Abstract

"Trustees of the Nation: Business, Philanthropy and Trust-making Regimes in Twentieth-Century Colonial/Postcolonial India"

Kena Wani, Duke University (kenawani@gmail.com)

This paper focuses upon certain philanthropic projects and endeavors that were initiated and organized by the mercantile and industrial business houses of western India during the early twentieth century. Within the fraught milieu of colonialism, ascending nationalism and the emerging postcolonial state in early twentieth century India, I focus upon the ways in which the commercial actors of western India mediated their socio-political standing through multiple forms of philanthropic practices and imaginaries. The paper examines the cultural and legal modes through which the concerned business actors incorporated philanthropy within their fold across the tumultuous years of early to mid-twentieth century. In the process, it examines the relationship between mercantile religious notions of charity, nationalist ideas of benevolence and the colonial legal framework of ‘public utility.’ I show how the meaning and value of philanthropy was often negotiated by exploiting/maneuvering the discursive limits and possibilities of the continually changing and contentious logics of charity and business. The paper particularly focuses upon the analysis of two very distinct views of philanthropy—the colonial legislation of the ‘public charitable trust’ and the Gandhian (nationalist) concept of ‘trusteeship.’ In doing so, the paper explores the multiple social, legal and affective ideas of ‘trust’ that were enfolded in these concepts of philanthropy. I argue that it was precisely through these acts of ‘trust-making’ that the concerned commercial actors and their imaginaries of private capital acquired legitimacy in the nationalist churnings of the time.
On a broader stroke, the paper reveals how these philanthropic discourses and practices laid the groundwork for producing a particular kind of a political milieu in western India, in which business actors were increasingly being imagined as the ethical and rightful protectors of ‘the commons' and agents of 'public good.'