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| Astrakhan 1681 |
‘Sutur’ was a leading Indian merchant
in the 17th-century Astrakhan. This Russian town has been the
traditional economic and cultural capital of the Caspian region. Consolidation
of Russian authority and expansion towards South under the Romanovs, opened a
new Asiatic route of commerce for Russia. The Muscovite state with its modest
trading class, then decided to welcome Armenians, Iranians, and Indian
merchants. A series of documents preserved in the Russian archives in recent
years helped to throw considerable light on this Indian diaspora, led by
merchants like Sutur.
Perhaps we would never get to know the
real name of ‘Sutur’ as all our information about this extraordinary Indian
merchant comes from Russian sources, where he is always identified as ‘Sutur’.
In a series of remarkable petitions submitted to the Tsar–and preserved in
Russian archives–Sutur mentions that he arrived at Astrakhan from Iran in the
1620s because of favourable business conditions. His brothers worked in
Northern Iranian cities as merchants. While generally praising the rule of law
under the Tsars, once he complained about a government functionary, who used to
harass merchants. His complaint led to quick removal of the officer concerned.
Sutur claimed that in 1646, at his invitation, his brothers and twenty-five
other Indian merchants arrived at Astrakhan with large amount of merchandise
and some of them settled down at Astrakhan.
In 1647, Sutur had obtained permission
to set up an Indian gostiny dvor, literally guest house but in effect, a
residential bazaar at Astrakhan. This dvor was completed in 1649, when a
government census found that twenty-six Indian merchants are living there. They
were substantial merchants–Sutur himself dealt in all sorts of commodities and
he sourced his stuff from Isfahan and Qazvin, where his brothers were settled.
At one point, he went ahead and created another base in Moscow, where he
himself stayed for three years.
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| Ateshgah or fire temple of Baku, used as a place of worship by Hindu and Sikh merchants |
Indian merchants and moneylenders were
present in significant numbers in Safavid Iran (1500-1722) and Uzbek Khanates
or Turan (1500-1920). This important trading diaspora is almost unknown to
modern scholarship as there is very little documentation available of them.
Merchants like Sutur did not go directly from India but advanced to Astrakhan
from his base in Isfahan or Qazvin. Indian diaspora in Iran and Turan not only had
the advantage of a common language (Persian) but also operated within the
common Timurid legacy in terms of political framework and a similar approach to
commerce. Russia was somewhat different but the Russian state welcomed the
Indian merchants as they had almost no mercantile class of her own.
For centuries, India dominated the
global trade by dint of its cotton exports and the picture was no different for
the 17th-century Persian or Russian markets. Varieties of cotton,
sugar, and indigo and a few speciality products formed the Indian export basket,
the principal imports items were horses, some silk and other luxury goods.
Overall, India enjoyed a positive trade balance made up by export of gold and
silver by Iran and Turan.
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| Invocation to Lord Ganesh, Baku Fire Temple |
Apart from Muslim Afghan merchants,
often from Lohani or Luharni tribes, those who were known as Multani or simply
as bania in Iranian and Russian records, were mainly Khattris and also Marwaris
and Jains. Their home base was Multan, where rich patriarchs, called Shahs,
deputed their underlings or gumasthas to trade in far-off places. In Isfahan
alone, there were 10,000 ‘permanently settled’ Indians during the
mid-seventeenth century. There were many others in Iranian and Afghan towns,
between Multan and Isfahan, their networks were spread all over cities and
towns of Afghanistan from Kandahar to Kunduz.
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| Invocation to Sikh Adi Grantha, baku Fire Temple |
In 1727, an Indian merchant ‘Vishnat
Narmaldas(ov)’ died while on a business trip to Kizil Yar on the Terek River.
Before his death, he had asked another Indian ‘Ardial’ (Hardayal?) to take his
property back to his father and relatives in India, but a third Indian,
‘Narayan Chanchamal(ov)’ petitioned the Russian authorities not to allow Ardial
to leave the city of Astrakhan as he had claims against the deceased. This
petition, which was eventually sent back to the Indian community to settle as
per their customary law–presents a unique picture of an Indian mercantile
community in a far-off land. Living inside their gostiny dvor, rich Indian
merchants had their assistants and priests with them. They maintained their
traditional lifestyle including daily rituals, food habits, and concepts of
ritual pollution. They were praised for their fairness and hard work as well as
high degree of personal hygiene.
‘Sukhanant Dyrymdas’ was an
archetypical Multani Shah. He came to Astrakhan from Multan at the age of
seventeen, died in Moscow at the age of sixty in 1759. His estate, consisting
of cash, goods, letters of credit, and other valuables, was valued at three
lakh Roubles (this is at a time when a substantial Russian merchant’s worth was
around 1,000 Roubles). Most Indians traded in all kinds of goods and the larger
among them indulged in money lending, bill discounting, and other banking
activities. For Astrakhan Indians, their supply hinterland stretched up to
Multan, through Iran and Afghanistan and their forward trading networks
terminated either in Moscow or Nizhnii Novgorod. In 1684, twenty-one Indian
merchants were there in Moscow, where they shared a gostiny dvor with Armenians,
Bukharans, and Iranians. In Astrakhan itself, their number increased to 209 by
1725 and up to half of them were merchants and moneylenders, others were
relatives, assistants, and priests. Some of them, presumably Muslims, lived in
Bukharan dvor also. A few married local ladies and settled down outside
gostiny. There were rare examples of a few converting to Russian Orthodox
Church. Around the same time, there were around 300 Indian merchants in
Bukhara.
From Moscow to Astrakhan and from
Isfahan, Balkh and Bukhara to Kabul and Multan–they were all linked through
kinship and hundi networks. The general practice was to advance another family
member or retainer to the next post. This family/kinship based agency
system–driven from their home base of Multan by wealthy patriarchs was in no
way different from their European contemporaries in Genoa or Pisa. In
pre-modern world, in the absence of a universal commercial law and state as an
implementing agency for enforcing commercial contract, it was this family/kinship
bonds and trust as well as fear of social sanction, in case a trust is broken,
used to ensure commercial compliance. Indian merchants like Sukhanant or Sutur
were at par or sometimes even better than their European counterparts in terms
of their business ethos and financial skills and ability to organise family
firms across the vast geography. Their organisational pattern as well as
business practices in many ways conformed to a common Eurasian merchant type.
In 1723, ‘Anbu Ram Mulin’ petitioned the
Tsar, Peter the Great to permit him to trade in St Petersburg and Archangel and
to transit through Russia to trade in Germany on the one side and China on the
other. This reflects the confidence of a trading community–which according to
the statistics of the next year–imported three times more to Astrakhan than
their nearest rivals, the Armenians. In the face of growing opposition from
emerging Russian business lobbies, he was denied such permission. His immediate
business prospect was, however, no way affected. But the rosy world of Anbu Ram
and his compatriots was about to crumble–and it was politics which was chiefly
responsible for that.
A year before his remarkable petition, the
Safavid rule melted away in front of a ragtag Afghan army. The power vacuum
created by this Ghilzai sack of Isfahan lasted nearly seven decades. There were
already complaints about extortionate Persian bureaucracy, now the total
absence of order in their hinterland destroyed the supply chain of Indian
merchants of Astrakhan. They were dealt an even more severe blow as the Mughal
central authority went on a downward spiral and for decades, their home base of
Punjab remained seriously disturbed. In next two decades, Indian population in
Astrakhan was halved and by the turn of the century it was almost over.
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| Alexander Burnes |
In 1832, when Alexander Burnes arrived in
Kabul on his way to Central Asia, he reported on Hindu moneylenders in
Afghanistan. He was informed that Hindu merchants run their commercial
networks/agencies from Astrakhan and Meshid to Calcutta. He was offered bills
of exchange on Nizhnii Novgorod (on the Upper Volga region), Astrakhan, and
Bukhara–this was the last time we heard about traditional Indian merchant
establishments in Astrakhan and interiors of Russia. In Central Asia, of
course, they continued as the prime moneylenders till the Russian Revolution.
In fact, as the last vestiges of Multani networks, Hindu and Sikh moneychangers
were visible on the streets of Kabul even a few years back.
For more such stories related to Indian
business history, see Laxminama: Monks, Merchants, Money and Mantra by Anshuman
Tiwari and Anindya Sengupta Bloomsbury 2018
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