— Chapter 1 —
FOR A CIVILISATION THAT continues to produce some of the world’s top business talent uninterruptedly for more than seven thousand years, it is an untold tragedy that no comprehensive work detailing the business history of Hindus has emerged from India itself. The Vedic civilisation cultivated a flourishing inland and maritime culture side by side with its Rishis and Munis. The so-called Buddhist era witnessed an explosive opening up of new international trade routes both on land and sea. For centuries, Hindu, Buddhist and Jain businessmen dominated the Grand Route in northern India. This route was the business corridor of the whole of Asia stretching from the Caspian Sea to China and from Bahlika to Tamralipti. Merchants, traders, bankers and caravans took with them monks, pilgrims, pedlars, horse traders, adventurers, acrobats, actors, students and tourists. Together, they carried the Ramayana, Mahabharata, the Jataka-Katha, drama, puppetry, painting, poetry, lyric and music.
This is how Bharatavarsha culturally conquered the whole of Asia without firing a single arrow. She transmitted her culture even to far-off Greece and Rome in pretty much the same manner. Trade and commerce played a central role in this cultural conquest.
We notice the same process in recent history as well. Over the last century, Hindu Dharma has left its characteristic invisible cultural imprint in Africa and the United States. Philip Goldberg’s American Veda is a good book exploring this phenomenon. It is a different matter that even today, powerful sections of the American polity and society stubbornly refuse to be cultured by Sanatana Dharma.
The prolific and highly learned scholar, V.S. Agarwala describes the historic role played by Hindu businessmen as carriers of culture and spirituality in evocative language:
“It is difficult to understand the story of Indian history without understanding the great achievements of Indian sailors and sea captains and their close cooperation with caravan leaders. Particularly is this true with reference to the eastern Archipelago and the Arabian Sea. According to the Milindaprasna, a determined and dutiful sailor always thought, “I am a servant who works on the ship for wages. It is due to this ship that I earn my livelihood. I should never be idle and neglectful in my duties. I should always be busy in my work attentively.” This thought was the true foundation of the ancient Indian shipping.
The Indian caravan always extended an earnest invitation to people to come out of the safety of their houses and lead a healthy outdoor life.”
The other profound scholar, Moti Chandra echoes Agarwala when he writes,
“These ancient stories inform us that in spite of manifold difficulties the Indian caravan always plied on land and sea routes and it was due to their indomitable courage that Indian religion and culture gained a firm foothold in Greater India… The development of the trade-routes of a country serves as the yardstick for measuring the evolution of culture. As soon as minor routes started branching out from the grand routes the parent Indian culture began penetrating the farthest corners of the country, and after it had covered the whole country then following the land and sea routes, it spread to Indonesia, Burma, Indo China and other parts of the world… [we] see how in different ages the conquerors, merchants, artists, and monks traversing these grand routes helped in the expansion of the trade and culture of this land. (Emphasis added)
Muscat was one such city to which Hindu businessmen took their culture throughout the centuries. What makes this story poignant and significant is its timeline. Hindu businessmen in the ancient period didn’t have to contend with Islam and its bigoted rulers in the Arabian region. But the Hindu businessmen who first landed in Muscat around the fifteenth century and made it their home had to deal with vastly different circumstances. And not only did they deal with it, they eventually dominated the financial and — at times — the political life of Oman for three centuries. Until the end of the nineteenth century.
It was not coincidental that Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the Motisvar Temple in Muscat in 2018. The visit in a way, was a celebration of a rather thrilling history.
— Chapter 2 —
THE EARLIEST KNOWN HINDU SETTLEMENT in Muscat is no later than the 15th century. Archeological digs have revealed that there was thriving maritime trade between the ancient Sumerian and the Harappan civilisation but no concrete evidence of Hindu settlement in the region dating back to that period has been found yet.
On April 6, 1506, the Portuguese pirate Afonso de Albuquerque left Lisbon on a second expedition to India. In a series of raids en route, he destroyed several Arab cities along the coast of East Africa and pocketed the island of Socotra in the Indian Ocean, now part of Yemen.
Albuquerque’s next target was Hormuz, a flourishing port city in the Persian Gulf. Its capture would singularly alter the fortunes of the nascent Portuguese Empire. He took seven well-equipped ships and a force of five hundred men and in July 1507, began devastating the coast of Oman. All its port cities fell like ninepins. Qurayat, Muscat, Sohar, and Khor Fakkan surrendered without giving a fight. In September 1507, he conquered Hormuz. Its Safavid ruler Shah Ismail I submitted in a craven fashion and Hormuz became a tributary state of the Portuguese King Manuel.
In his memoirs titled The Commentaries of the Great Afonso Dalboquerque, Second Viceroy of India, he mentions that “Hindu merchants from Gujarat fled Khor Fakkan and landed in Muscat.”
But Albuquerque could retain Hormuz for less than a year. A mutiny within his ranks forced him to abandon the city and in January 1508, he sailed to India, more than twenty years prior to Babur’s invasion. However, he returned in 1515, recaptured the city and reduced Hormuz and its provinces to the status of a Portuguese protectorate. He erected massive garrisons and forts throughout the region. Portuguese military and merchants flooded the place and till 1656, Portugal directly controlled the whole of northern Oman.
Muscat became the headquarters of this Portuguese mercantile imperialism. Its teeming population of talented Hindu businessmen aided Portugal in establishing a monopoly over the lucrative commerce between the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Gulf.
The prime source of this monopoly was its lavish trade with Thatta, a bustling port city of great antiquity.
A TWO HOUR DRIVE FROM KARACHI takes you to Thatta. On the map, Thatta directly faces Muscat across the Arabian Sea. But the early Arab geographers had called Thatta with a different name. They called it Debal, the ill-fated city that fell to Muhammad bin Qasim. It is the site of the so-called Arab conquest of Sindh. You can reach Thatta by land, traversing the treacherous route that passes along the Makran coast. Or you can directly sail to it from Muscat.
This was the picture of Thatta’s prosperity when in the 16th century, the Portuguese took control of Muscat: it boasted of 40,000 weavers of calico and lungis. Thatta lungis were especially prized in Oman. They called it wazar and paid handsome money for these lungis adorned with exquisite prints. Thatta was also home to more than 20,000 artisans of every variety: weavers, carpenters, potters, ironsmiths, sculptors, builders, braziers and trinket-makers. Bankers, money changers, shopkeepers, traders, and grainsellers totalled 60,000. Thatta also exported a staggering gamut of goods including silk, cotton yarn, ghee, sugar, opium, indigo and elegantly embroidered Kashmiri (Cashmere) shawls. In his Tuhfat al-A ’yan fi sirat ahl ‘Uman,’ Muhammad Al Salimi, the blind Omani historian mentions how the 17th century Imam named Sayyad bin Ahmad wore something called a silk Diwali. Diwali was also the name given to cummerbund. This was the selfsame Cashmere shawl imported from Thattta but worn as a cummerbund. But elsewhere in Arabia, these shawls were typically used as turbans.
In the late 17th century, the Portuguese missionary of the Augstinian Order, Sebastian Manrique who stayed in Thatta, describes its opulence:
However, Manrique was describing Thatta when it was undergoing terminal decline, as we shall see. But in the early 16th century, Thatta not only plied an abundant trade with Muscat, it also did extensive business with Africa. The volume was so enormous that the British — who were vying for maritime supremacy with other European powers — believed that the Portuguese power was wholly dependent on the revenue from Muscat. All ships bound towards Africa and the Gulf had to mandatorily call at Muscat and pay a hefty licencing fee to the Portuguese.
While the Portuguese derived their power from military conquests, their actual trade between Muscat and Thatta was carried on by Hindu merchants on Portuguese ships. Several wealthy Hindu businessmen had warehouses as large as entire villages in Muscat.
And a majority — if not all — of them were Sindhi Bhāṭiyās. The current spelling of Bhāṭiyā is Bhatia.
— Chapter 3 —
ORAL TRADITIONS and various firsthand documentary evidence reasonably prove that the Sindhi Bhāṭiyās were the first Banias from India to settle in Muscat. By the sheer dint of talent, hard work, savviness, cultural rootedness and business DNA, the community emerged as a formidable power in Muscat. It prospered continuously for about three centuries. It outclassed and outlasted the Portuguese, it was untouched by a series of Islamic civil wars and violent disruptions. It bequeathed a glorious legacy of intrepedity, cultural expansion and the art of survival amidst savage odds.
The most outstanding feature of this history is the fact that the Hindu business community including the Sindhi Bhāṭiyās flourished as a minuscule minority in a Sunni majority country. They were Kaffirs who prospered in a “pure” Islamic land. The Sindhi Bhāṭiyās undoubtedly owed their wealth and primacy to the Portuguese. The aforementioned al Salimi and another Omani chronicler, Ibn Razzaq mention that a “Bania worshipper of the cow acted as a supply agent for the Portuguese garrison at Muscat.” However, it was a two-way street. The Bhāṭiyā stranglehold over the trade between Muscat and Thatta owed to their generational family ties. A sizeable chunk of these Bhāṭiyās from Thatta had migrated to Muscat and elsewhere in Oman. And the Portuguese immensely benefitted from them.
IN 1555, THE TARKHAN WARLORD Mirza Isa Khan I requested Portuguese help in his insurrection against his master, Shah Hussain Arghun who was ruling Thatta. But when the Portuguese force arrived, it found that Isa Khan had already won the war. And so, he refused to pay the Portuguese soldiers. Enraged, they went on a brutal rampage, plundering the town, looting its abundant gold treasury and slaughtering its population indiscriminately. In a way, this seemingly minor incident altered the fortunes of Thatta for the worse. It heralded decadal instability in this prosperous commerical town.
In 1591, Akbar dispatched Abdul Rahim Khan-i-Khanan who annexed Thatta. What happened to Thatta after that will be narrated later in this essay series.
The Sindhi Bhāṭiyā proximity with the Portuguese soured in 1650 over… marriage. In fact, the final expulsion of the Portuguese from Muscat was directly enabled by a simple but furious letter written by a Sindhi Bhāṭiyā named Narottam. Most mainstream histories not only overlook his pivotal role in this momentous event but also omit Narottam’s name. His importance will be better understood in the context of the dog-eat-dog politics of that period.
After decades of internecine tribal wars, Nasir bin Murshid hailing from the Yaruba tribe became the Imam of Oman in 1624, thereby founding a dynasty. He immediately crushed lawlessness in the countryside and stamped his authority as the leader of all the tribes. But he also understood the mercurial nature of the powerful Ibadi and Nizar tribes and discovered a way to unify them. His message to them was straightforward and it unerringly found its target: Dear Muslim brothers, we’re fighting amongst ourselves while our hated enemy, the “infidel, beardless Portuguese polytheists” are controlling all our flourishing ports. Sohar, Sur, Qurayyat, and Muscat are in their hands and we suffer to see them prosper at our expense on our own soil.
Unity was achieved in no time.
And so, by 1633, Nasir bin Murshid had raised a formidable army. And then, he launched a series of offensives, which initially met with failure. The Portuguese managed to beat Nasir’s attempt to take the fort of Sohar. But they had not bargained for Nasir’s doggedness. And when he came this time, he captured both the forts at Ras al-Khaimah, ejecting the Persians from one and the Portuguese from the other. The fort of Sur fell next, followed by Qurayyat. The Portuguese were now thoroughly demoralised. In 1643, Nasir stormed Sohar again. This time, it capitulated. Three years later, he signed an alliance with the British East India Company, which was steadily expanding its operations in the region.
Now, only Muscat remained in Portuguese hands. Fully aware of their precarious position, they signed a humiliating treaty with Nasir in the desperate hope of retaining it. But before he could expel the Portuguese from Muscat as well, Nasir died in 1649.
That task would be completed by his cousin and successor, Sultan bin Saif. In December 1649, Saif assembled a large force and pitched his camp at Muttrah, within striking distance of the two forts at Muscat.
The siege commenced. But the Portuguese were ready for Saif’s troops.
Salil ibn Razik, the compiler of the History of the Imams and Sayyids of Oman describes the scene:
“The Portuguese, on their part, were well prepared for these attacks, and showed no signs of cowardice or of yielding. They had filled the two forts of Maskat, its towers, walls, and mountains, with picked men, and waited patiently for the coming assault. The Imam Sultan-bin- Saif’s troops advanced against them as far as the Bir-el-Rawiyah, of Maskat; but the Portuguese had erected towers on the mountains of Maskat and garrisoned them with musketeers. so that whenever any of the Imam's soldiers approached they fired upon them. They had also suspended an iron chain in the air from the tower whereto were attached iron cradles, in which men were concealed who discharged shot on any of the Imam's followers who ventured near them…They showed the greatest determination and were everywhere on their guard... The struggle went on in this way for a long time, and the Imam and his party began to despair of effecting an entrance into the place.”
This frustrating stalemate miraculously turned in Saif’s favour in a dramatic fashion.
PAREIRA, THE PORTUGUESE COMMANDANT of the Muscat fort had a long standing business relationship with the aforementioned Narottam. Razik describes him as a “worshipper of the cow, to wit, the polytheist, a Banian [Bania].” In spite of his precarious position, Pareira found time to lust after Narottam’s beautiful, unmarried daughter. He sent word to Narottam through a Pastor of the church attached to the Western fort: I want to marry your daughter. A horrified Narottam rebuffed the proposal and rebuffed it again in a stronger tone when Pareira offered him a lavish sum of money. Narottam’s reply is a lesson to all the present-day Hindu parents of “interfaith marriage.”
“The thing which the commandant requires is unbecoming of him and me. He is a Christian, whereas I am of a different religion. He and his co-religionists hold it lawful to drink wine, and to eat ox-flesh and the flesh of other animals. Neither in ancient nor modern times have Christians intermarried with us.”
Because the lure of monetary inducement had failed, the Pastor warned Narottam of the dangers of upsetting Pareira:
“You must not thwart the commandant, for he has been most generous towards you…and he declares that if you do not give your consent to the marriage I am to marry your daughter to him forcibly, and he will punish you and yours with fines, penalties, and other punishments, such as have not been inflicted on any before you.” (Emphasis added)
This singular episode suffices to illustrate the chasm of difference in the moral outlook separating Sanatana Dharma and Christianity. Here is a Pastor, an alleged man God, behaving worse than a streetside pimp, telling a father to trade his daughter. A man of God who has zero moral or spiritual authority over a mere Commandant.
The full implication of the threat dawned on Narottam who wisely took recourse to strategy. He personally visited Pareira and told him that although he was unwilling to betroth his daughter, he had no choice. He sought time. Give me a year, he said, because in our custom, weddings require elaborate preparation. I need to procure dresses and ornaments and other finery for the bride. All these items should come only from a certain town in India. Pareira was elated. One year was granted to Narottam.
And then, Narottam played on Pareira psyche.
AFTER RECEIVING A REPRIEVE of one year from Pareira, the shrewd Narottam began toying with the Portuguese commandant’s mind. He outlined a strategy to combat and repel Sultan bin Saif’s force waiting outside the Muscat fort:
“In the mean time, as one acquainted with the vicissitudes of war, I venture to give you a little advice… Sultan bin Saif has not yet withdrawn his seige. He lies in wait for you with forces as numerous as the drops of rain, and his soldiers are exulting over you because you are afraid to accept their challenge; hence you are humbled and he is triumphant. I fear… that his forces will assault you by climbing over the walls like lions… I have no doubt that, with the aid of a few ladders, they might succeed and thereby leave you nothing but the two forts, the Eastern and Western, wherein they would besiege you completely. In that case you would be cut off from all supplies, more especially water, which he would prevent you from obtaining…Now, the water which is in the tanks of the two forts is foul and swarms with insects, and causes disorders in the bowels… the gunpowder and provisions which are stored in the two forts and the two batteries are old and worthless… My advice therefore is that you let off the water now in the tanks, have the tanks well cleaned, and fill them with fresh water before the siege begins…Let the powder also be brought out and restored by being pounded anew. The old wheat, too, should be discarded, and new grain substituted in its place…”
And so he went on, preying on Pareira’s vulnerabilities. The mortified Portuguese commandant entrusted all these tasks to Narottam. Besides, he was basking in the heady prospect of marrying his beautiful daughter a year later.
It didn’t take long for Narottam to render both the forts defenceless. And then, he wrote a long and precise letter to Sultan Saif. He mentioned Pareira’s degenerate lust for his daughter and described how he had enervated both the forts. He also gave pointed instructions on when and how to organise the attack. And then he threw a challenge: “You, O Imam of Oman! You’ve been beseiging Muscat for such a long time and you’ve achieved nothing! If you wish to succeed, march to Muscat next Sunday. The Portuguese are Christians and they don’t carry weapons on Sunday. It is their day of feasting and drinking and merrymaking. I have done the hardest task all alone. I’ve emptied out all the provisions and ammunition. Send your army to both forts and set fire to the gates. I’ve removed all the gunpowder from there and replaced it with powder sprinkled with vinegar. You will face no opposition.”
It was too good to be true but it was also too good not to be true. Sultan bin Saif chose to believe Narottam.
The next Sunday, Saif’s substantial army stormed Muscat. The battle proceeded exactly as Narottam had outlined. The Portuguese cannons and guns would not fire. And the Portuguese soldiers were “reeling drunk” to put up even a semblance of a battle. Those who did were mercilessly slaughtered. The battle was over before it had begun.
On January 28, 1650, Commandant Pareira appeared in person before Sultan Saif and sought surrender. It was accepted. But suddenly, out of nowhere, the two large Portuguese ships anchored at some distance from the Muttrah fort began firing randomly into the town. While it did little damage, it evoked viscreal rage within Saif who ordered a wholesale destruction of all vestiges of Portuguese power in the city. In a matter of days, both Portuguese ships were thoroughly decimated and to the soldiers of Islam, “Allah gave…victory over the infidels, for they destroyed the two ships and killed all the polytheist crews.”
One hundred and fifty years of Portuguese power in the Persian Gulf sputtered to death. The weapon that caused it was a letter written by a wronged Hindu father.
FOR SULTAN BIN SAIF, the capture of the two forts at Muscat was a decisive triumph. It was, in the words of his congratulators, “a conquest which Allah himself had vouchsafed to the Mussulmans through him over the polytheists.” As much as he exulted in the victory, he was not content. In his eyes, the Portuguese polytheists had not been sufficiently punished. Centuries of their unholy domination of Muslim lands called for stronger vengeance. And so, Sultan Saif ordered a wholesale Jihad against the accursed Portuguese who “swept the coast of the sea of Oman.”
In a series of separate expeditions spread over many years, fleets of well-equipped warships sailed to Diu, Daman and Mumbai and devastated Portuguese possessions in all these places. The Arabs ravaged and burnt Portuguese Churches and everything that the Christians held sacred. Describing the extensive scale of destruction, an outraged Englishman Hamilton writes that
“the Arabs, like a parcel of unsanctified rogues, made sad havoc on the churches' trumpery, for besides robbing them of all the sanctified plate and cash, they did not leave one gold or silver image behind them, but carried all into dismal captivity, from whence they never returned…as for the poor images of wood and stone, they were so rudely treated by those barbarous infidels, that they came well off if they lost but a limb, and I saw some who lost their heads.”
Each Arab expedition launched to punish the Portuguese in India yielded massive loot, which Sultan Saif used for building the imposing fort at Nizwa, which is a popular tourist destination today. It took twelve years to complete and cost “lakhs of silver and gold.”
— Chapter 4 —
SULTAN BIN SAIF did not forget to shower his gratitude upon Narottam for the decisive part he had played in the victory against the infidel Portuguese. He exempted the Sindhi Bhāṭiyā community from paying the Jiyza (poll tax). And then, in an astounding gesture, he did something that was unprecedented and considered as heretical in the theory and practice of Islamic statecraft. He granted Narottam permission to build a temple.
That’s how Muscat got its first ever Hindu temple about three hundred years ago: the Govindaraja temple. This unravels a profound story by itself.
By the mid 17th century, most of the Sindhi Bhāṭiyās in India had adopted the Pushtimarga Sampradaya founded by Mahaprabhu Sri Vallabhacharya. Thatta was the city in which he first began to spread the teachings of his Sampradaya. Pushtimarga is one of the most evocative branches of the Vaishnava school with its worship of Bala-Krishna, Venugopala and Srinath Ji, the endearing seven-year-old Krishna. It is not coincidental that Pushtimarga is strongest in Gujarat and Rajasthan apart from the Braj region. It is also not coincidental that a majority of Pushtimargis hail from the business class. Yet, for some inexplicable reason, the Pushtimargi Sindhi Bhāṭiyās of Muscat chose Govindaraja as their preferred deity. It was known as a Mandir, and not as a Haveli, in Pushtimargi parlance.
After the Govindaraja Temple was consecrated, the Sindhi Bhāṭiyās offered their thanks to Saif by including an Omani dagger in the Ābharaṇa (jewellery/ornamentation) of the Murti.
The temple not only became the spiritual and cultural centre of the entire Hindu community in Muscat, it inspired and spurred similar feats of devotion in the future. This underscores a demonstrable truth hiding in plain sight: Hindus build temples wherever they go. To cite the same example of the Pushtimarga Sampradaya, there are eight Shrinathji Havelis in the United States, one in Canada, one each in Australia and New Zealand. Hindus building temples in alien countries is both an offering of piety and a preservation of their ties to Bharatavarsha. In stark contrast, a mosque or a church indicates conquered territory in infidel or heathen lands.
The Yaruba dynasty ended in 1718 with the death of Sultan bin Saif II. A hotly contested succession dispute erupted into a full blown, bloody civil war that lasted for about three decades. It witnessed the invasion of the Persian monster Nadir Shah in 1737. Peace and stability returned to Oman in 1744 with the coronation of Ahmad bin Said al-Busaidi.
What is notable in this entire blood-soaked saga is how the Hindu community in Muscat remained completely untouched by it. After Ahmad became the unchallenged Imam (i.e., Sultan) and delivered a relatively stable rule, Hindus once again prospered. Like Sultan bin Saif, Ahmad also allowed them to build temples. His Al Said dynasty, now known as the House of Busaid, continues to rule Oman.
Muscat got its second Hindu temple during Ahmad’s reign. This was a Pushtimargi Haveli dedicated to Sri Krishna, worshipped as Bayaji. The American Scholar Calvin Allen who visited Muscat in the 1970s records that the “temple still exist(s) in Masqat.” By the end of the 18th century, Muscat had four Hindu temples built by Hindus who followed other Sampradayas.
In January 1765, the Danish adventurer Carsten Niebuhr visited Muscat and wrote this about the Hindu community there:
“In no other Mahometan city are the Banias so numerous as in Maskat; their number in this city amounts to no fewer than twelve hundred. They are permitted to live agreeably to their own laws, to bring their wives hither, to set up idols in their chambers, and to burn their dead.”
However, around the same time, the primacy of the Sindhi Bhāṭiyās in Muscat started to wane. The biggest contributor to this decline was the ejection of the Portuguese. Their exit hit Thatta the hardest and with it, the Sindhi Bhāṭiyās who depended on its commerce, slowly began to sink. By the 1780s, Thatta had been under the control of Mughal governors for nearly two centuries. They ran the prosperous city like a personal fiefdom and ended up ruining it. But the rot had actually set in during Jahangir’s time. Which brings us back to Sebastian Manrique’s description of the city during Jahangir’s reign. After gushing over its prosperity (mentioned earlier in this essay), he gives us a portrait of it dark and sleazy side.
In the first half of the 18th century, newer dynamics both within India and on the global stage were at play. It would alter the fate of the Hindu community in Muscat in unprecedented ways. That story will be narrated in the next episode of this series.
AURANGZEB’S DEATH in 1707 had irreversibly shattered the Mughal Empire. The British were now vying for supremacy, warring with the Marathas, the Dutch, and the French in India. Elsewhere in the Indian Ocean, they had replaced the Portuguese. The focus of maritime commerce had now shifted from Thatta to Surat and Bombay on the west coast, and to Bengal, Machilipatnam and Madras on the east coast. With astonishing swiftness, Thatta first became an economic backwater, and then a wasteland.
Another factor that led to Thatta’s destruction was the bigoted rule of the Talpur “Sultans.” Their short-lived tenure (1783-1843) witnessed industrial scale persecution of all Hindus within Sindh. To this river of woe, nature poured her own share of misery. The Sindhu River suddenly changed course and with that, Thatta’s centuries’ old transportation route was permanently closed. Henry Pottinger, who served as a lieutenant in the Third Anglo-Maratha War, visited Thatta in 1809 and witnessed this scene:
“The only manufactures now carried on in Tatta are those of a few white cloths and coloured loongees [lungis], and in lieu of the bustle of a great trading city, the streets are deserted, the few shops that remain are scarcely worthy of being called such, in view of the disreputable figure they cut, and the whole bazaar exhibits a deplorable picture of poverty and depressed commerce.”
Faced with such bleak prospects, the Sindhi Bhāṭiyās began to develop Karachi as an alternative. While they continued to trade with their counterparts in Muscat as before, their glory days were long gone. They were swiftly overtaken and replaced by another Hindu mercantile group, the Kutchi Bhāṭiyās, who surged forth from the Mandvi port in Kutch, Gujarat.
— Chapter 5 —
IN 1830, MUSCAT BOASTED of a large Kutchi Bhāṭiyā enclave. Their meteoric rise in the city is the stuff of legends. They not only dominated trade and commerce but exercised a powerful influence over its ruler, Said bin Sultan. A Kutchi Bhāṭiyā named Gopal Bhimani induced Said bin Sultan to conquer Zanzibar. Gopal also organised campaigns on behalf of the Sultan to suppress piracy on the high seas.
Indeed, the conquest of Zanzibar proved so eminently fruitful that in 1832, Said bin Sultan shifted his entire court from Muscat to Stone Town on the island of Unguja. This brought two massive windfalls to the Kutchi Bhāṭiyās.
The first: in Muscat, the Office of the Treasurer and the Chief Customs Officer passed into their hands.
The second: Said bin Sultan, as a policy, encouraged Kutchi Bhāṭiyās to settle in Zanzibar. Most academic studies are unanimous in holding that modern Zanzibar was actually built by the Kutchis from India.
The vacuum created by Said bin Sultan’s exit from Muscat was filled, quite obviously, by the Kutchi Bhāṭiyās. They flooded into the city from India and in 1840, Muscat’s Bania population exceeded two thousand. The British explorer James Wellsted who spent thirteen years touring Arabia gives us this striking observation about Muscat, circa 1836:
“There are more Banians in Maskat than in any other town of Arabia. [They are] estimated at 1,500, and their number is rapidly increasing. They possess a small temple there, are permitted to keep and protect a certain number of cows, to burn their dead, and to follow in other respects the uninterrupted enjoyment of their respective religious tenets.... They mostly embark at Porebunder, from the north-west provinces of India, and in the prosecution of their commercial avocations frequently remain for a period of fifteen or twenty years.. ..They constitute a body of the principal merchants of the place, and almost monopolise the pearl trade from the Persian Gulf. They enter as largely into the supply of grain from India, and have also extensive dealings in Indian cloths and piece goods.”
Said bin Sultan’s death in 1856 caused no real damage to the Kutchi Bhāṭiyās. On the contrary, their prosperity touched even greater heights under the regime of his son, Thuwayni bin Said. He continued the hands-off policy of his father. And so, the Kutchi Bhāṭiyās remained the absolute masters of the Muscati economy, facing zero competition from any quarter. Calvin Allen gives us a memorable clue as to the extent of their glory: “The profits that had formerly filled the coffers of the ruling family now went to the Kutchi merchants.”
IF THIS IS THE COMMERCIAL SIDE of the Kutchi Bhāṭiyās, the cultural side presents a deeply expressive picture. It was entirely characteristic of the Hindu social solidarity in alien lands of that period. Economic competition was no obstacle to this solidarity. The Bania community especially, was represented by the most respected man in the community. His title by itself showed its deep cultural moorings in Bharatavarsha. He was known as the Nagar Seth or Mukhi, and represented the community in political matters. In the late 19th century, this office was held by a Bhimani, belonging to the aforementioned Gopal Bhimani’s bloodline.
The Hindu community celebrated all its major festivals like Holi, Janmashtami and Deepavali with the same fervour as they did in Bharatavarsha. Community dinners on these festivals were basically the partaking of Prasadam. A large platter of the best food would be sent to the Sultan’s palace. However, Hindus politely declined to eat the food that the Sultan offered in return, if it was prepared by non-Hindu cooks. Hindus wore their traditional attire and mostly spoke Gujarati. Account books were also maintained in Gujarati.
The Hindu community also maintained a Gaushala, which supplied the dairy needs for Muscati Hindus. This Gaushala has a story of its own. It was located adjacent to the selfsame Motishwar Mandir, which Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited in 2018. When the Oman National Dairy was opened in 1976, the Hindu community donated the Gaushala cows to it on one condition: once the cows stopped producing milk, they should not be slaughtered, but sent to India. This story is also a footnote of sorts to the present fate of the four Hindu temples in Muscat. This is Calvin Allen’s observation, made in the 1970s:
In the mid to late 19th century, four eminent Hindus were recognised as the pillars of the Hindu community in Muscat. Dowlatgirji Manrupgirji, a Gosai Brahmana from Kutch; Virji Ratansi, a well-respected banker; Damodar Dharamsi, a customs-farmer; and Ratansi Purshottam, a fabulously wealthy magnate with diverse business interests. They offered protection, patronage and encouragement to scores of other Banias who established lucrative businesses in Muscat.
Calvin Allen offers an overall assessment of three centuries of Hindu economic prowess in Muscat, which was seeded by the Sindhi Bhāṭiyās and taken to Himalayan heights by the Kutchi Bhāṭiyās:
“Over the course of the nineteenth century, Indian merchants came to dominate the economic life of Masqat, replacing the Al Bü Said rulers as the principal merchants of the city and acquiring fortunes that had once gone to the royal family. The Hindu Banias, who had first come from Sind as junior partners to the Portuguese, flourished under the Ya'ariba but suffered as a result of the combined strains of political and economic dislocations at home and a more aggressive Masqati commercial policy…”
The glory enjoyed by the Kutchi Bhāṭiyās was too good to last.
The first blow came in the form of the hardcore bigot, Imam Azzan bin Qais who deposed his cousin, Sultan Thuwayni bin Said in 1868. He established a fundamentalist regime and ousted the Kutchi Bhāṭiyās from all the government posts they held.
Next, he specifically targetted all the Hindus in Muscat. He imposed stifling prohibitions on dress, music, and social mores. He banned tobacoo and prohibited Hindus from ringing bells, gongs and drums on auspicious occasions. And then he unleashed his fanatical hordes who began physically attacking the Banias. As anticipated, a wave of Hindu exodus began. In just two years, the Hindu population of Muscat fell from 2000 to 250.
Epilogue
BY ANY MEASURE, this three-century saga is a thrilling journey of a small slice of Hindu business history imbued with epic elements. It is a relatively recent proof of V.S. Agarwala and Motichandra’s profound observation about the intrinsic temperament of the Hindu attitude to business, quoted in the beginning of this essay series.
The manner in which the Hindu business community preserved its Dharma, its traditions and values in a Mleccha land imparts several invaluable lessons. The foremost lesson is the indivisibility of culture and economics. Economics safeguards and nourishes culture, and culture spiritualises economics. Economics divorced from culture and spirituality leads to financial cannibalism, and financial cannibalism is the very definition of American style capitalism.
|| Om Tat Sat ||
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