Marwaris: from traders to industrialist

The present volume is the result of work spread over five years, and
already covered in part in several other publications cited in the biblio-
graphy. My first work on the subject was done with funds from the
Development Advisory Service at Harvard University, in the summer of
1967, and published by them as a memorandum in June 1969. I con-
tinued my work on Marwaris during 1968 and 1969. A later recension
is available in a paper delivered to the Bengal Studies Conference in
May 1969, and published with the other proceedings of that Conference
by Michigan State University, Asian Studies Center in the Fall of 1971.
I received a Foreign Area Fellowship for work in India in 1969 and
returned to the United States in September 1971 to work on the final
draft of my Ph.D. thesis on which this work is based.
I would like to thank Drs Gustav and Hanna Papanek for their initial
encouragement in this study and continuing support; my thesis advisor,
Prof. Henry Rosovsky, for the time he devoted to going over various
versions of the thesis manuscript; my two formal host institutions in
India--the Birla Institute of Technology in Pilani, Rajasthan and the
Indian Institute of Management in Calcutta—especially Drs Dool
Singh, B. R. Aggarwal, and S. K. Porwal at the former and Borun De
and Kaumini Adhikari at the latter; as well as two informal institutional
hosts—the Delhi School of Economics and the University of Rajasthan
at Jaipur-especially Drs Tapan Raichauduri, Dharma Kumar,
Krishnamurty, and Radhakrishan at the former and Dr Dilbagh Singh
at the latter.
I would like also to thank the numerous students of the history of
Bengal and Rajasthan who have assisted me and given generously of
their time and wisdom to me in this endeavor-especially Drs Blair
Kling, Subyasachi Bhattacharya, Pradip Sinha—those who have specia-
lized in the study of Indian business-especially Drs Wayne Broehl,
Stanley Kochanek, and C.A. Bayly; the historians of the Marwari com-
munity itself, pre-eminently Rishi Jaimini Kaushik “Barua” and
Vishambharlal Sharma; and the numerous Marwari families who
told me of their family history and made private records available to me.
Most of Chapter V is based on such records now in the possession of
Mr Janki Prasad Poddar of Calcutta and Chitrkot, Sir Bhagchand Soni
of Ajmer, and Mr Srinivas Dalmia of Calcutta. A special note of thanks
is due to Mr R. K. Dalmia and his son, Mr Grun Nidhi Dalmia, for a
chance to read his unpublished memoirs and to Mr L. N. Birla and
Santosh Mukherjee of the Birla Organization who assisted me in study-
ing the history of that family. Finally, I want to extend a general note
of thanks to the many Indians of all communities who assisted and be-
friended me during my 19-month stay in that country.
It goes without saying that those who assisted me are in no way res-
ponsible for my analysis or conclusions.