himself to orchestrate a reconciliation between rival Left and Right Hand castes in the dispute of 18Io. In doing so he by-passed both the caste heads who were authorized to negotiate the conflict and the local government committee assigned to investigate the dispute. These officials were relieved when Chinnia's plan failed to get wide acceptance, for they had observed not merely his extensive influence in the city (stemming in part from his position as dharmakarta of the Town Temple, as well as from his wealth and good connections) but also his political ambitions and disregard for either traditional caste or government authorities. As the police superintendent remarked in his report on the caste dispute, 'It is dangerous to permit an opulent individual to place himself at the head of people who have evinced a disposition to influence the decision of government by striking work and endeavouring
Madras Gazette, 8 April I809. A secret correspondence between the Nawab and Tipu Sultan was later discovered by the Madras government and excited further suspicions of Indians associated with Chepauk. 68 Benjamin Heyne, Tracts, Historical, and Statistical, on India (London, 1814), pp.
I2 1-2. 69

Madras District Records, 994: I88-9.

THE DUBASHES OF MADRAS

23

to impede the public service'.70 A sense of challenge and even threat from the ranks of dubashes thus still existed during the early i8oos.71 The dubashes or their descendants, however, did not pose a competitive challenge to the British mercantile community in Madras. There is little evidence of their independent involvement in the predominant textile trade of the region outside their role as agents for their European patrons. By the later 1700s, control over this trade had shifted from the hands of Indian merchants to those of the Company and private English traders. Shipping, either in the coastal Indian trade or in the larger Asian market, did not seem to attract much sustained interest among this group, though it is possible that further research will confirm their role as silent partners in shipping ventures and investors in particular cargoes. Hindu ship owners and overseas traders of any caste were the exception by this period, when even the coastal trade was dominated by European and Muslim vessels. Some dubashes did trade in other commodities during the Mysore wars when, for example, large amounts of grain had to be imported from Bengal, the Andhra districts, and other granaries of the south for use by the military and in the city. But here, too, English traders were extending their influence, at least in those commodities imported by sea. Among the owners of 'banksalls' or grain warehouses on the North Beach in I799, few of the non-Chetti proprietors stored their own goods. Most appeared to rent out their space to more active traders.72 Ranga Pillai, like other dubashes, owned several large godowns in the Black Town, but these also seemed to be used as income-producing property rather than for his own trade.73 Various dubashes profited from contracts and commissions secured for the supply of provisions and transport facilities for military forces during the wars. Their earnings, however, nowhere matched the truly impressive fortunes earned from similar contracts by such men as Paul Benfield, Basil Cochrane, orJames
M.P.C., 6 March 812: Minute from the Superintendent of Police, 21 August 18Io. This perception of the dubashi threat was openly expressed in some published popular writings. To quote Heyne from his Tracts: 'Much has been said about these monsters; but it is impossible to say too much until the whole race of them, both with an English jargon and without it, are entirely eradicated. They will correspond with your enemies; they will plunder you of your property; and, after they have enriched themselves at your expense, they will throw you into jail ... All currency is in their hands, hoarded up and lost to the state... Who will be bold enough to say that government is secure among a race of men possessed of such principles? It is secure only as long as it is formidable'. (Pp. I2 1-2.) 72 M.B.R.P. I9 September 1799: List of Banksall Holders. 73 Madras Gazette, 9 December I809.
71

70

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Balfour (who retired to England with seven and half lakhs of pagodas.) 74 Individuals with extensive property and financial interests outside Madras, such as Manali Chinnia Mudaliar, were frequently involved with local trade, but mainly, it appears, as suppliers of capital. Chinnia Mudaliar was the son, brother, and brother-in-law of dubashes, and close associate of many others, though he himself did not hold such a position, at least later in his career. In the I78os he called himself a soukar (or banker) and merchant of Tanjore district. His business there included providing funds to local poligars, merchants and officials, managing several villages both as a tax farmer and shrotrium holder, in addition to financing the rice trade of various district towns.75 It was as landowners and bankers, or more accurately as moneylenders, that dubashes had their greatest economic influence. Like Bengali banians, they purchased property in the city and its suburbs. Unlike their Bengali counterparts, however, they did not come to control large tracts of urban land or establish and populate entire neighborhoods with their relations and dependent servants, artisans, and traders.76 The Madras dubashes rose to wealth and power too late in the development of Madras to have that kind of direct impact upon its spatial and social organization. Their holdings were usually scattered in the various town centers and suburban villages.77 Several had owned houses within Fort St George, a privilege accorded to only the most important Indians of the city. To take the example of Ranga Pillai once again, at the time of his death in I890, he possessed, in addition to his godowns, six houses together with some shops and other buildings in the Muthialpet section of the Black Town, several properties in Triplicane, including his own garden in Tondiarpet north of Black Town. A few years earlier he had also owned three houses in the Fort, which had been sold in some cases to satisfy his creditors and in others in response to the Company's new policy prohibiting privately owned property of both Europeans and
74 House of Binny, p. 12. 75 M.P.C. 12 May 1785 and 27July I786.
76

See the work of Pradip Sinha on Calcutta: 'Approachesto Urban History: Calcutta

(1750o-850)', Bengal Past and Present, 87 (January-June I968), 106-19; 'The City as a Physical Entity: Calcutta 1750-1850', Bengal Past and Present,89 (July-December 1970), the Mid-Nineteenth 288-302. Century', Bengal Past and Present, 92, I (January-June 1973),

264-76; and 'Social Forces and Urban Growth-Calcutta from the Mid-Eighteenth to

77 For a discussion of these sections of Madras, see Susan M. Neild, 'Colonial Urbanism: The Development of Madras City in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth

Centuries', Modern Asian Studies, 13, 2 (April 1979),

7-46.

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Indians in the Fort.78 A few dubashes acquired very extensive tracts of suburban land, like Munniya Pillai who owned a 'garden' of forty acres in the distant suburb of Mambalam.79 But most seemed to prefer smaller suburban gardens of only a few acres in the more adjacent villages favored by Europeans or in the older temple centers. Here they built mansions in imitation of their colonial patrons, often partly furnished according to western tastes, where they could lavishly entertain both Europeans and Indians.80 Usually they maintained a town residence as well in the Black Town (sometimes inhabited by a second wife and family) which served as the center of their business activities. As bankers or creditors, dubashes were active participants in the intense money markets of late eighteenth-century Madras. Supplying personal loans to Europeans and Indians, they offered a much needed service which the Chetti shroffs, with their involvement in internal trade and money-changing, and the Gujerati banking houses, which financed much of the Nawab's activities, could not provide. How much of their capital went into business loans to European merchants has yet to be documented. Cash was a rare commodity those days.81 The Company, its officials, the Nawab and his court, Indian merchants, local bankers, and private European traders were all in direct competition for a limited supply of cash. It is not at all certain that commercial loans to European merchants were the most profitable or secure investments a dubashi banker could make, although they did have their political advantages. What is clear, nevertheless, was the high degree of financial interdependence which then characterized relations between dubashes and Europeans. That these relations were not one-sided is easily documented by newspaper announcements of court decrees for distraint of property arising from indebtedness. Europeans and Indians constantly brought suit against one another for default. Ranga Pillai, for instance, had both debtors and creditors among Company officials and English merchants.82 Avandhanam Papaiya's large debts to Armenian and English
Madras Gazette, 9 December 1809; Love, Vestiges, 3: 510-I . Madras Board of Revenue Records, Misc. vol. 14, no. 21 2: List of lands granted for gardens (1774-I803). 80 The huge collection of European furnishings possessed by Sunku Chinna Krishna Chetti, a Komati merchant and descendant of the early eighteenth-century Chief Merchant Sunku Rama Chetti, was probably representative of those gathered by affluent dubashes during the late I700s. The Hircarrah, I9, 26 August I794: Madras Courier,28 November 1815. 81 S. Ambirajan, 'Laissez-Faire in Madras', Indian Economicand Social History Review, 2, 3 (I965), 239. 82 Madras Courier, 10 September I806; Strange, Cases in the Courtof the Recorder,I: 266.
79

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merchants did not prevent him from assuming the administration of an estate left by one of his English debtors.83 This nexus of Indian and European financial involvements reached its peak in the late 700oos, but continued into the early I8oos. Two joint-stock banks established at the turn of the century had both Indian and European proprietors and directors (in contrast to the older Carnatic Bank, whose founders in I788 were all Europeans).84 The roster of directors of the Madras Bank in i804, which included five Europeans and eleven Indians, contained the names of several of the most prominent dubashes and merchants of the time: Munniya Pillai, Manali Chinnia Mudaliar, Kola Singana Chetty (the leading Komati merchant of the early I8oos), Ranga Pillai, C. Arunachala Chetti, and Subaraya Mudaliar (probably of the old Poonamallee Tuluva Vellalar dubash family ofNungambakkam).85 The newer Asiatic Bank, with ten European and sixteen Indian proprietors, featured such important names as Kalingaraya Mudaliar, Muttukrishna Mudaliar, Vadachalam Mudaliar, and Kola Peddaswamy Chetti.86 The ultimate fate of these banks is not certain. It is likely they succumbed to the general trade depression and failure of credit which severely affected Madras commerce in 806 and 1807 and caused the collapse of several European agency houses. These experiments in joint financial activities of a formal nature do not appear to have been repeated during the early decades of the nineteenth century. At least, Indians of these older dubashi and merchant families did not publicly associate their names with European business houses and merchants in the same way. When we next come across Indians involved in European-style commercial activities, it is a new generation in the late 183os. Of the thirteen agency houses listed in the Madras Almanac of I839, two by then are owned by Indians.87
I805. Papaiya's funeral and family support costs were borne by Thomas Parry. Hodson, Parry, p. I64. 84 B. Ramachandra Ray, 'Organized Banking in the Days ofJohn Company', Indian Journal of Economics, IO, I (July 1929), I6. 85 Madras Almanac, 1804 (Madras, I803), p. I62. 86 Madras Almanac, 1805 (Madras, I804), p. 209. This Asiatic Bank had a capital of Pagodas 2.5 lakhs, according to Ambirajan, 'Laissez-Faire in Madras', p. 240. Kalingaraya was a highly prominent dubash; Muttukrishna may have been the son of Manali Chinnia Mudaliar; Vadachalam was probably the son of Tottikkalai Kesava Mudaliar; Kola Peddaswamy was the nephew and heir of Kola Raghava Chetti, the son of Kola Singana Chetti. 87 These were the businesses owned by C. Tirukami Naik and Balakrishna and by Gazulu Sidloo Chetti, an indigo and cloth merchant, and his sons. Madras Almanac and Compendium Intelligence, i839 (Madras, 1838), p. 224. of 83 Madras Courier, Io July and 20 November

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But these Indians (who now took part in the growing trade in raw commodities) came not from dubashi backgrounds, but from the more traditional mercantile castes which had been overshadowed by dubashes during the late I7oos. With their extensive caste networks throughout the Presidency, strong contacts in the producing districts, and internal sources of credit, these groups, notably Komatis and Nattukkottai Chettis, were in a position to participate actively in the financing and supply of the profitable new export commodities. Whether it was the absence of attractive commercial investments in early nineteenth-century Madras or the depletion of dubashi fortunes by that time which discouraged this group from apparently assuming a more prominent role in the trade of this period is a question still to be resolved. Calcutta, even during the late I700s, was a far more active trading center than Madras both as regards its external and its up-country trade. This disparity sharply increased during the early I8oos as Calcutta merchants were able to more than compensate for declines in the local textile export trade by exploiting external markets for raw cotton, indigo, and opium. Madras during the same period had no significant commodity alternatives to textiles. Cotton, indigo, and sugar did not begin to play an important role in its commerce until the late i83os and I840s.88 The number of European agency houses there remained far fewer than in either Calcutta or Bombay, and their proprietorship frequently changed hands. Those which survived the difficult early decades of the nineteenth century to become the major business houses of the later nineteenth century such as Binny's, done so by continuing Parry's, and until its collapse, Arbuthnot's-had to emphasize their banking and agency work and to avoid more speculative commercial ventures.89 This period of comparative commercial stagnation in Madras coincides with the eclipse of the eighteenth-century dubashi institution. The gentry lifestyle which dubashes had adopted became more muted under their nineteenth-century descendants. Indebtedness, law suits with the Company or many concerning family inheritance, the control of temples, and disputes over property, together with an apparent lack
A. Sarada Raju, Economic Conditionsin the Madras Presidency, 1800-1852 (Madras, 1941), pp. 89, 3I0. 89 Madras had from ten to thirteen agency houses from the late I70os through the I84os, while Calcutta had fifty and Bombay eighteen by the I83os. See K. N. Chaudhuri (ed.), The EconomicDevelopmentof India underthe East India CompanyI8I4-58 (Cambridge, I971), p. I8; House of Binny, pp. 15-I9.
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of interest in business, took their toll of many dubashi fortunes.90 Pachaiyappa Mudaliar's wealth might have been entirely lost through years of litigation among contesting heirs if the Supreme Court had not stepped in almost forty years after his death (under the prodding of the Advocate-General George Norton) and had ordered the creation of a trust to manage his estate. The trustees included some of the most respected members of the Indian community of that time. They decided, under Norton's influence, that a part of the estate would be designated for the English education of Hindu youth, though the bulk of his remaining wealth would still be used, as he had wished, for his many religious charities.91 One can speculate that many dubashes and other well-to-do Indians bequeathed large portions of their estates to temples and other religious charities (often specifying in great detail the exact ceremonies to be performed or number of Brahmans to be fed) not merely from piety or the wish to perpetuate the family name in ways that guaranteed social prestige and cultural approval. Some may have shrewdly chosen these forms of cultural 'investments' as a more secure means of keeping fortunes at least partially intact and out of reach of their litigious relations and descendants. In this they were helped by the Madras government, which sold government securities at eight percent interest for funds deposited as endowments for secular and religious charities.92 Whether the motivation was devotional, social, financial, or political (or more likely a combination of all these) the emphasis on religious activities was an integral part of the dubashi lifestyle, as it had been for earlier merchants in the city.93 Considerable time and a large part of
George Norton, the Advocate-General of Madras in the I830s, made these observations on the absence in nineteenth-century Madras of a gentry class: 'Independent employment of any superior quality (if brokerage, money lending, and petty contracts and trading are to be excepted) scarcely enter, even now, into the contemplation of a Madras native. The Ryotwari system of tenure and revenue has totally extirpated capital from the Provinces; and litigation in the Supreme Court has entirely swallowed up the native wealth once exhibited in Madras itself.' George Norton, Native Education in India: Comprisinga Review of its State and Progress within the Presidencyof Madras (Madras, 1848), p. 25. 91 Srinivasachari, 'Pachaiyappa,' pp. 3 -6. 92 M.P.C., 29 June I81o, and M.P.C., 12 February 18II. The Company's involvement in these charitable accounts, in fact, stemmed directly from a request for such safekeeping of funds for charities made by the dubash Munniya Pillai. M.P.C. I 7 July I827. 93 See the unpublished papers by Susan Lewandowski, 'Merchants and Kingship', (1980), and by Susan Neild-Basu, 'Urban Elites and Philanthropy in Madras in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries' (1982), for an analysis of the religious involvements of leading dubashes and merchants in Madras. 90

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their wealth went to supporting these charities, both during their lifetime and after their death. Most dubashes possessed the title of dharmakarta at least during some period of their lives, some managing the larger temples of the city, others ones they had built or renovated outside Madras. While this gave them a major voice in temple affairs and considerable influence over cultural and social activities in the city, it was also an expensive avocation. Much of the cost of temple maintenance and festivals had to be borne by these dharmakartas. Charges of embezzlement by managers from temple funds became commonplace. These and internal temple conflicts over festivities and rituals, often reflecting larger political and social rivalries, consumed the energies and resources of many dubashi families.94 The greater this wealth, the more a dubash was expected to devote himself to religious charities. In the absence of royal patrons or titled landlords, these monied men had a certain obligation to sustain the religious values of the culture, particularly as they themselves were (in the eyes of many inhabitants of the region) the representatives of the current political authority. Viraperumal Pillai and Pachaiyappa Mudaliar took this role upon themselves with great seriousness, allocating a major portion of their wealth for gifts to temples and dharmasalas (centers of religious learning) and in support of daily temple and domestic rituals. Pachaiyappa was known to feed hundreds of Brahmans, mendicants, and poor people each day in Komaleswaran Kovil both at his home and at the local temple he had helped to renovate. He gave his hospitality to pilgrims and priests, sponsored religious discourses and recitations from the sacred Tamil and Sanskrit devotional works, and had pujas performed in temples throughout the province. He built choultries and agraharams, funded the renovation of the famous Shaivite temple at Chidambaram, and in other ways expressed his personal as well as social commitment to 'Shaiva dharma'. His will specified thirty separate charities, mostly involving rituals to be performed on a daily basis at certain temples.95
94 To take a prominent example, Nedavaiyal Narayana Pillai had been falsely accused of embezzlement of funds from Triplicane's Parthasarathi temple while serving as its dharmakarta. It took considerable investigation to unravel the underlying cause of the conflict-a dispute between rival Brahman castes over temple rituals and their respective privileges. Madras District Records, vol. I028, I June 1790. Narayana's son and grandson, who in turn succeeded as managers of the Parthasarathi temple, also found themselves involved in bitter disputes regarding temple affairs M.B.R.P., 3 January and 15 April 1822. The Manali family was involved in lengthy litigation in the Supreme Court during the I83os over the right to the title of dharmakarta of the Madras Town Temple established by Manali Muttukrishi Mudaliar. 95 Srinivasa Pillai, Pachaiyappa mudaliar sarittiram, pp. 34-8.

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While much dubashi wealth seems to have been dispersed by the early I8oos among religious charities, through litigation, family divisions, and indebtedness, a few descendants of some of these dominant eighteenthcentury families continued as social leaders in Madras. Formerly considered a gentry class, they were now entitled 'respectable Hindu natives' (a shift in terms which reflected British perceptions of their own new political and social status as much as the standing of these particular Indians). Those whose inheritances were depleted found employment in government offices, becoming, together with Tamil and Teluga Brahmans, the mainstay of the Madras government bureaucracy. Others with more substantial estates spent their time enjoying their inherited wealth, managing property, performing their religious commitments, or, in the case ofSrinivasa Pillai, establishing a role as a leading citizen of the new urban community.96 They did not quite become the cornerstone of cultural and political change, as were the children of the Bengali banians. Even by the mid-nineteenth century, Madras was not yet ready for strong political or cultural challenges to the statusquo.But some of these children of the eighteenth-century Madras dubashes, by their support of educational and social reforms, helped pave the way for later social and political activists. Others, by continuing family traditions of religious and cultural patronage helped to nourish the roots of later nineteenth-century Tamil cultural revivalism. By the mid-nineteenth century, political and social influence in the city had begun to shift to the growing class of western-educated Brahmans, while economic power was highly concentrated within the mercantile castes. Yet those upper ranking non-Brahman castes to which most of the Madras dubashes had belonged preserved their strong, if comparatively less assertive, presence in the city. By virtue of their long affiliation with Madras, their sheer numbers and relative wealth, and their continued association with the British rulers in
96 Komaleswaran Kovil Srinivasa Pillai, son of dubash Munniya Pillai, built a reputation as perhaps the leading philanthropist in Madras during the I83os and I84os. In addition to maintaining his own family charities and serving as dharmakarta of the Parthasarathi temple, he was appointed to administer the trust created from Pachaiyappa's estate and became as well a manager of the primary secular charitable institution of colonial Madras, the Monegar Choultry. He sat as one of the few Indian Justices in Session and later on the Board of Governors of Madras University. His articulate support of western education for Indian youth was balanced by his deep commitment to Hindu religious values within a reformed cultural and social environment. For a further discussion of his role as one of the early political and social activists of nineteenth-century Madras, see R. Suntharalingam, Politics and Nationalist Awakening in South India, 1852-i89i (Tucson, I974), pp. 36-7, 49-5 I.

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bureaucratic positions, they remained one of the dominant communities of the colonial urban center. It was from these descendants of the dubashi elite of eighteenth-century Madras that emerged many of the political leaders of Madras during the early nationalist movement period of the late nineteenth century and during the decades that followed.