Merchants of Virtue: Hindus, Muslims, and Untouchables in Eighteenth-Century South Asia

by Divya Cherian

What is the line that separates those with caste from outcastes? In the eyes of caste elites, this line was mutable. Depending on context, an outcaste could be anyone except rajputs, brahmans, and merchants.

Despite shifting lines, the bhangi was indisputably and always “untouchable”. How and why did the bhangi come to constitute the extreme Other for Gandhi and for generations to come? What did this history have to do with Hindu–Muslim relations? Merchants of Virtue offers a granular, everyday account of the construction and practice of untouchability and its relationship with Hindu-ness in the kingdom of Marwar in eighteenth-century western India.

Divya Cherian uncovers how Marwari merchants enforced their caste ideals of vegetarianism and bodily austerity as universal markers of Hindu identity mobilizing the law and the state in their favor. They successfully remade the category of “Hindu” as antithetical to the “Untouchable”, and in the process reconfigured Muslims in caste terms.

This book, for the first time, explores the key role that merchants played in the politics of caste and untouchability, and in defining who is a Hindu.

Genres: India, History, Nonfiction, Religion

272 pages, Paperback

First published December 27, 2022

Reviews

[Revanth Ukkalam · Rating 3 out of 5]

To me the most profound and powerful takeaway from this book is the volume of the Early Modern archive and how much of society - sometimes even easily - it can illuminate. That published volumes like the Jodhpur Sanad Parwana Bahais can tell such rich and also disturbing stories is reassuring and the agency to tell important narratives from history is pinned upon the scholar's will and interest to read, more than anything else really.

The book argues very persuasively that state and caste shape each other the former relation by making caste practicable by powerful injunctions - like banishing Muslims, fining untouchables, and outlawing meat and liquor, the latter in the way of the popular currency of Banias (and Brahmins). One of the creative but somewhat controversial moves by Cherian is to argue that Brahmins ought to be placed under the category of the merchant. Cherian shows through analysing state policy and surveying visual art, that a prominent presence through the execution of caste and the making of policy, was exercised by puritanical Vaishnavism and Jainism with their strong ideas of purity and pollution (Cherian thus takes the discussion of caste back to its somewhat classicist roots in Dumont-esque anthropology). This is particularly interesting when one contrasts this model of kingship with more premodern modes where Shaivism due to its "openness" and "moral ambiguities" became the vehicle for Non Kshatriya communities to early legitimacy as kings and divinely ordained at that. However the book is clearly lacking in its engagement with Vallabhite theology. Hence, one can be free to suspect the obviousness of religion's connection with the practice of caste in Marwar.

[Nirbhay Kanoria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Merchants Of Virtue by Divya Cherian is an important and interesting read. It covers Marwaris in the 18th Century and their treatment of Muslims and the so-called Untouchables.

Reading of the othering of any community is painful, especially when done on puritanical lines. Economic superiority was the main reason, and vegetarianism, religious practices, etc were the guise.

While meticulously researched, Cherian's professoral roots are evident and the book is quite dry and academic.

[R R · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t have the words to describe how fascinating and wonderful this book was to read. Sharp, concise, interrogating, thorough. One of the first texts I’d recommend to anyone looking to gain a better understanding of cultural trends in precolonial India or anyone interested in learning about caste.

This is will read as cheesy, but I’m so damn grateful to Divya Cherian for writing this book. It will be carved into my brain forever. Going to have a permanent place on my bookshelf for the rest of time. I’m sure I’ll revisit it often.

Had the time of my life reading this! But definitely recommend getting your hands on a physical copy if possible. I’m a huge proponent of the digital read, but I personally needed the book in my hands and the ability to mark up the margins to truly comprehend and enjoy this.

[Daniel]

Merchants of Virtue: Disha Karnad Jani interviews Divya Cherian

[Student · Rating 4 out of 5]

Delivers a fascinating and deeply researched insight into the way caste worked in 18th century Marwar, and how it influenced the rise of Hindu identity in colonial and postcolonial India.

[aswathyjayasree · Rating 3 out of 5]

Needs some good editing.