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Caste and Capitalism in Colonial India: The Nattukottai Chettiars. By DAVID WEST RUDNER. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. xxvii, 41 pp. $50.00 (cloth); $18.00 (paper).
Whether or not "caste" has shaped India's society, it surely has shaped anthropology's engagement with India's society. David Rudner's stimulating analysis of a South Indian banking caste underscores this fact by providing an exhaustive investigation into the many facets of a caste's inner dynamics while situating his findings in relation to a wide range of historical and anthropological scholarship.
It is a highly rewarding book, rich in detail and imaginative insight. Rudner tells us much about the Nattukottai Chettiars or Nakarattars, offering probably more about these remarkable people than most readers had realized they wanted to know.
Forty years ago scholars encountered the Chettiars in J. S. Furnivall's Colonial Policy and Practice; A Comparative Study of Burma and Netherlands India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1948), wherein these Indian capitalists delivered equal parts of ready money and economic havoc...