কাস্ট ব্যবস্থা কি প্রগতির অন্তরায় ছিল?

Caste connections helped the Nattukottai Chettiars, a major South Indian banking community, forge relations of trust which were indispensable for business transactions conducted over long distances. In the case of merchants in Benares in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Christopher Bayly has argued that “extended linkages of kinship and marriage, perceived by contemporary Indians and later commentators as ‘caste’, played a significant role in reinforcing the community of trust and mercantile intelligence which was essential to long-distance trading.” Mercantile activities were not shaped only by caste in Benares, however, and Bayly found that even tightly organized family firms placed deep faith in agents who were of different castes. The bulk of credit transactions were also conducted beyond the boundaries of kin and caste, which indicates that while caste facilitated some business activities, it was not, according to Bayly, “the prime parameter of mercantile organization.

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