CHARITY FOR OUR FAMILY GODDESS: : The Marwaris And A Caste Association In Colonial India

Tetsuya Tanaka

Authors

Tetsuya Tanaka Department of Global Studies, Chukyo University

Keywords:

Caste Association, Caste Journal, Public Utility

Abstract

This study analyzes the Kedia Sabha (association for the Kedia lineage) as a case study for historical analysis on how an Indian merchant community, known as Marwaris, described themselves through managing a caste association and invented their family goddess through editing their caste journals in colonial India. A historical-ethnographic methodology is used to analyze using caste journals and archival sources. The organization was founded in 1913 as a charitable association with the purpose of supporting members of the lineage residing in Calcutta. The organization has two contrasting characteristics; one is a caste association to promote their social, cultural, and economic welfare for members of a certain lineage or caste, and the other is a charitable institution for the public in theory. First, a review of the literature on caste associations in colonial India and Marwari’s involvement in the caste associations is conducted. The Kedia Sabha is then analyzed as a case study to determine how charity functions as both social consumption and economic accumulation.

References

FOOTNOTES

[1] The definition of the term “public charitable purpose” in Section 4 (3) of the 1922 Income Tax Act was referred to in All India Spinners’ Association v. Commissioner of Income Tax Act, Bombay (1944: 486).

[2] For the 1917 directory, see Chāvchariyā (1921: 193-201).

[3] The Sabha was also scrutinized by the Income Tax Office of West Bengal because of its familial recipients of charitable benefits under the name of public utilities in 1950s. In 1977, the Sabha was successfully registered as a public charitable association by reconstituting a new legal definition of the Kedia community out of the “cross-section of the public.” For more information on Sabha after the 1950s, see Tanaka (2018).

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