Immigrant Entrepreneurs in Colonial Burma - An Exploratory Study of The Role of Nattukottai Chettiars of Tamil Nadu, 1880-1930

Immigrant Entrepreneurs in Colonial Burma—An
Exploratory Study of the Role of Nattukottai Chettiars of

Tamil Nadu,1880-1930*
RAMAN MAHADEVAN
Centre for Historical Studies
-
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
Despite our long tradition of academic pursuit and

research it is a scholarly
curious, albeit unfortunate, fact that in relation to the subcontinent
as a whole
the scholarly inputs in the area of modern South Indian history of the nine-
teenth and twentieth century is woefully scant. It is only recently that scholars,
particularly from the Western world, have begun to envince some interest in
this region. However, most of them have sought to focus their attention on
processes of political, social and institutional change. Consequently, vital
areas in the field of the economic history of the region still awaits scholarly in-
vestigation. Entrepreneurship is one such important areas. To this day there

is no full-length study on the entrepreneurial history of the region.’ Not that
the entrepreneurs of South India were in any way less enterprising and less
adventurous than their counterparts in the North and therefore unworthy to
merit investigation.
The lack of such studies has serious implications. It, as it were, precludes and
limits our understanding of such vital questions as (a) the character of the in-
dustrial capitalist class that emerged in South India under conditions of colonial
rule; (b) the degree of homogeneity of this class or in other words its perception
of its common class interests; (c) the nature of its relationship with foreign
. This paper is a modified version of an extract from my unpublished M.Phil Thesis entit-
led, &dquo;fhe Origin and Growth of Entrepreneurship in the Nattukottai Chettiar Community of
Tamil Nadu 1880-1930,&dquo; Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, 1976 (hereafter referied
to as 1~l.Phi1 Thesis). I wish to acknowledge my gratitude to Dr Sabyasachi Bhattacharya and
Aditya Murao among others for their liberal comments, advice and assistance.
S rangely enough the South Indian entrepreneurial groups have been either completely
1
overlooked or at best treated cursorily in most standard works on the Indian capitalist class.
See V.I. Pavlov, The Indian Capitalist Class, New Delhi, 1964; B.B. Misra, The Indian Middle
Class, London, 1961; A.I. Levkovsky, Capitalism in India, Bombay, 1966; Helen. B. Lamb,
"The Rise of Indian Business Communities," Pacific Affairs, XXIII, No. 2, June 1955, pp.
98-126; D.R. Gadgil, The Origins of the Modern Indian Business Class—An Interim Report,
University of British Colombia, Canada, 1967. The only exception to this is A,K. Bagchi,
See his Private Investment in India 1900-39, Cambridge, 1972,
Downloaded from ier.sagepub.com at University of Sydney on March 14, 2015

330
capital, its ties or lack of it with feudal and semifeudal structure; (d) its
political alliances and alignments; (e) its equation with the capitalist class of
other regions. In short, the very essence or dynamics of capitalist development
in colonial South India has yet to be empirically investigated. Answers to
these questions apart from facilitating inter-regional comparison would take us
closer to a more comprehensive understanding of the dynamics of socio-
economic and political change that characterized South India of the nineteenth
and twentieth century.
The present study seeks no more than to put into historical perspective the
evolution of Chettiar capital in the context of colonial Burma-their principal
area of operation and accumulation of capital until 1930s. This is important as
it was the fortunes earned by some of the Chettiars through years of lucrative
moneylending and trade in Burma that enabled them to- transform themselves
into modern capitalists in their own country. Two such outstanding examples
among many others are the Raja Sir Annamalai Chettiar group and the
A.M.M. Murugappa Chettiar Group.
Before getting down to discussing the role of the Chettiars in Burma it may
be worthwhile to consider briefly the nature of their activities in Madras. The
Nattukottai2 Chettiars also known as the Nagarathars-since they were
grouped for socio religious purposes into nine Nagarams or temple townships-
are a section of the traditional business community of South India. A fairly
closely knit social group, the Chettiars claim an ancestry and heritage that goes
back to the time of the Cholas.1 However, as much of what has been handed
down to us is in the form of folklores and legends, the authenticity and vera-
city of their early history is somewhat difficult to establish. The only thing
that appears somewhat credible in their otherwise legendary past is their long
tradition of maritime trade with the overseas area of South and South-East
Asia. It is only from the early nineteenth century that a clearer picture of
their activities emerges as reliable sources of information become available. A
f.
The
2 term "Nattukottai" when translated literally
means country fort. It is perhaps rea-
sonable to assume that this
prefix was used by non-Chettiars to distinguish the Nattukottai
(those who lived in houses resembling country foris) from the various other subdivision with-
in the Chetti caste. The term "Chetti" was used rather loosely in most of the official pub-
lications such as the census reports and gazetteers to denote both a title in the occupational
sense and a caste. The confusion was confounded by the multiplicity of the subdivisions with-
in the Chetti community or caste. Some of the major subdivis’ons are as follows: (1) Ariyur
Chetti, (2) Vallanad Chetti, (3) Kasukar Chetti, (4) Vandakottai Chetti, (5) Vellar Chetti,
(6) Viralur Chetti, (7) Narayanapuram Chetti, (8) Beri Chetti, (9) Komati Chetti, (10)
Nattukottai Chetti or Chettiar. For more information on the Chetti caste, see E. Thurston,
Castes and Tribes of South India, Madras, 1909, Vols. II and V, and also Manual of the
Puddukottai State, issued by the Durbar of Pudukottah, 1921, p. 195 ff.
Chinnayya Chettiar, Nattukottai Nagarathar Charithiram (Tamil), Tanjore, 1894, p. 5;
3
see also, J.S. Ponnaiah, "Human Geography of the Ramnad District," Journal of the
Madras Geographical Association, Vol. VII, 1932-33, p. 275.

331
particularly noticeable feature of their activities during the greater part of

the nineteenth century was the organized exodus of Chettiar capital from its
base in Greater Madras to such of those areas which were being opened up
for colonial exploitation, viz., Ceylon, Malaya, Burma, Indo-China, etc. This
coincidence was by no means accidental. Rather, it has to be viewed in the
context of the following objective conditions prevailing at that time, namely,
(a) the creation of opportunities for the profitable investment of Asian capital
in the above-mentioned regions, especially after the introduction of commer-
cial crops such as rice, tea, coffee, rubber, etc., which greatly stimulated a
demand for credit in these regions, (b) the lack of investment outlets in the
Madras Presidency in the fields of industry, foreign trade, money market, etc.,
as a consequence of the European domination and monopoly over these
sectors’ and (c) the relative unprofitability of their moneylending business in
Madras Presidency as compared to those &dquo;blessed regions of a very high
interest rate&dquo;5 (viz., Burma, Strait settlements, Ceylon, etc.).
The operations of those who remained in the Madras Presidency extended
essentially to financing the agriculturists and traders with the bulk of their
funds employed in financing the latter.’ Their major areas of operation were
Tinnevelly, Coimbatore, Ramnad and Tanjore districts, parts of coastal
Andhra and the city of Madras.7 In Coimbatore district almost all their bor-
rowers were agriculturists and they had practically no hold over the important
Tiruppur Cotton market which was said to have been a monopoly of the
4
F or details see M.Phil Thesis, 15-83.
T.K. Duraiswamy Aiyar, "Indigenous Banking in the Madras Presidency," Progs. of the
5
Seventh Indian Economic Conference, Bombay, 1924, p. 116. The Chettiars were encountering
even within their limited sphere of investment open to them in Madras, viz., in field of finan-
cing of agriculture and trade impediments and difficulties which in a sense restricted their
area of manoeuvrability and hampered the growth of their business. These constraints inclu-
ded the discriminatory policy of the Imperial Bank of India towards the Chettiars on the
question of rates of interest on loans; the manner and mode of effecting sudden repayment
of loans and its unsettling effect on the system of moneylending. The cumbersome legal pro-
cesses and executive proceedings of cases involving defaulting debtors; keen compeition
from sections of North Indian business communities, principally the Marwaris and Multanis.
As a result of these factors the Chettiars were unable to establish the way they did in some
of the overseas areas, their dominance and hegemony over even the limited sphere of invest-
ment. This would also partially explain why even as late as 1920s some of the Chettiars were
winding up their business to South India and diverting their capital to the overseas. See
M. Phil Thesis, pp. 77-83.
6
Written Evidence of Nattukottai Nagarathar Association, Madras Provincial Banking
Enquiry Committee Report (hereafter referred to as M.P.B.E.C.R.), Vol. III, Calcutta, 1930,
p. 1102.
See P. Vaidyanathan, "Problem of Rural Credit in the Madras Presidency," Journal of
7
the Annamalai University, Vol. XI, No. 3, July 1942, pp. 103-04; A. Savarinatha Pillai, written
evidence entitled "Monograph on Nattukottai Chettiar Banking System," M,P,B.E,C.R.,
Vol. III, p. 1178; T.K. Duraiswamy Aiyar, op. cit., pp. 116-17.

332
Marwaris.8 However, in the cotton tract of Tinnevelly, Ramnad and in and

around Koilpatti, Chettiar capital was said to be involved. In Tinnevelly the
Chettiars also assisted &dquo;the traders in the purchase of chillies, paddy, pulses,
jaggery and other articles.&dquo;9 In the Chettinad region, they advanced loans
mainly to &dquo;their farm servants or dependants in order to keep them under
obligation.&dquo;&dquo; In Tanjore and in parts of Coastal Andhra (especially in the
Guntur and Krishna region) the Chettiar finances enabled the rice millowners
to &dquo;buy up paddy in the beginning of the season and store it.&dquo;11 Apart from
moneylending there is evidence that the Chettiars were engaged in no small
measure in trade- both import and export as well as internal (wholesale and
retait)-in such commodities as rice, salt, timber, cotton textiles, tobacco, etc.12
From the late nineteenth century onwards, some large Chettiar houses, though
still engaged in moneylending and trade operations in South India and the
various overseas areas, began to gradually invest part of their accumulated
capital in various industries and non-industrial modern incorporated enter-
prises. By 1930 the Chettiars had either promoted or taken over as many as six
textile mills, a modern joint stock bank (the first of its kind to be floated by
Indian in Madras), a paper mill and a few sugar MillS.13
However, until 1930 Chettiar investments in Madras Presidency as a pro-
portion of their total investments spread over Burma, Malaya, Ceylon, Indo-
China was extremely small. Various attempts have been made to arrive at an
approximate estimate of the total working capital of the Chettiars, as also the
8
A .S. Pillai, op. cit., p. 1178.
P. Vaidyanathan, op. cit., p. 104.
9
A.S.
10
op.
p. Pillai,
cit.,
1176.
11 Duraiswamy Aiyar, op.cit., p. 117. The Chettiars themselves, during the days of
T.K.
the rice trade with Ceylon, had established a number of rice mills in the Tanjore district by
investing considerable capital. This business, however, appears to have declined with the
"entry of Marwaris and Bombay Sails and influx of Rangoon rice..." (A.S. Pillai, op. cit,
p. 1178).
A.S. Pillai, op. cit., p. 1178; see Vysiamitran, Tamil weekly, published from Devakottai,
12
in Ramnad District, 2.2.1920 issue, p. 4. The firm of Chockalingam Chetty was one of the
largest dealers in timber in the MadrasPresidency. See Somerset Playne, Southern India—Its
History, People, Commerce and Industrial Resources, London, 1914, pp. 646-49; A report en-
titled "MadrasSalt Depot" in the Report and Correspondence of the South India Chamber of
Commerce, Madras, March 1914, Feb. 1915, pp. 80-95 provides interesting information regar-
ding the virtual monopoly of the AR. AR. SM Chettiar film over the salt trade in Madras.
See also Vysiamitran, 6 August 1917, p. 3. In the field of textiles the Chettiar firm Rama-
swamy Co., established in Madras
in 1907, wasengaged in both the retail and wholesale
tra de in textile goods of (Somerset Playne, op.cit., pp. 692-96). Chettiars were also associated
in the tobacco trade between Ceylon and South India. See W.S. Weerasooria, The Nattu-
kottai Chettiar Merchant Bankers in Ceylon, Dehiwala, Sri Lanka, 1973, p.20.
See my article "The Development of Modern Entrepreneurship in the Chettiar Com-
13
munity of Tamilnadu 1900-1930." Progs. of the Indian History Congress, Vol. II, Thirty-
fourth session, Chandigarh, 1973, pp. 133-43.

333
regionwise distribution of this capital. Thus, according to Burma Banking

Enquiry Committee, out of their total working capital of Rs 120 crores, only
Rs 1 crore was invested in Madras.&dquo; While according to the estimate of
A. Savarinatha Pillai, Assistant Commissioner of Income Tax, Southern
Range, the total working capital of the Chettiars was Rs 75 crores of which
only Rs 3 crores was invested in Madras Presidency.&dquo; The Madras Banking
Enquiry Committee on the other hand, while putting their total working
capital at Rs 75 crores placed their investment in Madras Presidency at Rs 6.5
crores, the turnover of which, according to the committee, was as much as
Rs 11I crores. 16 Of these three divergent estimates of Chettiar investments in
Madras Presidency the latter appears most plausible.&dquo; Significantly, these
three estimates however divergent do point to the fact that (a) the investments
of the Chettiars in the overseas far outweighed their investments in the
Madras Presidency and (b) within the overseas area the Chettiar business in
Burma far outstripped the rest of their operation. Thus, as the table given
below indicates three-fifths of the total working funds of the Chettiars were
employed in Burma.
REGIONWISE BREAK-UP OF TOTAL WORKING FUNDS OF CEIE1’T1ARS
AROUND THE YEAR 1929-31
SOURCE: B.P.B.E.C.R., Vol. I, pp. 2(0-11.
Burma Provincial Banking Enquiry Committee Report (hereafter

14 referred to as
B.P.B.E.C.R.), Rangoon, 1930, Vol. I, pp. 210-11.
A.S. Pillai, op. cit., p. 1174.
15
M.P.B.E.C.R., Vol. I, pp. 185-86.
16
The figures of Chettiar working capital in the Madras Presidency as worked out by the
17
Burma Banking Enquiry Committee and A.S. Pillai, viz., of Rs 1 crore and Rs 3 crores res-
pectively seem to be grossly underestimated in so far as these estimates are largely based on
investigation and assessment through income-tax returns filed by the Chettiars; a major limi-
tation of this method of estimation of the capital was—as admitted by A.S. Pillai himself—
that "the Chettiars do not always produce their entire accounts before the income-tax autho-
rities but only some branch accounts." (A.S. Pillai, op. cit., p. 1172). Moreover both the
Banking Enquiry Committee and A.S. Pillai do not seem to have taken into account in their
estimates the share of the Chettiar business firms not assessable for income-tax, as for ins-
tance, the Chettiar firms located in the independent principality of Puddukottai. Exempted,
as they were from income-tax, these firms, however, conducted extensive business in the
Madras Presidency. One is also not very certain whether these estimates took into account
the Chettiar capital invested in the various industries and other modern incorporated enter-
prises, in trade and, finally, the income of the Chettiars from zamindaris and other landed
estates in possession.

334
In view of the importance in purely quantitative terms of Chettiar invest-

ment in Colonial Burma vis-a-vis their total investments both in India and
abroad until 1930 and also considering the significance of the accumulation
of this capital in relation to the subsequent growth of modern entrepreneur-
ship in this community the early twentieth century, it is proposed to examine
in the following sections, the specific nature of Chettiar enterprise in colonial
Burma.
It took the British sixty years and three wars to bring Burma completely
under their rule: the Arakan Division and part of Tennasserim were the first
to come under British rule, in 1826; the rest of the potentially richer lower
Burma came under colonial rule in 1852, while upper Burma was annexed
last, in 1886.’e Long before lower Burma became a part of the Indian Empire,
the British had realized the importance of the Delta region as a potential
market for British manufactured goods and as a source of raw materials.
Therefore, soon after the occupation of lower Burma, attempts were made to
open up the region for colonial exploitation.la
Prior to the occupation of Pegu, almost the entire lower Burma was covered
with dense and marshy swamps, &dquo;wherein lived a sparse population subsisting
on fishing and saltmaking and the tillage in odd clearings of rice suflicient
only for its own needs.&dquo;~O In the pre-British period, domestic economic
growth was checked by several restrictions imposed by the then ruling Kon-
baung dynasty such as the ban on rice exports, sumptuary rights, etc. After
1852 the colonial authorities set about to remove these constraints so as to
promote growth and fully exploit the economic potential of this deltaic region
by importing legal, political and commercial institutions and all the para-
phernalia that goes with colonial rule. Thus transport and communications
and embankments were improved; private investors were encouraged to build
processing plants for rice (an item which was to be, in the years to come, of
great importance in the export trade of Burma) while British and Indian
merchants imported manufactured goods into Burma, thus providing &dquo;stimu-
lus to surplus production on the part of Burmese agriculturists.&dquo;‘1
With the establishment of British rule in lower Burma, certain changes
were also introduced in the land tenurial system. In place of the loose noncon-
tractual usufructuary rights that had prevailed in the pre-British period, the
J.F. A
18 Cady, History of Modern Burma, Cornell University, 1955, p. 155.
J.S. Furnival, Colonial Policy and Practice, New York University, 1956, p. 63. See also
19
Michael Adas, "Immigrant Asians and the Economic Impact of European Imperialism:
The Role of the South Indian Chettiars in British Burma," The Journal of Asian Studies,
Vol. XXXIII, No. 3, May 1974, p. 387.
Notes by the Indian Advisory Committee to the Burma Nattukottai Chettiars Association on
20
the Land Nationalization Act 1948, K.E.S.C. Ltd., Buildings Chettinad Ramnad District,
N D., p. 4. This document will hereafter be referred to as N.B.T.I.A.C.
M. Adas, op. cit., p. 387.
21

335
British introduced the squatter system of land tenure.21 Under this system any
person could clear and settle any vacant land. The cultivator was, however,
liable to eviction by the government though he was generally allowed to remains
in occupation as long as the land revenue was paid regularly. The chief objectives
of the British Government in this period of experimentation in evolving a stable
land tenurial system was to open up and develop the lands in lower Burma
in as short a time as possible so that adequate revenue could be obtained. The
government was also seized with the idea of introducing some form of pea-
sant proprietorship since it was thought that such a system would be most
conducive to the stability and prosperity of the region.23 (It should, however,
be noted that until 1876, no proprietary right was granted.)
In the meanwhile, owing to the increasing demand for Burma rice in the
European and Asian markets, an export trade in rice was beginning to grow.
In 1865, a decade after the British had occupied lower Burma, the export of
rice had risen to 1,60,000 tons and further increased to 5,00,000 tons by
1869-70.24
Encouraged by the profitable employment opportunities in Lower Burma,
a steady stream of immigrants from upper Burma and India began pouring
into the delta region. Amongst the immigrants from India, who included the
labouring classes, traders, merchants and clerks, were the Nattukottai Chet-
tiars of South India.
The migration of Chettiar capital into Burma and the nature of their busi-
ness activities can be studied most conveniently by dividing it into two broad
phases, namely, the period from about 1826 to the 1870s and the period from
the 1880s to 1929. Of the three major waves of Chettiar immigration into
Burma, which took place in 1826, 1852 and 1870s respectively, the first two
fall within the first phase, and the last into the second.
The first wave arrived in Tennassarim around 1826, soon after its occupa-
tion by the British; their business was &dquo;informal moneylending among their
compatriots ... in small Burmese towns.’ ’26 Their operations were not pro-
perly organized and were on a scale too small to be of much significance.28
The typical Chettiar agency had not yet come into existence.
In response to the growth in trade and the opportunities arising out of the
Cheng Siok Hwa,

22 The Rice Industry of Burma, 1852-1940, Kualalumpur, University of
Singapore, 1968, p. 73.
23
Ibid.
Chester L. Cooper, "Moneylenders and the Economic Development of Lower Burma—
24
An Explanatory Historical Study of the Role of the Indian Chettiars" (The American Univer-
sity, Ph.D Thesis, 1959), University Microfilms Inc., Ann Arbcr, Michigan (consulted at
N.M.M.L. Mic 59/3440).
Chester L. Cooper, op. cit., p. 29.
25
Ibid. See also N.R. Chakravarthy, Indian Minority in Burma: Divide and Decline
26 of an
Immigrant Community, Oxford, for the Institute of Race Relations, 1971, p. 56.

336
colonization of lower Burma, there came the second and more organized wave
of Chettiar migration. These Chettiars organized the first Chettiar &dquo;agency&dquo;
or firm in either Rangoon or Moulmein between 1850 and 1852.27 More such
firms came to be established in quick succession in these two towns and until
the 1870s, the Chettiar firms were concentrated in these towns, where they
financed the trade between Burma and India. It is important to note that at
this time they did not finance agriculture directly; they merely provided loans
to the indigenous moneylenders who in turn provided credit to the Burmese
agriculturists.28 The magnitude of their business was rather small, owing prin-
cipally to two factors: the low demand for agricultural credit, and the tenurial
system that existed before 1876, whereby the peasant was a squatter and not
the proprietor of the land he cultivated,29 and hence could not provide the
of
type security which the Chettiars usually demanded as moneylenders. In’
view of these facts, the assessment that the &dquo;Chettiars played only a marginal
role in the early decades of Lower Burma’s economic expansion &dquo;)30 appears to
be quite reasonable.
It is equally important to note that generalization about Chettiar activities
that do not differentiate between the role of the Chettiars in the period before
and after the seventies and eighties of the nineteenth century are very mislead-
ing. Thus it is said that it was with Chettiar capital that &dquo;jungles were cleared,
swamps drained and the best part of the country brought under cultivations
Another equally sweeping, though perhaps more subtle contention, is that, but
for the capital provided by the Chettiars, Burma could not have developed
economically as rapidly as it did. While these views are correct as far as Chet-
tiar activities in the post 1870-80s are concerned, they provide a totally false
picture of their activities in the period prior to this date.
The first point to be noted is that in the early decades of lower Burma’s
economic development, as is typical in a colonial economy, it was the Euro-
peans who dominated the key sectors of the economy like banking, large scale
processing, foreign trade, transportation, etc. At the same time, internal
marketing was controlled by the several thousand jungle brokers who directly
purchased the paddy from the producers or the rice merchants and &dquo;non-
B.P.B.E.C.R., Vol, I, pp. 200-01. See also Allene Masters, "The Chettiars in Burma—
27
An Economic Survey of the Migrant Community," Population Review (A Journal of Asian
Demography), Vol. I, January 1957, p. 28; V.A. Seshadiri Sharma, Nagaratharu Varalaru
(A History of the Nagarathars) (Tamil), 1970, p. 93.
28 Adas, op. cit., p. 389; Chester L. Cooper, op. cit., p. 29.
M.
Cheng Siok Hwa, op. cit., pp. 137-38.
29
30
Memorandum presented to the Representative of the Government of India with the
31
Government of Burma on behalf of the Chettiar Overseas Association, Karaikudi, Ramnad
District dated 27 January 1945 p. 2. This document will hereafter be referred to as Memo-
randum of Chettiar Overseas Association, (Karaikudi).

337
Chettiar Indians or European agents who supervised purchasing operations at
the rice MillS.1132
The second point to be noted is that although the economy of lower Burma
experienced an upsurge-the area under paddy cultivation increased from
6,00,000 in 1852-53~3 to 17,12,000 acres in 1870;&dquo; and the rice exports in-
creased from 74,000 tons in 1845 to 1,60,C00 tons in 186135 and to 3,63,000
tons by 3869-703~-yet, until the opening of the Suez canal, most agriculturists
produced for the market only on a part-time basis.37 Thus it was reported
that till as late as 1870, rice was grown on small holdings by peasant culti-
vators for their family and surplus, if any, was sold only if they were assured
of a good price and if there was an adequate demand in India, China and
Upper Burma. Quite often, when there was &dquo;little demand for paddy, much
of the crop might ... be left unreaped.&dquo;38 One would therefore go along with
Michael Adas’ conclusion that &dquo;the early growth of export production was
based on inputs of cheap and abundant land and additional labour, normally
generated within the agriculturists own family and not upon large inputs of
capital.&dquo;39
It was the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 that revolutionized the delta’s
economy and paved the way for the third and largest wave of Chettiar immi-
grants into Burma. The opening of the Canal was a momentous event for
them as it served to integrate colonial Burma with the world capitalist eco-
nomy. By providing a direct channel for Burmese rice to the European market;
it gave a tremendous impulse to commercial rice production. Even in South-
East Asia with the development of the plantation economy, the demand for
rice increased because of the migration of rice-eating Indian labour to these
plantations. Thus, immediately after the opening of the canal there was a
striking increase in the export trade, in the area under paddy cultivation, in
the number of steam rice-mills and even in the population of lower Burma.
The rice exports, which averaged 3,63,000 tons for the three years ending
1869-70,~° leaped to 5,44,285 tons in 1871-72 and to 7,47,005 tons in 1872-73;
by 1873-74, it was 8,35,824 tons.4’ In 1880, the exports of rice from Burma
by sea were larger than in previous year and amounted to 9,28,750 tons.42 In
32 Adas, op. cit., pp. 387-88.
M.
33
N.B.T.I.A.C.,
34 p. 2.
35
N.B.T.I.A.C., p.
36 2.
37 Adas, op. cit., p. 389.
M.
J.S. Furnivall, op. cit., p. 85.
38
M.
39 Adas, op. cit., p. 389.
N.B.T.I.A.C.,
40 p. 2.
41 Government of India, Department of Commerce and Industry, Separate Revenue,
See
Statistics, etc., April 1882, Prog. No. 597.
Ibid., Prog. N. 592.
42

338
1869-70, the area under paddy cultivation was only 1,72,000 acres; during
the following year 21,785 acres of additional land was brought under paddy
cultivation and in 1872-73, another 1,02,200 acres of land was brought under
paddy cultivation. By 1880, the area of land under rice cultivation was
3,089,213 acres.&dquo;
Thereafter, for upward of thirty years, the average rate of increase exceeded
1,50,000 acres a year. Likewise, there was a tremendous increase in the num-
ber of steam rice-mills, from 3 in 1867 to 26 in 1872.4~
Simultaneous with this growth and expansion was the steady increase in
the price of paddy, which had been more or less stationary around Rs 45 to
Rs 50 per hundred baskets (100 baskets=46 pounds) in the decade prior to
the opening of the canal, shot up to Rs 70 per hundred baskets in 1870 and
thereafter increased steadily and was in 1880 quoted around Rs 85-Rs 90
per hundred baskets in Rangooii.’5
Meanwhile the colonial authorities, with a view to fully opening up lower
Burma for colonial exploitation, enacted in 1876 the &dquo;Lower Burma Land
and Revenue Act.&dquo; By providing that any person could acquire freehold of
agricultural land after occupation and payment of land revenue for 12 years,
this Act was, to some extent, responsible for attracting immigrants into lower
-
Burma as it provided the necessary incentive for people to come in and

occupy all the available land and bring it under rice cultivation.&dquo;
It was the emergence of these opportunities, coupled with the governments
free land policy, that accounted for the large influx of immigrants from upper
Burma and India and, to a lesser extent, from China, into the booming deltaic
region of lower Burma. It was estimated that between 1850 and 1900 the
population of Lower Burma increased approximate’y from one million to over
four million.47 This increase in population intensified the competition for
paddy lands and, along with the rise in the wholesale price of paddy, contri-
buted to increase the value of land.
’fhe immigrant, and even the existing cultivator, was faced with the need
for credit with which to purchase or enlarge his landholdings. Apart from this,
Ibid.
43
44 p. 2.
N.B.T.I.A.C.,
Cheng Siok Hwa, op. cit., p. 73. By 1880 the price of paddy had, in fact, slumped from
45
what it was between 1877-79, v:z., Rs 90, Rs 100 and Rs 110 per hundred baskets. See
Government of India, Deptt. of Commerce and Industry, Separate Revenue, Statistics and
Commerce, April 1882, Prog. No. 586/97.
Speech of Thak in Nu, Prime Minister, in support of the land Nationalization Bill, at
46
the Sixth session of the Parliament of the Union of Burma, 11 October 1948.I consulted
theoffprint of the above speech at the residence of the late S.R.M. Soloyappa Chettiar
(Hony. Secretary, Burma Nattukottai Chettiar Association) in Palathur. See para 2, p. 12,
Prog. of the Parliament of Burma, 1948. We shall hereafter refer to the above document as
Speech of Thakin Nu (1948).
47

339
finance was needed for clearing shrubs from plots of virgin land and prepar-
ing it for cultivation, for the purchase of tools and cattle, for hiring labour
and more immediately, in the case of the immigrant, for maintaining himself
and his family until the harvest.&dquo;
These factors contributed to stimulate the demand for credit in the agri-
culturalsector of lower Burma and, since this demand could not be wholly
met by the indigenous moneylenders, the Chettiars, seeing prospects of good
business and profit in financing agricultural production, came forward to take
advantage of these new opportunities.
It was under these circumstances that in the 1880s the Chettiar business
houses, which were already firmly established in Rangoon and Moulmein and
other important urban centres, began to expand their operations into the
villages of the deltaic region.49 Branches or sub-agencies, known as &dquo;Ulkades&dquo;
or &dquo;h.attukadais,&dquo; of the Chettiar firms, were established in a number of
small towns and villages, some of which were along the railway lines and
riverways.10
The annexation of upper Burma by the British in 1886 offered opportuni-
ties for the Chettiars to extend their operations northwards and in 1890 they
established their business in 1’vlandalay, in 1891 in Myingnan, in 1892 in
Meitkila, in 1894 in Shwebo and other centres of trade in upper Burma.&dquo;
Alongside this movement of Chettiar capital from centres of trade to the
remote villages and towns in the interior of lower and upper Burma, there
was also a fresh wave of Chettiar migration from Calcutta and the Madras
Presidency. Around 1850 there were as many as 120 Chettiar firms in Cal-
cutta engaged in the export-import trade and in moneylending. After 1869,
with the emergence of profitable opportunities for the employment of capital
in the booming deltaic region of lower Burma, quite a large number of thcse
Calcutta-based firms are reported to have wound up their business in Calcutta
and migrated to Burma. It is said that in Burma these firms not only conduc-
ted moneylending but also exported the cheaper and better Burmese rice to
India and Ceylon and established rice mill.a in Arakkan.52 The principal
business of the firms that remained in Calcutta, numbering around 60 in
1910, was the collection of deposits and loans for use in Burma as also else-
where and the export of rice to Ceylon.53
48 L. Cooper, op. cit., p. 21.

Chester
Chester L. Cooper, op. cit., p. 30; see also M. Adas, op. cit., p. 391.
49
P.J. Thomas, "Nattukottai Chettiars—Their Banking System," Raja Sir Annamalai
50
Chettiar Commemoration Volume, 1941, p. 847; see also, A Savirinatha Pillai, M.P.B.E.C.R.,
Vol. III, p. 1176; M. Adas, op. cit., p. 391.
51 Vol. I, p. 201.
B.P.B.E.C.R.,
Somalay "Calcutta" in Sri Kasi Nattukottai Nagarachathiram Nutranda Vizha Malar
52
(hereinafter S.K.N.N.V.M.), Tamil, 1963, p. 41.
B.P.B.E.C.R., Vol. I, p. 190.
53

340
It should be borne in mind that this movement of Chettiar capital from
Calcutta and the Madras Presidency to Burma, as well as within Burma, was
a process that continued well into the twenties of the twentieth century, with the
number of Chettiar firms and sub-agencies operating in Burma multiplying
decade by decade.
There is a paucity of data on Chettiar operations in Burma for the period
from the end of the 1880s to the 1920s. However, an attempt will be made,
with the help of inferential and other piecemeal data, to survey their activities
till the 1920s. Though this lack of data prevents us from ascertaining the
growth and extent of Chettiar operations, the inferential evidence of the
general expansion and growth of delta’s economy suggests that their business
flourished. 54
Thus, from the seventies of the nineteenth century, with the rising demand
for Burmese rice in the European and Asian markets, there was a steady
increase in the area under paddy cultivation, as the following table shows:
ACREAGE UNDER PADDY CULTIVATION IN LOWER BURMA,

FOR SELECTED CROPS, 1852-1933
SOURCE: Chester L. Cooper, Moneylender and the Economic Development of Lower Burma,
p. 44.
Along with this increase in the acreage under paddy cultivation there was
concomitant increase in rice production, leading eventually to a growth in the
export trade: ,
In
54 1907, there was, however, a huge crash caused by a world-wide stringency in money
supply because of which several Chettiar firms collapsed. The number of such firms is,
however, not available. According to the Burma Banking Enquiry Committee Report, the
number of Chettiar firms operating in 1910 was 350, with a working capital of Rs 15 crores.
In view of the fact that there was a crash just 3 years earlier it would appear that both the
number of firms and the capital employed in the period before 1907 was greater than the 1910
figures would indicate. See B.P.B.E.C.R. Vol. I, p. 61; see also N.B.T.I.A.C., p. 15.

341
DECENNIAL EXPORT OF RICE AND PADDY FROM BURMA:

_______
1865-66-I 939-40
SOURCE: Cheng Siok Hwa, Rice Industry of Burma, /852-]949, p. 201.

This increase in the export of rice led to an increase in the price of paddy
which, except for marginal fluctuations, continued in its upward trend until
the depression:
WHOLESALE PRICE OF PADDY IN THE RANGOON MARKETS
1~65-1931, SELECTED YEARS
SOURCE: Ch~ng Siok Hwa, Rice Tlldustry Burma, 1852-1949, p. 73.
The available evidence tends to suggest that the value of land was also
increasing during this period. Owing tu the lack of data it is not
possible to construct a time series for land values, but citing some specfic
cases may serve to illustrate what may have happened generally. The per
acre price of paddy land in a certain area of Pegu District increased from
Rs 18 per acre in 1900 to Rs 46.83 in 1911-13, an increase of nearly 170 per
cent. In another area of the same district, the value of land rose from a range
of Rs 17.34-Rs 19.85 to range of Rs 34-Rs 61 per acre in 1913-14.55 The
op. cit.,
Chester L. Cooper,
55 p. 48.

342
Third Revision Settlement Report of the Thaton District (1913-15) also

indicated an increase in land value since the last settlement, as the Reportt
put it, &dquo;as was to be expected, the price of land has risen considerably since
the last settlement. The increase for paddy land is from Rs 22/- per acre to
Rs 67/- .... The average value of all classes and kinds of land is Rs 72/- per
acre. &dquo;56
The Second Revision Settlement Report of the Maubin district of 1925-28
also recorded an enormous increase in the value of paddy land. As the Report
put it, &dquo;over the district as a whole, the statistics indicate that the value of
paddy land has increased by 216 per cent, while in the embankment protected
tracts the rise in value has been no less than 300 per cent, and in some cases
600 per cent.&dquo;5’
The above account is intended merely to show the allround expansion and
growth of the Delta’s economy from 1870 onwards. Conditions such as these
provided an adequate basis for moneylenders to operate successfully, and it
is quite certain that the Chettiars, with ample funds at their disposal and a
wide network of firms, took full advantage of the situation.
The Chettiar sub-agencies that has mushroomed over several areas of the
Irrawady region would have catered to the ever increasing demand for credit,
providing long-term loans against the security of the newly developed fertile
land and crop loans during the flourishing cultivation season from March to
September against the security of the standing crop.58 The steadily increasing
paddy prices and land values, coupled with the relatively high interest rates
ranging from 18 per cent&dquo; to 36 per cent and sometimes even 45 per cent per
annum,60 must have enabled them not only to secure repayment of their loans
in either cash or kind but also to reap handsome profits. When the debtors
failed to repay their loans the colonial legal systems came to their aid and
they took possession of the land, the value of which was steadily going up.
Information on Chettiar activites for the third decade of the twentieth
century is relatively less scarce. We have the Burma Banking Enquiry Com-
mittee Report providing fairly useful data on the nature and volume of their
business. The data provided in the report is based partly on the findings of a
special survey carried out by the Burma Nattukottai Chettiar Association in
1928-29, partly on the inside information provided by a Chettiar member of
the Commission and also partly on the independent enquiries made by the
Commission itself. Since there is;’a paucity of other sources of information on
Chettiar activities during this period, one is forced to rely on the Banking
N.B.T.I.A.C.,
56 p. 17.
57
Ibid.
A. Savarinatha Pillai, M.P.B.E.C.R., Vol. 1, p. 1177.
58
Evidence of U Po Tin, Asst. Registrar, Cooperative Societies. Pegu East Division, Royal
59
Commission on Agriculture in India, Vol. XII, Evidence taken in Burma 1928, p. 104,
60

343
Enquiry Committee Report. Moreover, given the fact that the twenties repre-
sented the peak period in their activities, it should be reasonable to assume
that the data provided by the report is a fair index of their activities in the
twenties.
There were, in 1929, 1650 Chettiar firms operating all over Burma-of these,
360 firms, i.e., one-fifth of the total number of firms, were located in Rangoon.
The heaviest concentration of the firms was in lower Burma; it was estimated
that there were 1443 firms in the whole of lower Burma, inclusive of the firms
in Rangoon. The share of upper Burma was only 195, excluding the Federat-
ed Shan States, where 12 firms were reported to have been functioning. In
the course of their moneylending operations the Chettiar firms penetrated
into as many as 217 villages and towns of Burma. Of these, 155 were in lower
Burma, 55 in Upper Burma and 7 in the Shan States.61 The concentration of
Chettiar firms in lower Burma is indicative of their involvement in the financ-
ing of rice cultivation. Almost all the IOS3 Chettiar firms in lower Burma
(excluding the 360 Rangoon firms) were located in the 13 principal rice grow-
ing districts of the region, as the following table shows:
DISTRIBUTION OF CHETTIAR FIRMS IN THE 13 MAIN
RICE-GROWING DISTRICTS
SOURCE: N.R. Chikrivir4thy, Indian Minority in Bitrii.,a -Dii,i(te ancl Doclino ofai lititiii-
grant Cornmunity, London, 19? I , p. 62.
The Burma Banking Enquiry Committee has also provided a fairly usefui
See B.P.B.E.C.R., Vol. I, p. 203.
61

344
estimate of the total working capital of the Chettiar firms in Burma in 1929,
which it estimated to be around 75 or 80 crores of rupees. Of this amount
only Rs 4 crores were invested in upper Burma; of the remaining 76 crores
invested in lower Burma, the share of Rangoon itself was 33 crores, while the
rest of the Lower Burma accounted for 43 crores.62 Unfortunately, the Com-
mittee did not indicate in sufficient detail the method by which it calculated
the working capital of the Chettiars. All that we are given to understand is
that to start with the Committee prepared a list of cities, towns and villages
in which Chettiar moneylending firms operated, followed by an estimation of
their capital invested in each one of the centres of activity.
The Committee further estimated that out of the total Chettiar working
capital of Rs 75 crores, over two-thirds, i.e., more than 53.5 crores, was the
capital of the proprietors of the firms, 11.5 crores were deposits from Chet-
tiars, and 10 crores was borrowed from the European Banks and also includ-
ed the deposits by non-Chettiars such as Marwaris, Chinese and Burmese. Of
this 10 crores, 3 crores was from the European banks in Burma, 1.3 crores
from the Banks in Madras such as the Imperial Bank of India, Chartered
Bank, the National City Bank, etc., and 5.7 crores were the deposits from the
non-Chettiars indicated above.63
The Banking Committee also examined the sectoral distribution of the
working capital and estimated that of the Rs 4 crores of working capital in
upper Burma, Rs 3 crores were invested in financing trade while only 1 crore
were invested in agriculture. In the case of lower Burma it was just the reverse;
while Rs 45-50 crores were invested in agriculture, only about 21-26 crores
were invested in trade.64 That in comparison to lower Burma Chettiar invest-
ments in upper Burma were extremely small is not very surprising; as a largely
dry zone, upper Burma experienced frequent crop failures and fluctuations in
harvests. This uncertainty in farming and the consequent lack of adequate
security made moneylending in the agricultural sector relatively less attractive
and thus discouraged many Chettiars from venturing into this area. On the
contrary, in lower Burma, not only was the land extremely fertile, the rainfall
dependable and the harvests regular, but the prices of paddy and land were
high. Lower Burma thus provided a more adequate basis for moneylending.
The agricultural loans provided by the Chettiars were principally the crop-
loans and the long-term loans. According to the Burma Banking Enquiry
Committee Report, the total amount of crop loans required annually for the
whole of Burma was around Rs 20 crores and of this amount Rs 16 crores
were utilized in lower Burma while 4 crores were required in upper Burma.61
62 Vol. I, p. 210.
B.P.B.E.C.R.,
B.P.B.E.C.R., Vol. I pp. 211, 213, 218-19.
63
64 Vol. I, p. 211.
B.P.B.E.C.R.,
Ibid., p. 74.
65

345
The Committee further stated that the Chettiars either directly or indirectly
provided about 10~12 crores of the crop-loans in lower Burma (two-thirds of
the total amount) and about Rs 5 million, or one-sixth of all crop-loans, in
upper Burma.66 These crop-loans were generally taken in instalments. The
Burma Banking Enquiry Committee provided the following rough breakdown
in terms of the time when the loan was sought. Of the total crop-loan require-
ment of Rs 20 crores, 6 crores were taken between April and June, to meet
the initial expenses of cultivation such as the purchase of seeds, implements
and cattle. Money was also required for meeting household expenditure and
for paying advances to the ploughmen. The next instalment was taken between
July and September and was roughly of the order of Rs 10 crores. This sum
was often used to meet the wages of transplanters, besides food and other
household expenditure. The last instalment was taken sometime in November,
just before the harvest, and amounted to about Rs 4 crores.67 The duration
of a crop loan was generally seven to eight months, and these loans were nor-
mally expected to be repaid in full immediately after the harvest.
The Banking Enquiry Committee estimated that out of their total invest-
ment of 45-50 crores in the agricultural sector in lower Burma, short-term
loans accounted for 10-12 crores.68 The balance was invested in the form of
intermediate-term and long-term loans. The security usually demanded by the
Chettiars was land, gold, or jewellery and houses; they were said to have
sometimes lent against the security of paddy and other produce and standing
crops.69
By 1929, the Chettiars had become the mainstay of agricultural credit in
lower Burma and their operations through a network of firms was exception-
ally widespread. They not only did the largest part of direct moneylending to
the agriculturists, but also supplied credit to other moneylenders. Thus it was
said that in Prome District the &dquo;Chettiars lend one-third of all the crop-loans
directly and finance the Burman lenders to such an extent that Chettiars
money forms two-thirds of all the loans.&dquo;’° The Banking Committee said that
in certain areas of Hanthawadi &dquo;they are the only moneylenders,&dquo;’1 in Thar-
rawady 99 per cent of the loans were ascribed to the Chettiars.72 The extent
of Chettiar operations as compared to the operations of other moneylenders
is brought out by the following figures: in 1927-28, for income-tax purposes,
1587 Chettiars were assessed on an estimated total assessable income of over
66 Vol. I, p. 76.
B.P.B.E.C.R.,
Ibid., p. 68.
67
Ibid., p. 211.
68
Ibid.,
69 pp. 82-83.
70 Vol. I, p. 68.
B.P.B.E.C.R.,
Ibid., p. 67.
71
Ibid.
72

346
Rs 3 crores, while 1315 other moneylenders were assessed on an estimated

total assessable income of Rs 65,00,000.73
However, all the Chettiars were not equally wealthy and this point is not
brought out in most works on the Chettiars and as there is some misapprehen-
sion on this point, it needs to be very clearly stated that the Chettiars, in spite
of belonging to a very closely-knit social grouping, did not allow social con-
siderations to take precedence over economic ones.
We get a fair idea of this differentiation from a very important document
of the Burma Nattukottai Chettiar Association showing details of Chettiar
landholding in Burma some time in the post-1945 period. Though the data
do not strictly pertain to our period, they do provide a fair indication of the
situation. The extract of the document, which provides a breakdown of Chet-
tiar landholders, is reproduced below:
Detailed information about approximately another three lakh acres of land with Chettiars
was not available.
(These data along with certain other information were provided by the Secre-
tary, Burma Nattukottai Chettiar Association, to Shri Kanam Pillai, Charge-
d’affaires, Embassy of India, Rangoon, covering letter dated 22 October 1953,
Ref. No. 137/53/54; it has been cross-checked by referring to a list of land-
holding of member firms of the Burma Nattukottai Chettiar Association).
The above data provide a fair indication of the stratification within the
Chettiar community. 574 firms with a holding of 2,17,164-111 acres, and an
average approximate holding of 378 acres per firm, can be classified as the
really small firms, while firms having a holding ranging between 1,000 and 5,000
acres can be said to compose the middle strata of the community. Under this
Cheng Siok Hwa,

73 op. cit., p. 184.

347
category we have 429 firms with a total holding of 9,82,905-16 acres. The
remaining firms with a holding of 5000 acres each can be considered as the
51
large firms. Twelve of these possessed more than 10,000 acres and one posses-
sed 86,000 acres. 74
As disparities of wealth and economic differentiation within the community
became a marked feature, caste sodality increasingly receded into the back-
ground. Correspondingly, many of the institutions and practices that had en-
sured spatial unity among the Chettiars in the overseas areas during the second
half of the nineteenth century became inept and were in course of time either
modified or discarded.75 Alongside there was also a tremendous growth of
their business as reflected in the proliferation of Chettiar firms operating in
Burma. Under these circumstances, an urgent need was felt for an organization
that could exercise some control over the multifarious activities of the grow-
ing number of Chettiar firms and also ensure spatial cohesiveness and unity so
as to contain the stresses and strains within the community. Together with
this there was further, the need for consolidating and strengthening their over-
all economic position in Burma. It was to meet these needs that the Burma
Nattukottai Chettiar Association was formed. The Association was a member
of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, and had
a membership of 1498 firms by 1929.76 It was specifically charged with the
responsibility of protecting the vast commercial and economic interests of the ’
community.
In the course of its activities the Association strove to infuse a sense of
unity among the various competing Chettiars firms, and in this direction or-
ganized meetings and conferences of the Chettiars at frequent intervals. The
first All-Burma Nattukottai Chettiars Conference was held in Rangoon in
November-December 1924.
In his Presidential Address T.S. Nagappa Chettiar, the proprietor of the
TSN Firm, urged his kinsmen to strengthen the position of the Association.
He pointed out that there was currently less unity and more competition
among the Chettiars. He also deplored the practice of taking intra-Chettiar
See letter from Secty., B.N.C.A., to Kanam Pillai, 22 October 1953.

74
75 institutions and practices were evolved in response to the specific needs of their
These
business activities in the overseas area and had facilitated the creation of an extensive re-
source network within the community. (See P.J. Thomas, op. cit., pp. 845-46; A.S. Pillai,
M.P.B.E.C.R., p. 1179; Cf. M.Phil Thesis, pp. 86-91.) However for reasons indicated above,
from about the turn of the century they gradually fell into disuse. Thus the institution of
caste panchayat, which adjudicated on economic and non-economic disputes among the
members of the community became more or less defunct when the Chettiars increasingly
took recourse to the colonial courts to have their disputes settled. Similarly the Assembly of
Elders (held at regular intervals in Chettiar temples or "Nagara Viduthis")—where general
financial matters were discussed and information exchanged—became redundant and was
discontinued.
B.P.B.E.C.R.,
76 Vol. I, pp. 195-96.

348
disputes to the courts rather than settling them at the Chettiar Panchayats.
He appealed to them to change with the changing times and requested them
to venture into fields other than moneylending, such as trade and organized
modern banking.&dquo;
Among the major resolutions passedat this conference were:
The establishment of a modern joint stock Chettiar Bank, the directors
(a)
and shareholders of which were to be Chettiars.
(b) In order to effectively represent the interests of the community in
Burma, it was requested that the Chettiars come forward and contest elections
for the legislative assemblies, municipalities and town corporations.
(c) It was requested that the Chettiar firms should not charge excessive
interest rates on loans to their own kinsmen, and that Chettiars should not
borrow from non-Chettiar sources.
(d) It was requested that the government inform the Chettiars in cases
where landholders had failed to pay land revenue of a particular land before
that land was put up for auction.
(e) It was urged that the commercial banks in Burma lower their interest
rates on loans to the Chettiars since the same was much higher than the rates
prevailing at banks in Calcutta and Madras.
( f ) It was resolved that the tenure of the Agent of the Chettiar firms in
Burma be reduced from three to two years.
(g) Consideration on the resolution as to whether disputes amongst the
Chettiars be settled within the community, viz., through the medium of the
Chettiar Panchayats, or outside the community, was postponed to the next
conference.78
Though the association was theoretically intended to provide spatial unity
to the large number of Chettiars in Burma, it, in fact, be dominated came to
by section of the upper strata of the community who sought to use it as a

a
pressure group for lobbying for concessions from the state authorities.’9
Burma Nattukottai Chettiarkalin Mudalavadu Mahanadu: Thiruvalar T. S. Nagappa

77
Chettiarkalin Mukuvarai Pirasangam
; Tenkanchi, 1924, pp. 1-11.
Burma Nattukottai Chettiarkalin Mudalavadu Mahanadil Niraiveriya Theermanangal,
78
Rangoon, 1925, pp. 1-8.
This is based essentially
79 on the information provided by a number of Chettiars—who
had at one time or theother served as agents of Chettiars firms in Burma—whom I happened
to interview in the course of my field trip to Ramnad district during May-July 1973. Un-
fortunately owing to paucity of data and source material one is not in a position at the
moment to cite documentary evidence in support of the above information.
Interestingly this dual dimension of Caste Association has also been the observation of
the finding of David Arnold et al. See their article, "Caste Associations in South India,"
The Indian Economic and Social History Review, Vol. XII, July-September 1976, No. 3,
pp. 371-73.
Apart from the Burma Nattukottai Chettiars’ Association, the Burma Indian Chamber of
Commerce was also utilized as an organization for representing their interests. As many as

349
Having surveyed the and development of Chettiar activities uptil

growth
1928-29, we now
pass discussion
on of their business organization and
to a
financial management. The Chettiar firms in Burma, as elsewhere, were either
partnership firms or sole proprietor concerns, in either case, the head office or
the proprietor of these firms was in Chettinad, while the branch firm was
managed by an agent. The principal agency in Burma was, in most cases,
located in Rangoon or one of the other major trading centres.
A large portion of the capital of the Chettiar firm was provided by the pro-
prietor or the partners (as the case may be); money was also borrowed from
relations and members of the Chettiar Caste. The larger Chettiar firms had
direct dealings with the European Banks from whom they got loans and over-
drafts. Apart from this, they also accepted deposits from Marwaris, Chinese
and Burmese. The smaller Chettiar firms, which did not have access to the
European Banks, borrowed from the bigger Chettiar firms and from big Mar-
wari firms like Rai Bahadur Bansi Lal Abirchand, Nanigram Jamuna Das and
others.10
A noteworthyfeature of Chettiar moneylending operations in Burma, as
elsewhere, that capital was never allowed to remain idle; it kept shuttling
was
between the sub-agencies in the small villages and towns and the principal
firms, which were located in one of the larger trading centres and vice versa,
depending on the demand for credit at a particular time in a particular area.
Thus between April and November, the paddy cultivation season, capital was
required, as has been indicated already, for buying various inputs and to meet
household expenditure. At the end of the cultivating season the paddy brokers
came to the villages and purchased the produce, the money the cultivator
received for the produce was given to the Chettiars as repayment of the loans
they had earlier provided. The Chettiars now used this money to finance the
threshing and transportation of paddy to the trading centres. When the
demand for credit was small during the slack season, the sub-agencies sent
part of their capital to the principal firms at the trading centres where it was
utilized in such activities, other than financing agriculture, that the Chettiars
were engaged in.81
There is ample evidence that besides moneylending some of the Chettiars
13 leading Chettiars firms were members of the organization in 1925-26. They included the
A.K.A.C.T.V., A.K.R.M.M.C.T. A.K.R.M.M.K., P.K.N., R.M.P., S.A.A., S.A.R.M.,
S.K.R.S.K.K., S.M.A.R,A., S.R.M.M.A., S.R.M.M.C.T.M.S.I.R., S.R.M.M.R.M. and
T.S.N. Chettiar firms. See The Burma Indian Chamber of Commerce Reports of the Committee
and Correspondence for 1925-26, 1926-27, Rangoon, 1929, p. v.
80 Notes on the question of Compensation payable to Indians for Nationalisation
Confidential
of Paddy Lands (hereinafter Confidential Note). This is a document prepared by the
Burma Nattukottai Chettiar Association; see sub-heading III, Chettiars Method of business
(N.D.) p. 3.
B.P.B.E.C.R., Vol. I,
81 pp. 92-93.

350
also carried on trade in rice and timber. Among these were the Chettiars who
had come from Calcutta to Burma, and they are reported to have established
rice mills in the Arrakken region and also to have carried on trade in rice.82
Apart from these ex-Calcutta firms, several other Chettiar firms were also
engaged in the rice trade. So important a force were they in this line of busi-
ness that they were considered not merely as middlemen but &dquo;as potential
rivals of the millers (European) as they brought rice for India and the
Straits.&dquo;&dquo; In so far as procurement of paddy (for export) was concerned, one
can say that they had an edge over the European millers, since the rice was
easily acquired in the normal of their

moneylending operations.
course
Elaborating on this point, J.S. Furnival noted that the Chettiars &dquo;had done
much to destroy the independence of large numbers of Burmese cultivators,
to whom they advanced on ruinous terms when the harvest time comes
around, it usually turns out that to satisfy the moneylenders claim, the deb-
tors’ whole crop of paddy has to be made over to him [the Chettiar], and the
Chettiar instead of selling it ... to the European miller shipped it to Madras.&dquo;84
That the Chettiars were also securing loans in kind is confirmed by A. Saviri-
natha Pillai in his evidence to the Madras Banking Enquiry Commission of
1929. According to the evidence gathered by him, the Chettiars obtained 50
per cent of the crop of the agriculturist in return for the loan advanced. He
further stated that by acquiring paddy in this way and selling it, they could,
given the upward trend in the prices of paddy, easily secure repayment of
their loan and the interest. 85 The weekly journal of the Chettiars, The Oolian,
by regularly publishing quotations of paddy prices in the various markets
enabled them to keep a constant watch on the prices of paddy.
The Chettiars also either established or acquired a number of rice mills.
According to the evidence of the Indian Industrial Commission of 1916-17,
16 rice mills out of a total of 318 were under Chettiar ownership.86 Quite a
few of these had originally been set up by the Burmese with the help of
Chettiar capital but gradually, on account of bad management and the resul-
tant losses, these mills got into the hands of the Chettiars. 17 Among the
important rice mills of the Chettiars was the M.M.P.L. Palaniappa Rice Mill
at Akyab; with its Registered Head Office at Nemuthapatty in Ramnad district,
it had branches spread over Burma, India and Ceylon. In Burma, besides
Akyab, it had branches in Dedaye and Rangoon.888
Somalay, S.K.N.N.N.V.M.,
82 p. 14; see also, Vysiamitran, 2-2-1920, p. 4.
J.S. Furnival, op. cit., p. 96.
83
Ibid., pp
84 96-97.
A. Savarinatha Pillai, M.P.B.E.C.R., p. 1177.
85
See Report of the Indian Industrial Commission Minutes of Evidence 1916-17, Vol. V
86
Punjab, Assam, Burma and General (hereinafter (I.LC.), Cal., 1919, p. 543.
Evidence of Mr English, Commissioner, Maymyo, I.I.C., 1916-17, Vol. V, p. 638.
87
Thacker’s India Directory, 1915, Commercial Industries Section, Rice Mills, p. 71.
88

351
Apart from rice, the Chettiar firms were also exporting considerable quan-
tities of timber to India. From the 7 August 1911 issue of The Vysiamitran
we gather that 5,000 tons of timber were shipped from Burma to the small
port of Tondi in Ramnad district.89

An important figure in the timber business of Madras was P.A. Chockalin-
gam Chetty. He commenced his business around the year 1902, though it was
said that his ancestors for three generations had been dealing in timber. This
firm imported huge quantities of timber from Burma and it was said that
every week a consignment of logs was either shipped or floated ashore from
Burma. Among his customers were the Government of Madras and private
contractors in Madras, and the dominions of Hyderabad and Mysore.90
An examination of the ledger of the A.M. Chettiar firm of Moulmein for
the year 1919 revealed that along with moneylending they were also exporting
huge quantities of timber to South India.
The Chettiars also possessed quite a few saw and timber mills in Burma.
As in the case of the rice-mills, some of these were originally set up by the
Burmese with the help of Chettiar capital, but owing to mismanagement and
losses, passed into the hands of the Chettiars.91 There were as many as 18
saw-mills under Chettiar ownership, out of a total of 189 mills in 1916-17.92
The above account shows that the Chettiars did not hesitate to employ
their capital in fields other than moneylending. This diversification and dis-
persal of their capital into different fields of economic activity would surely
have helped in averaging the risk, and in maximizing the profits.
However, it was the financing of agriculture that took up a major part of
Chettiar capital. Loans in Burma were classified into five main types on the
basis of the form of advance made and the mode of repayment. These were:
(1)~ Ngwedo-a loan given in cash with principal and interest repaid in cash.
(2) Sabado-was a loan given in kind with the principal and interest also paid
in kind. (3) Sabade-This was again a loan given in kind but while the princi-
pal was paid in kind, the interest was to be paid in cash. (4) Sabanyun was a
loan made in cash, while the principal was to be repaid in cash, the interest
was to be paid in kind. (5) Sabape was a loan made in cash at the beginning
or the middle of the agricultural season. The loan (both the principal and in-
terest) was to be repaid in kind at harvest time.93
Vysiamitran, 7 August 1911. From the Swadeshemitran (the nationalist Tamil daily
89
published from Madras) of 8 May 1896 we gather that N.A.R. Arunachellam Chettiar, a
businessman based at Moulmein, possessed a cargo ship with a load capacity of 810 tons.
Southern India—Its History, Commerce and Industrial Resources, compiled by S. Playne,
90
edited by A. Wright, London, 1914-15, pp. 646-49.
Evidence of Mr English, I.I.C., Vol. V, 1916-17, p. 638.
91
I.I.C., Minutes of Evidence,
92 Vol. V., p. 543.
93 Siok Hwa, op. cit., p.
Cheng 173.

352
Of all these loans the Chettiars mainly dealt with Ngwedo loans and to a
smaller extent with Sabape loans. Though the Chettiars deny that they resort-
ed to Sabape loans there is ample evidence that they did provide these
loans. 94
Loans were further classified, on the basis of the period of the loan, into
long-term, intermediate-term and short-term loans. Long-term loans were lent
for the purchase of land, expensive implements, repayment of large debts,
etc.9~ These loans were secured by mortgage or against the security of land,
houses, jewellery, etc. The duration of this loan was, in the case of Chettiar
firms, usually three years, though sometimes it was allowed to run on if the
security was adequate and the interest was paid regularly after every harvest.9,
Intermediate-term loans were generally provided for house-building, the
purchase of cattle, carts, etc. These loans were also lent against some security
and were to be repaid within two or five years.97
Short-term loans, also known as crop-loans, were given for cultivation ex-
penses and the living expenses of cultivator and his family. These loans were
to be repaid in full after the harvest;98 short-term loans were issued against the
security of promissory notes.
The rates of interest on all these loans was determined by and dependent
upon the size of the loan, its duration, the time of the year it was sought, the
kind of security offered and the prevailing rate of interest in the unorganized
money market. On the whole, small loans were charged a higher rate of in-
terest than the large loans.99 The interest rate generally varied between 18
per cent and 36 per cent per annum, but were sometimes as high as 45 per
cent.~oo
Since the rates of interest were fairly high, it often happened, especially if
paddy prices registered a fall or if there was a bad harvest, that the debtor
defaulted in repayment of the loan. The failure of repayment inevitably in-
volved the loss of the mortgaged property. Since land constituted a major part
of the security or mortgage offered by the debtor, there was a steady flow of
land from cultivator to creditor. This persistent trend of loss of lands by
Burmese peasant to non-agriculturists, particularly the Chettiar moneylenders,
noticed first around the 1880s, was a continuous process which assumed alarm-
See
94 note 84 and 85 supra.
B.P.B.E.C.R., Vol. I,
95 pp. 75-76. See also Allene Masters, op. cit., p. 24.
Allene Masters,
96 cit., p. 24.
op.
Cheng Siok Hwa, op. cit., 175.
97
B.P.B.E.C.R., Vol. I, pp. 75-76. See also Allene Masters, op. cit., p. 24.
98
Cheng Siok Hwa, op. cit., p. 174. See also Allene Masters, op. cit., p. 24.
99
See Royal Commission on Agriculture in India Vol. XII. Evidence taken in Burma
100
(1928), p. 75, p. 104; see also speech of Thakin Nu (1948), p. 17; Chester L. Cooper, op. cit.,
p. 37.

353
ing proportions during the depression of 1930.’0~

Given the nature of the tenurial system the British had created, this trend
was in a sense inevitable. Thus, as already stated, under the lower Burma
Land and Revenue Act of 1876 the squatter over a piece of land obtained a
permanent heritable and transferable right of use and occupation in land after
the payment of land revenue continuously for a period of 12 years. The Act
also provided that a cultivator could obtain an occupancy right by paying a
nominal land revenue for a single year so as to enable the cultivator to use
the land as security for loans to cover the purchase of such things as food,
cattle and seeds and cultivation expenses. The moneylenders, it was said,
made good use of this provision by moving in to take the occupancy right
before full heritable permanent ownership could be acquired.10~’ It is ironical
that the colonial authorities who set out to create some form of peasant pro-
prietorship in Burma, by making the title of land heritable and transferable
under the 1876 Act, in fact ended up by preparing the ground for the extinc-
tion of peasant proprietorship. It should be noted that this was also precisely
the period when land values and prices of paddy had started increasing and
hence land acquired a sale or exchange value and therefore began to be used
by the moneylender as a security for loans.1°~ Consequently, from this time
onwards, viz., in the eighties and nineties of the nineteenth century, there
was a steady transfer of land from the cultivators and agriculturists to non-
agriculturists moneylenders and though several attempts were made by the

authorities to check the process of land alienation, because of the strong
opposition of the Chettiars, the Burmese landlords and the European mer-
chants, nothing was done until as late as 1939.10,1
It was estimated that by 1926 non-agriculturists held 3.5 million acres of
land out of a total of some 18 million acres of cultivable land.l°5 By 1929-30,
viz., before the onset of the depression, the Chettiars owned as much as
5,70,000 acres of fertile land in the thirteen main districts of lower Burma.
This was 6 per cent of the total occupied land,106 no mean figure by any
standard.
It needs to be pointed out that the process by which Chettiar moneylenders
became landlords was not pure chance or accident, as is quite often made out
in works on Burma, but the result of the logic inherent in their credit system.
Since the bulk of Chettiar operations was in the Irrawady region, it may be
reasonably assumed that they loaned against the best land and when the
J.R. Andrus, "The Agrarian Problem in Burma," Pacific Affairs, Vol. XIX, No. 23,
101
September 1946, p. 262.
J.F. Cady, op. cit., p. 158.
102
N.B.T.I.A.C., p. 1.
103
104 of Thakin Nu (1948),
Speech para 3, pp. 13-14.
Ibid., p. 15.
105
N.B.T.I.A.C., p.
106 7.

354
repayment of the loan was defaulted, the Chettiars took possession of the
land.
The Confidential Note on the Question of Compensation payable to Indian
for the Nationalization of Paddy Lands,l°’ drafted by the Burma Nattukottai
Chettiar Association, has listed the following methods whereby Chettiars gene-
rally came to possess land:
(1) Voluntary Sale in Settlement of Debt: When a debt accumulated and

the debtor was unable to pay, he sometimes settled with his creditor by con-
veying a portion of his property in full settlement of the debt.
(2) Court Sale Under Money Decree:~ If the Chettiars were unable to rea-
lize their dues from the debtor, they filed a suit in a court and obtained a
money decree and attached the property. Thereafter, the court authorized
the property to be sold in a public auction and the creditor sought the per-
mission of the court to bid at the auction so as to set off the purchase
money against the dues. Since the creditor was usually the highest bidder he
secured the property.
(3) Court Sale Under Mortgage Decree: Under this method the Chettiar
filed a suit for the realization of the mortgaged property and obtained a
decree, and after the normal period of six months for redemption of the
property, the property was sold, as in the above case in public auction. The
remaining procedure was the same in the above case.108
It is stated that the Chettiars purchased the property only when they found
that their full dues were not being realized by the sale.109 One is a bit sceptical
of this argument in view of the fact that land values were on the whole rising
during the period 1880-1929. Moreover, since the Chettiars usually demanded
the best land as security for the loan, the sale value would ordinarily have
been far greater than the amount (the loan and the interest) due from the
debtor. Thus the fact that the Chettiars purchased land in a public auction in
the face of competition from other bidders would indicate that the ownership
of land was profitable. That this was in fact so was inadvertently admitted in
the &dquo;Confidential Note.&dquo; Looking back at the turn of events, the &dquo;Note&dquo;
stated rather critically that &dquo;they [the Chettiars] thought rather foolishly that
if they purchased the land they might sell it later on at a higher price.&dquo;lio
Several writers have striven to stress upon the assumption that basically the
Chettiars were not interested in acquiring land and that they were forced
This document was consulted by me at the residence of the late Solayappa Chettiar,
107
the former Secretary to the Burma Nattukottai Chettiar Association, in Palathur, Ramnad
district.
Confidential Note,
108 op. cit., Sub-heading "How Chettiars came by the Lands," pp. 4-5.
109 pp. 5-6.
Ibid.,
Ibid., p. 6.
110

355
into landownership by circumstances.&dquo;’ One writer has even suggested that

their business organization was not equipped for landownership since &dquo;owner-
ship necessitated constant surveillance of property and some responsibility
for the collection of rents and indirectly, production on land.&dquo;&dquo;;, As already
indicated, the trend among the Chettiars was to diversify their activities into
different fields, such as trade and ownership of mills, etc. Of significance in
this context is a certain memorandum of the Burma Nattukottai Chettiar
Association to the Chairman of the Central Board of Revenue. Listing the
losses incurred by the Chettiars during the Japanese occupation of Burma,
the memorandum incidentally throws light on the nature of the business of the
Chettiars in the pre-war period. According to the memorandum the Chettiars
were, apart from moneylending, also engaged in the collection of rent from
their lands. The rent so collected, largely in kind, was stored in granaries and
subsequently exported from Burma.113 In the face of this evidence it is a little
difBcult to accept the hypothesis that their business organization was not
equipped for landownership. Leasing out lands to the tenants and securing
the rent does not call for any elaborate organization. The question of owner-
ship of land by the Chettiars assumes its real significance when seen in
conjunction with their involvement in rice-milling and in the rice-trade.

In any case, considering that the Chettiars owned as much as 5,70,000 acres
of fertile land in 1929 and bought land themselves at public auctions when
the proceeds of the auction would have secured them their dues, the argu-
ments regarding their disinclination to be landowners do not appear plausi-
ble. 114
Another argument that has been advanced is that the Chettiars, in accor-
dance with their preference for liquid capital, would not have been inclined
Golay Anspech et. al., Underdevelopment and Economic Nationalism in S.E. Asia,
111
Cornell, 1969, p. 220; N.R. Chakravarthy, op. cit., p. 58; Memorandum of Chettiar
Overseas Association, Karaikudi (1945), pp. 1-2; Allene Masters, op. cit., pp. 23-29.
Allene Masters, op. cit., p. 29.
112
Memorandum of the Burma Natukottai Chettiar Association to the Chairman, Central
113
Board of Revenue (this document was made available to me for consultation by Akactal
Chidambaram Chettiar of Kottaiyur), p. 1, para 3.
In fact, the Burmese Newspaper Thuriya in its issue of 19 February. 1930 had stated
114
that "in the recent years Chettiars have aimed at obtaining possession of agricultural land
and for this purpose have seized it more rapidly when loans were in arrears, holding it and
working it through tenants." Making a specific reference to the Maubin district, the paper
stated that the Chettiars had taken over 30,000 acres of paddy lands in each of last three
years.
The majority of the members of the BurmaProvincial Banking Enquiry Committee (viz.,
five out of eight members) endorsed the view expressed by the newspaper and added that
this was due to "the increase of rents and the disappearance of difficulty in finding tenants.’’
However, the Chairman and another member of the Committee disagreed with the above
view (the Chettiar member of the Committee kept himself out of the debate). See
B.P.B.E.C.R., Vol. I, 1929-30, Rangoon, 1930, pp. 198-99.

356
to lock up their funds in landholdings. 115 However, this principle would apply
strictly to the smaller firms only, which operated with a small quantum of
capital. The large and medium firms, which commanded a larger pool of
capital, were quite prepared to invest their capital in fields other than money-
lending, if such an investment provided an adequate return.
The transfer of land to the Chettiars and the ownership of land by them
was profitable as long as the prices of paddy and land values were high; how-
ever, with the onset of the depression and the sharp fall in prices of paddy
and land, the ownership of land became distinctly unprofitable. Thus, in dis-
cussing the ownership of land by the Chettiars, one needs to distinguish bet-
ween the pre-depression and the post-depression periods.
The calamitous effect of the depression on Burmese agriculture, trade and
more specifically on Chettiar moneylending operations was heralded by the
collapse in the wholesale prices of paddy. Thus the price of paddy, which had
been Rs 160 per hundred baskets in the Rangoon market in 1929, came down
to Rs 130 in 1930 and plummeted to Rs 75 in 1931.111 A Burma Nattukottai
Chettiar Association document provided a different set of figures. According
to it, the wholesale prices of paddy in lower Burma fell from Rs 240 in 1929
to Rs 155 in 1930 and to Rs 60 in 1931. 117
Land values also registered a fall. Thus, in Pegu district, where Chettiar
operations were quite considerable, land values had by the 1932-34 session,
fallen by 25 per cent from the values of 1924-25.1’a The average sale value of
land, which was about Rs 92 per acre,&dquo;9 fell to Rs 68.36 per acres by 1932-
34.~ Similarly, in the Amherst district, from the highest price of over Rs 300
per acre in 1927-28 in certain developed tracts, the value came down to Rs
230 per acre in 1931-32, a fall of 26 per cent. 121
The net result of these developments was that it became virtually impossible
for the agriculturist to repay his loans and often even the interest. When out-
standing loans could not be repaid, the Chettiars went to court in settlement
of their dues. Thus, hundreds of thousands of acres of land got into Chettiar
hands during this period. The extent of this landholding is shown in the
table. As the table shows, Chettiar holdings of land increased from 5,70,000
acres, which was 6 per cent of the total cultivated area in the major rice-
growing districts, to 23,93,000 acres, which was 25 per cent of the total culti-
vated area. In addition to these landholdings, it was estimated that another
large area of 10-20 per cent of the total cultivated area in lower Burma was
Allene Masters, op. cit., pp. 28-29.
115
Cheng Siok Hwa, op. cit., p. 73.
116
Confidential Note, op. cit., Sub-heading "Depression of 1929-30," p. 7.
117
N.B.T.I.A.C., p. 16; Chester L. Cooper, op. cit., p. 48.
118
119
N.B.T.I.A.C., p. 16.
120
121
Ibid.,p. 17.

357
mortgaged to them. A considerable amount of real estate in Rangoon also

came into their possession during this period.122
CLASSIFICATION OF OCCUPIERS OF LAND IN THE 13 PRINCIPAL

RICE-GROWING DISTRICTS (’OOOs)
No/e~ by
SOURCE: Notes //!<? Indian
&~ the //!~M Advisory
~~M<?f~ Co~!M</~~
Committee /o the
to ~Ae Burma
~f<fwa Nattukottai
A~M~<?~< CAe//~~
Chettiars
Association on the Land Nationalisation Act of 1948, K.E.S.C. Ltd. Bldgs., Chettinad,
Ramnad District, p. 7.
The smooth functioning of their system of moneylending required the main-

tenance of a balance between their liquid assets and investment in immovable
property; hence, this drastic conversion of their capital into immovable pro-
perty created a serious crisis in their moneylending system. The crisis was
further intensified as the European Banks began calling in the loans they had
advanced to the big Chettiars and Marwari firms. The latter in turn applied
pressure on the smaller firms and demanded immediate repayment of their
loans. Being unable to bear this pressure many small Chettiar firms, and a
few large ones, collapsed.123 It was estimated that as many as about 400 of
the 1650 firms that were operating in 1929 collapsed during the depression.124
Furthermore, the changing economic and political conditions in the colonial
countries of South and South-East Asia made it increasingly difficulfi for the
Chettiars to operate on their traditional lines. In fact, the economic crisis
following the great depression provided a filip to the nationalist movement
in Burma which avowedly expressed its hostility to the Chettiars. 125 By

122
123 the large firms that collapsed during
Among this period were such reputed firms as
T.S.N. Chettiar and S.A.R.M. Chettiar firms. Both these firms were adjudicated insolvents
with debts of 50 to 70 lakhs of rupees—Confidential Note, op. cit., p. 7.
Memorandum of Chettiars Overseas Association, Karaikudi, 1945, p. 2.
124
125

358
dispossessing the large mass of the Burmese of their movable and immovable
assets and reducing them to abject poverty they became visible exploiters
of the Burmese and hence easy targets for the nationalists. Thus during the
late twenties of the twentieth century attempts were made by certain political
groups and associations to induce sections of the people to refuse payment
of their dues to the Chettiai-s. 121, There was also about this time imminent
prospects in Burma of double assessment of income-tax. 12’ The cumulative
effect of these various factors, in a sense, prompted the Chettiars to withdraw
part of their capital and profits from Burma to India.
The 1930s can be considered as the end of the era of large-scale Chettiar
financing in Burma. With the bulk of their capital frozen into immovable
property, their activities were largely limited to the management of the lands
in their possession.
126 Mahajani, The Role of Indian Minorities

Usha in Burma and Malaya, p. 19.
Ibid. See also Wecra Sooria, op. cit., p. 156.
127

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Immigrant Entrepreneurs in Colonial Burma&mdash;An

Exploratory Study of the Role of Nattukottai Chettiars of

Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

Despite our long tradition of academic pursuit and

vestigation. Entrepreneurship is one such important areas. To this day there

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particularly noticeable feature of their activities during the greater part of

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Marwaris.8 However, in the cotton tract of Tinnevelly, Ramnad and in and

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regionwise distribution of this capital. Thus, according to Burma Banking

SOURCE: B.P.B.E.C.R., Vol. I, pp. 2(0-11.

Burma Provincial Banking Enquiry Committee Report (hereafter

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In view of the importance in purely quantitative terms of Chettiar invest-

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Cheng Siok Hwa,

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Burma as it provided the necessary incentive for people to come in and

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48 L. Cooper, op. cit., p. 21.

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ACREAGE UNDER PADDY CULTIVATION IN LOWER BURMA,

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DECENNIAL EXPORT OF RICE AND PADDY FROM BURMA:

SOURCE: Cheng Siok Hwa, Rice Industry of Burma, /852-]949, p. 201.

SOURCE: Ch~ng Siok Hwa, Rice Tlldustry Burma, 1852-1949, p. 73.

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Third Revision Settlement Report of the Thaton District (1913-15) also

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Rs 3 crores, while 1315 other moneylenders were assessed on an estimated

Cheng Siok Hwa,

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responsibility of protecting the vast commercial and economic interests of the ’

See letter from Secty., B.N.C.A., to Kanam Pillai, 22 October 1953.

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by section of the upper strata of the community who sought to use it as a

Burma Nattukottai Chettiarkalin Mudalavadu Mahanadu: Thiruvalar T. S. Nagappa

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Having surveyed the and development of Chettiar activities uptil

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easily acquired in the normal of their

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port of Tondi in Ramnad district.89

terest) was to be repaid in kind at harvest time.93

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ing proportions during the depression of 1930.’0~

agriculturists moneylenders and though several attempts were made by the

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(1) Voluntary Sale in Settlement of Debt: When a debt accumulated and

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into landownership by circumstances.&dquo;’ One writer has even suggested that

Immigrant Entrepreneurs in Colonial Burma—An