Introduction

Abstract

There is a substantial literature analysing the evolution of business enterprise in India with reference to particular communities and castes. Organized research in this direction is traceable to Dhananjaya Ramchandra Gadgil’s two oft-cited mimeographs of the 1950s and an article by Helen B. Lamb during the same decade.¹ These preliminary inquiries led to more comprehensive studies, including Dwijendra Tripathi’s edited volume emanating from a business history seminar at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, in 1982, and Thomas Timberg’s treatise on the industrial transition of the Marwaris.²