The Worldmaking of Mobile Vernacular Capitalists: Tracing Entanglements Between Race, Caste and Capital

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Main author: Dilawri, Shikha
Format: Journal Article           
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id eprints-39874
recordtype eprints
institution SOAS, University of London
collection SOAS Research Online
language English
language_search English
description This article traces the colonially inscribed spread of global capitalism through the lives and legacies of mobile vernacular capitalists in the Indian Ocean during the early-to-mid 20th century, centring the merchant-turned-industrialist-and-philanthropist Nanji Kalidas Mehta. Turning to a figure that shaped and challenged the infrastructures and outcomes of empire, but advanced forms of hierarchical differentiation – between capital and labour, and across race and caste – this article makes two interventions. First, it complicates literature on worldmaking by highlighting a figure in a register distinctive from the ‘progressive’ internationalisms associated with Bandung. Second, it reveals entanglements between race, caste and capital, illuminating how local hierarchies have been incorporated into differentiating logics of colonial capitalism. Considering sites, subjects and categories beyond an Atlantic frame lends to more capacious understandings of racial capitalism while challenging readings of caste as a subcontinent-bounded, feudal residue. This ultimately presents a more complex picture of global hierarchies shaping the (post)colonial present.
format Journal Article
author Dilawri, Shikha
author_facet Dilawri, Shikha
authorStr Dilawri, Shikha
author_letter Dilawri, Shikha
title The Worldmaking of Mobile Vernacular Capitalists: Tracing Entanglements Between Race, Caste and Capital
publisher Sage
publishDate 2023
url https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/39874/

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