{"id":68114,"date":"2021-07-02T17:35:24","date_gmt":"2021-07-02T17:35:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/websitedesigns.com.au\/elankanew\/?p=68114"},"modified":"2021-07-02T17:35:24","modified_gmt":"2021-07-02T17:35:24","slug":"the-colombo-bharathas-a-merchant-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/websitedesigns.com.au\/elankanew\/the-colombo-bharathas-a-merchant-community\/","title":{"rendered":"The \u201cColombo Bharathas\u201d: A Merchant Community"},"content":{"rendered":"

The \u201cColombo Bharathas\u201d: A Merchant Community<\/span><\/span><\/h1>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Joe \u201cMalli\u201d Vaz ***<\/span><\/h1>\n

The ghosts of forgotten family histories haunt the children of immigrants, pressing us to take on the role of scribes to recover and record those enduring tales implanted deep within our childhood memories.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Iruthamma<\/p>\n

Iruthamma De Votta kin<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Source:<\/span><\/strong>Thuppahis<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

This experience loosely corresponds to what social scientists studying diasporic identity describe as an interesting\u00a0rule of three:<\/em>\u00a0The first generation to immigrate tries to \u201cblend in,\u201d often leaving their traditions and culture behind. Their children\u2014the second generation, who are born in the new country\u2014become superficially curious about their identity and ancestry. But surprisingly, it\u2019s the third generation that struggles to figure out who they are and where they came from, showing a strong desire to connect with the old country, language, culture and cuisine.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0Periamma<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

In the arc of my family\u2019s narrative, the generations of my great- grandparents and grandparents have been the principal actors, shouldering weighty risks as they left their Indian homeland in the nineteenth century, crossed the gulf and settled in Sri Lanka. They helped to transform the island and were themselves changed as a result. Though unfailingly gracious to neighbours and friends, they were fiercely opposed to assimilation. A closed marriage network, kinship ties and devotion to the religion sustained a common-caste community. It is for this generation\u2014mine\u2014that this minor epistle attempts to answer a frequently asked question:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018So, who or what is a Bharatha? A \u201cColombo Bharatha? \u2018\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In my adult years, because of an avid interest in migration, I became absorbed in my roots and the spirited details of my ancestry. My curiosity about the history of this socioeconomic group in Sri Lanka, however, failed to elicit meaningful answers from my extended family of cousins, aunts, uncles and others in the clan. (We are an \u2018Indian family,\u2019 so everyone\u2019s an uncle, aunt or cousin, even when he or she\u2019s not.) Most pleaded it was outside their field of interest and politely moved on to other themes. For me, it is a persistent quest; other people\u2019s stories are the stories that may clarify my unsettled family chronicle.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the Beginning: India\u2019s Coromandel Coast<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

A little research has turned up the following: The Bharathas[1]<\/a>\u00a0are a traditional fisher community, since ancient times inhabiting the regions on either side of the Gulf of Mannar\u2014that is, both southern India and north-western Sri Lanka. Here, an endowment of nature gifted the Bharathas with a homeland full of lucrative natural resources: storied pearl banks and chank (conch) fisheries, with opportunities for other related ventures. Yet from the earliest years, fishing, pearling and chank fishing as primary occupations were considered by Hindus to be ritually polluting callings, since they took life and touched blood. Therefore, Hindu Bharathas were excluded from participating in sacred temple rituals.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Coromandel<\/p>\n

Coromandel Coast<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

The Bharatha migration to the island from India can be deciphered\u00a0 in\u00a0 \u00a0three phases. From the earliest times, the seafaring Bharathas were naturally drawn to migration and trade along the coast of the Gulf of Mannar. Prior to the arrival of the Portuguese in the sixteenth century, the Bharathars were recruited by Sinhalese kings as mercenaries. These warriors and their families settled in coastal areas north of Colombo and elsewhere, and came to be known as the \u2018Negombo Bharathars\u2019. They were augmented by a migration to the west coast organized by the Jesuits and the Portuguese \u00a0in an effort to promote Catholic expansion and military stability.<\/span><\/p>\n

During the nineteenth-century British colonial period, economic disruption from port and road development \u00a0in Tamilnadu and the pull from \u00a0plantation \u00a0expansion on the island brought another wave of Bharathas from across the gulf who came as immigrant- traders. Distinctly a middle-class socioeconomic cluster, they were educated, thanks to missionary schools and were experienced \u00a0in retail, shipping and other commercial activities. These new citizens informally branded themselves as the \u2018Colombo Bharathars\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

I had heard the term\u00a0Bharatha<\/em>\u00a0and its vernacular synonyms\u00a0Parava<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Paravan,<\/em>\u00a0or the affectionate geographic nickname\u00a0Paravanadu.\u00a0<\/em>In Dravidian languages, there is no equivalent for \/Bh\/; hence the appellation\u00a0Parathar\u00a0<\/em>was pronounced phonetically. In Sri Lanka, the preference is to be referred to as\u00a0Bharathas,<\/em>\u00a0a name suggestive of a military pedigree harking back to Bharatha, brother of Rama and king of the city of Ayodhya. Another theory attaches the Bharathas to the Jewish culture, suggesting connections to one of the lost tribes of Israel. Despite these folkloric assertions, the Bharathas are better described as a caste or lifestyle group within the Catholic Church, a view that considers the community\u2019s close association with the Portuguese colonizers of the sixteenth century.<\/span><\/p>\n

In keeping with their nautical traditions, the Bharathas were highly regarded as shipbuilders. In point of fact, their catamarans (from Tamil\u00a0kattu<\/em>\u00a0\u2018to tie\u2019 and\u00a0maram<\/em>\u00a0\u2018wood, tree\u2019) were the first craft with two hulls, an innovation unknown in the west until the seventeenth century. Their long tradition of seafaring seems to be linked to their early lifestyle as warriors and members of the Tamil navy who fought for the kings and dynasties from whom they claim their descent.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

In the immediate pre- and post-colonial periods, the Paravas\u2019 monopoly on these lucrative maritime trades provided them a springboard to move up the socioeconomic ladder. The entrepreneurial types set themselves up as chank and pearl traders as well as boat owners employing large numbers of low-wage divers. Susan Bayly, a Cambridge anthropologist, notes that \u2018by the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Paravas had emerged as one of South India\u2019s most highly organized caste groups.\u2019<\/a><\/a>[i]<\/strong><\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

My earliest primary source on this rich but mysterious heritage was my grandmother, Mary Iruthyammal Devotta Paiva. Born in Tuticorin, South India, in the late 1800s, she found herself in Colombo, Sri Lanka, with her husband, Jeronimus Nazarene Paiva, when both were barely out of their teens.\u00a0Periamma,\u00a0<\/em>as we called her (Tamil for \u2018elder sister\u2019, an odd misnomer), had a vivid sense of history: social history, community history and some dabs of political history. She routinely offered me verifiable stories, and occasionally dismissive comments on persons and places, with insights worthy of a social anthropologist. She recalled colonization, which she accepted as God\u2019s endowment to this poor littoral on the South Indian shore\u2014\u2018poor\u2019, of course, being only her cavalier characterization of her homeland.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the details of her telling, Periamma\u2019s ancestral home, Tuticorin on the Fishery Coast of the south-eastern Indian seaboard, was a magical location not unlike the fictional Brigadoon\u2014a place barely affected by time. Situated on the Coromandel Coast, it has a frontage that covers 68 miles of coastline. Historically defined by seven port cities (yelu ur<\/em>, in Tamil) and a contiguous basketful of smaller ports, this stretch of coastline was home to the Parava people and affectionately referred to by them as Paravanadu.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Bharathars and Their Homeland in Literature<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The Fishery Coast, a segment of the Coromandel Coast that forms the western boundary of the Gulf of Mannar, is celebrated in natural history for its marine ecology and its famed pearl banks. The Portuguese name for this littoral area was\u00a0costa de<\/em>\u00a0pescaria<\/em>\u00a0while the Dutch toponym was\u00a0visserijkust<\/em>. This idyllic corner of South Asia and its pearl industry were also immortalized in the intellectual and literary world\u2014in global literature by science fiction writer Jules Verne (1828\u20131905), in economics by English sociologist Harriet Martineau (1802\u20131876), in music by composer Georges Bizet (1838\u20131875), and in verse by poet and Indian freedom fighter Sarojini Naidu (1879\u20131949).<\/span><\/p>\n

In Verne\u2019s magnum opus,\u00a020,000 Leagues Under the Sea<\/em>, the narrator, Dr Arronax, accompanies Captain Nemo to the seaboard of the Gulf of Mannar near Tuticorin to dive for pearls. After viewing a gigantic pearl in an underwater cave, they return to the surface and stop to observe a man from the Fishery Coast plundering the vast pearl bank:<\/span><\/p>\n

It was a man, a living man, an Indian, a Black, a diver, a pearl-fisher, a poor devil no doubt who had come early in the season to fill his net. I could see the bottom of his boat, which was moored a few feet above his head. He dived and resurfaced repeatedly. He carried a stone carved in the shape of a sugar loaf, which he gripped between his feet and was attached to his boat by a rope. It enabled him to reach the bottom more quickly. It was the only tool he used. When he was on the sea-bed in about 5 metres of water, he quickly got on to his knees and filled his net with pinctadas grabbed up at random. Then he returned to the surface, emptied his net, hauled up his stone and recommenced the operation, which lasted no more than thirty seconds.<\/em>[ii]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

From 1832 to 1834, Harriet Martineau, England\u2019s first woman sociologist, published the nine-volume\u00a0Illustrations of Political Economy,<\/em>\u00a0a series containing fables about colonial negligence and the destructive effects of monopolies on local populations and the environment. In Volume 7\u2019s \u2018Cinnamon and Pearls\u2019, she asserted that the pearl divers of the Gulf of Mannar were \u2018the natural native owners of the wealth of the region\u2019, who had been \u2018kept bare of almost the necessaries life\u2019 by an overbearing and extractive colonial regime.<\/span><\/a>[iii]<\/a>\u00a0Martineau wrapped her story about a lowly pearl diver in Ceylon in the liberal theories of the day and a readable style, arguing in favour of her choice to study Ceylon because its people had been \u2018more thoroughly and ingeniously beggared than any dependency\u2019.<\/span><\/a>[iv]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Ceylon became the setting for the 1863 French opera\u00a0Les P\u00eacheurs de Perles<\/em>\u00a0(The Pearl Fishers<\/em>) under mixed-up circumstances. The key word \u2018Orient\u2019 in nineteenth-century Europe had become a standby for almost any place deemed \u2018foreign and exotic\u2019. Inspired by the exploits of Napoleon Bonaparte in Egypt (1798\u20131801) and Charles X\u2019s invasion of Algeria in 1830, the opera lionized the Orient. Its backdrop, however, initially northern Mexico, had to be switched to Ceylon on realization of the faux pas. Once in the proper setting, the libretto described the superstitions of the island, highlighting scenic fantasies and descriptions from the recently published book\u00a0L\u2019Ile de Ceylan et Ses Curiosit\u00e9s Naturelles\u00a0<\/em>(The Isle of Ceylon and Its Natural Curiosities<\/em>) by traveller Octave Louis Marie Sachot.<\/span><\/p>\n

Finally, \u2018The Coromandel Fishers\u2019, an inspiring 1905 poem by Sarojini Naidu, interprets the gruelling lifestyle of the fishermen along India\u2019s eastern seaboard, underscoring the devotion of the fishermen to the ocean, personified as a mother figure. Reviewing the work in its historical context, we cannot fail to recognize the imagery as an allegory for its times: This is Naidu the poet-activist at her best, in a strident call recruiting her countrymen to the cause of freedom from colonial rule, so distinctly expressed in these stanzas:<\/span><\/p>\n

Rise, brothers, rise; the wakening skies pray to the morning light,
\nThe wind lies asleep in the arms of the dawn like a child that has cried all night.
\nCome, let us gather our nets from the shore and set our catamarans free,
\nTo capture the leaping wealth of the tide, for we are the kings of the sea!<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

No longer delay, let us hasten away in the track of the sea gull\u2019s call,
\n<\/em>The sea is our mother, the cloud is our brother, the waves are our comrades all.<\/em>
\n<\/em>What though we toss at the fall of the sun where the hand of the sea-god drives?
\nHe who holds the storm by the hair, will hide in his breast our lives.<\/em>[v]<\/a><\/span><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n

Religion: Conversion by Choice<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The North Star of Bharatha culture is the Shrine Basilica of Our Lady of Snows in Tuticorin, Tamil Nadu, South India. Built in 1582 and known to Tamil-speaking locals as the\u00a0Periya Kovil<\/em>\u00a0(\u2018Big Church\u2019), it is centrally situated within sight of the old harbour, where in olden days commodities from the country\u2019s major port cities, including barrels of drinking water, would be unloaded and local products hauled aboard: pallets of textiles and salt- fish destined for Colombo and South Asian ports.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Basilica is also the community\u2019s cultural icon, deriving its fame as the repository of a statue known by its Portuguese name as\u00a0Senhora das Neves<\/em>, or Our Lady of Snows\u2014in Tamil,\u00a0Panni Maya Matha\u2014<\/em>gifted to the Parava people by the Augustinian nuns in Manila. The impressive edifice is painted bright blue and white in the Iberian tradition, resembling a larger, ornamented version of many Sri Lankan coastal churches.<\/span><\/p>\n

Each year, around the fifth of August, a raucous weeklong festival emulating Hindu practice takes place in Tuticorin, proclaiming the history of the pearl fishery coast and its familial bonding with this South Indian community. The shrine, statue and festival are an integral part of the community\u2019s life here.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Bharathas\u2019 association with the Catholic faith is both a compelling and an illuminating part of their story. In an example of historical irony, Christianity in this instance was embraced not at the point of the sword but in fulfilment of a diplomatic coalition. For several years in the early sixteenth century, the fishermen of the neighbouring Muslim Kayalar caste, supported by local chieftains, had hijacked the community\u2019s livelihood by plundering their pearl banks. Tensions between the two castes were naturally simmering, with the Paravas unable to battle the invaders militarily or politically.<\/span><\/p>\n

In a highly risky move, a deputation of Parava leaders appealed to the Portuguese general, who, under the Padroado system (an arrangement between Rome and Lisbon), represented both king and pope. The new colonial power was now the superior firepower on the Indian coast, able to take on the Muslims and restore the locals\u2019 livelihoods. The ensuing agreement was a straightforward one that satisfied both king and church. It required the Paravas to convert to Christianity and pay an annual tribute in exchange for the Kayalars\u2019 being expelled from the coast.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 1535, the Portuguese successfully expelled the Muslims and, in keeping with their agreement, approximately 20,000 Paravas accepted the Christian faith in an overnight mass conversion.\u00a0\u2018The great ceremonies of mass Baptism which followed this move were really declarations of tactical alliance rather than religious conversions as the term is usually understood.\u2019[vi]<\/strong><\/a><\/em>\u00a0The descendants of these new converts\u2014and thousands more family members who were later baptized by St Francis Xavier\u2014have come to be known as known as \u2018the children of Xavier\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

This swift adoption of Christianity by the community would inevitably result in problems of adaptation. In point of fact, in the absence of Christian instruction in the local language, the new religion was more or less a veneer applied to Hindu customs and caste traditions. The resulting syncretism, or blending of two religions, was evident at several levels, and with the passage of time, some worthy practices have persisted while others have been given a new life through diversion.<\/span><\/p>\n

For example, in current practice, we see the use of the gold chain, or\u00a0thali<\/em>, in marriage ceremonies. It is a tangible symbol, similar to the ring in western culture. In the Hindu liturgy, it is a sacred symbol of marriage presented to the wife by her husband. In the revised Christian (Bharatha) version, the\u00a0thali\u00a0<\/em>contains the image of the Holy Ghost in the form of a dove, incorporating the presence of the Holy Trinity, a crucial element of Catholic doctrine.<\/span><\/p>\n

Equally prominent is the use of an opulent gold cart, known as the\u00a0pon ther<\/em>, in the August festival\u2014it is\u00a0the\u00a0<\/em>iconic standard-bearer in Hindu festivals. The Parava version is a cumbersome gold-encrusted chariot, 75 feet long[vii]<\/a>\u00a0and drawn through the streets of Tuticorin just once every five years, bearing the Our Lady of Snows statue. In the gap years, the statue is transported in a big golden palanquin, and on the first Saturday of each month the sacred image is set forth on a smaller palanquin.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another consequence of the near-total absence of Tamil-speaking catechists and resulting ignorance of Christian doctrine among the new adherents, was that the Paravas continued to worship Hindu goddesses, such as Meenakshi Amman and Bhagavathi Amman. Francis Xavier understood the community\u2019s ingrained affection for the mother goddess traditions and, in an act of psychological diversion, successfully introduced the role of Mary, replacing one maternal goddess with another. The practice of mother goddess worship was thus converted into the veneration of Mother Mary. Half a millennium later, Jesuit evangelization has successfully produced a vibrant Christian community in South India.<\/span><\/p>\n

CASTE LIFESTYLE AND CHRISTIAN CASTE LIFESTYLE<\/span><\/h4>\n

The code of social gradation in Indian society, colloquially referred to as the caste system, is best understood through its abutting companion, the\u00a0caste lifestyle<\/em>\u2014a rigid dogma of Hindu edicts in dress, dietary habits, marriage customs and traditions of worship. The Hindu holy books are a lexicon of the castes\u2019 lineage, from which we learn the origins and stratification of the four main caste groups (themselves divided into Brahmins and non-Brahmins), plus approximately thirty thousand lesser and subordinate castes (called\u00a0jatis<\/em>). The texts may also be referenced as a sacred writ of hereditary entitlement which endows higher castes, while those in the lowest castes are frequently subject to ingrained inequities and, sadly, even violence.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Portuguese entry into India was destined to have a transformative impact on the future life of the Bharathas and their Hindu caste lifestyle. The conversion to Roman Catholicism eventually culminated in profound Jesuit missionary activity devoted to eliciting worship of and compliance with the church\u2019s\u00a0magisterium<\/em>\u00a0(declared doctrine). The clan\u2019s life was therefore consistently instructed in Christian truth, which established the new religious culture as a\u00a0Christian<\/em>\u00a0caste lifestyle:\u00a0<\/em>The catechism displaced the Vedas, and the diurnal rituals of the\u00a0puja<\/em>s were forced out by the sacrament of the Catholic Mass. In marriage preparation, the consanguineal Hindu practice of union between first cousins was an early casualty, being promptly proscribed by church edict.<\/span><\/p>\n

The rituals of baptism and the other sacraments had far-reaching clan repercussions imprinting on all, without exception, Portuguese first names and surnames (patronyms) sustaining a sense of distinct\u00a0jati<\/em>\u00a0or caste identity. In its routine execution, it had all the trappings of a proud rite of passage. In\u00a0Fishermen of the Coromandel,<\/em>\u00a0historian Patrick Roche writes,<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018So completely have Portuguese Patronymics been absorbed into the Paravar fabric that no Parava can have even the faintest recollection of what his or her indigenous occupation or clan name might have been.<\/em>\u2019[viii]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

The unique \u2018Christian name\u2019 given at baptism was a forename that was a Tamilised European name: Suroni (Jerome), Soosai (Joseph), Xaviermutthu (Xavier), Yagappan (James), Pavel (Paul), Annamma (Anne), Arulappar (John), Lorthusaamy (Lourdes), Matheyu (Matthew), Maatha (Mary), Rayappar (Peter), Saviriyar (Xavier), Thevasakayam (God\u2019s help), Thomayar (Thomas), Thiresamma (Theresa). The patronyms, of which there were approximately seventy-two, were indiscriminately borrowed, usually from Portuguese soldiers who stood in as godparents in the baptism of a child or adult. Examples include Alvarez, Miranda, Pereira, Gomez, Motha, Vaz , Fernando, Corera, Roche and at least sixty-four others.<\/span><\/a>[ix]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

THE BHARATHA EXODUS, THE BHARATHA ARRIVAL<\/span><\/h4>\n

Looking back with a wide angle on the nineteenth century, we witness the Raj in South India converting the Tinnevelly District hinterland into cotton plantations. Meanwhile, across the ocean in Sri Lanka, their counterparts were aggressively transforming the colony from subsistence farming to large-scale plantation agriculture. These two forces, on opposite sides of the Gulf of Mannar, were the push and pull factors leading to an exodus in the nineteenth century of Bharatha families from the Fishery Coast and the surge onto the island of an energetic trading diaspora.<\/span><\/p>\n

For two millennia, the South Indian Fishery Coast had been the principality of Paravanadu\u2014the land of the Paravas. Now, in the space of a quarter-century, the British Raj not only supported misplaced development but stripped the very foundation of an ancient people\u2019s way of life. Newly integrated rail and road networks, rather than connecting the seven port cities, bypassed six of them, with port modernization limited to Tuticorin all to expedite the delivery of cotton to the Birmingham and Lancashire mills. The bottom line is vividly captured in the words of historian Patrick Roche:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2026 these port towns were divested of their older roles as centres of commercial activity and education, and the void created in their maritime economy rendered them ghost towns, inhabited largely by a few fishermen, females and retirees from Government service or trade in Ceylon.<\/em><\/span><\/a>[x]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

The gateway to the new country, from the early 1860s, was the jetty of the Colombo harbour, with settlers usually arriving by\u00a0boat mail<\/em>\u2014that is, aboard the steam-powered mail ships that plied between Tuticorin (on the India side) and Colombo (on the Ceylon side), a 16- to 18-hour journey across the 170 miles separating the two ports. On arrival, Bharatha immigrants followed the well-beaten trails of their pioneers, heading\u2014usually by horse carriage, bullock cart or rickshaw\u2014to their new homes in the precincts of Pettah, Kochikade, Mutwal and Kotahena, or by rail to the hill country or coastal towns with their plantation environs, all locales with a developing familial population.<\/span><\/p>\n

At their destinations, the settlers surveyed their neighbourhoods like tourists, fascinated by the shop houses and the multi-cultural citizenry, both strikingly different from the unicaste townships of their former homeland.<\/span><\/a><\/a>[xi]<\/a>\u00a0Predictably, some were conflicted between memories of the world they left behind and the challenges of acquiring a new language and coping with unfamiliar situations. The Colombo Bharathas were ahead of the adaptation curve, however, because their culture in many ways dovetailed with that of the local Karave, a fisher caste community that shared a colonial past and were acknowledged forerunners in the commercial world. Mutually comforting were the two groups\u2019 western names and other Portuguese and Dutch influences which had found their way into the languages and dress. Most of all, both communities had converted to the Latin rite of the Catholic religion, the focus of their social well-being, with commitment and devotion displayed in familiar religious traditions and rituals.<\/span><\/a><\/a>[xii]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

PETTAH: THE PERFECT LANDING SPOT<\/span><\/h4>\n

The commercial area of Colombo known as\u00a0Pettah<\/em>, a Tamil name meaning \u2018area outside the military fort\u2019, was the perfect backdrop for demonstrating the immigrant trader\u2019s business skills\u2014both formal and informal\u2014to a robust assembly of multi-ethnic competitors. Here Bharatha merchants would have interacted face-to-face with every Indian trading ethnicity\u2014Borahs, Gujarathis, Hyderabadis, Keralites, Malays, Memons, Moors, Nattukottai Chettiars, Parsis and Sindhis, to name a few.<\/span><\/p>\n

Pettah was a compact area laid out in the symmetry of an oversized crossword puzzle. Ambling down its premier conduit, Main Street, the immigrants would have encountered the diaspora\u2019s well-distributed pockets of specialised economic activity: exotic goods and services, wholesale and retail distributorships, middlemen, jobbers, salesmen and other functioning parts of the supply chain. At first, with untrained eyes, those \u2018fresh off the boat\u2019 from across the gulf may have been repelled by the din; history makes it clear, however, that they soon accepted the raucous atmosphere as a race towards price equilibrium.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Colombo Bharathas made use of Pettah as a kind of home planet to satellite operations in the hill country and the coastal towns. First and most entrepreneurial among the visionary merchants was Paul Soris, who in 1861 founded a provision store in Nuwera Eliya and within a few short years added a model storehouse with well-stocked inventories of wines, spirits and imported foods. These operations plainly generated sizeable cash flows, encouraging Soris to branch out into fresh produce and flowers with the launching of a ten-acre garden near his hill-country operations. He followed it up with the construction of the small Pedro View Hotel for upper-class visitors to this incomparable resort in the hill country.[xiii]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

The family firm of M.P. Gomez started its life in Ratnapura and rapidly opened branches in Colombo, Negombo, Chilaw, Avissawella and Balangoda. The energy and drive of the Gomez family encouraged\u00a0 \u00a0its extended kinsfolk, and in short order, franchises were opened in Kandy, Bandarawela, Nuwara Eliya and the suburbs of Colombo, with the addition of gas stations to their business archetype.<\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps the most extraordinary achievement by a member of the tribe was that of Santiago de Mel, also known as \u2018Godfather\u2019 (Aiya<\/em>\u00a0or\u00a0Periva<\/em>\u00a0in Tamil), who rose from status as a minor clerk in a forgettable commodity house, first to become the leading agricultural importer of onions from his own farms near Tuticorin, and then to innovate the distribution of cooking oils and kerosene by bullock carts throughout the island under the\u00a0Rising<\/strong>\u00a0Sun<\/strong>\u00a0brand. The entire operation was staffed by his Bharatha relatives from the defunct port city of\u00a0<\/span><\/a>Vembar.<\/em>[xiv]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

By the turn of the twentieth century, Sri Lanka was beginning to realise the increasing presence of an industrious Indian diaspora: These were \u2018the Toilers\u2019, \u2018the Traders\u2019 and \u2018the Entrepreneurs\u2019 so vividly brought to life by S. Muthiah in his masterpiece\u00a0The Indo Lankans: Their 200-Year Saga<\/em>.<\/span><\/a>[xv]<\/a>\u00a0Muthiah quotes G.A. Crowell, a nineteenth-century Sri Lankan planter (the editorial emendations are Muthiah\u2019s): \u2018Wherever new roads have sprung up \u2026, towns spring up and commerce establishes itself.\u2026 [Who] that saw Matale 20 or 25 years ago [could have imagined] it with its long street of thriving bazaars and its \u201cMiranda\u201d\u2019\u2014here Muthiah interjects his opinion of this Portuguese-derived (and thus clearly Bharatha) surname, with its Shakespearean \u2018brave new world\u2019 association, as \u2018not a bad name for its principal merchant and hotelkeeper\u2019.<\/span><\/a>[xvi]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

In these years, the massive expansion of Sri Lanka\u2019s plantations, focusing on the cultivation of tea, rubber and coconut, was a turning point in the island\u2019s economic life, negating the contraction of livelihoods just across the ocean. As this trade opened the country to commerce with the rest of the world, it created prototypical small towns with government offices which provided employment for a new class of workers, especially those with an English-language education, whose wages and salaries were paradigms of a nascent middle class. This was an environment perfectly suited to the Bharatha trader invested in the culture of merchandising provisions, food, liquor and all the essentials of life to the new populations in and around the plantations island-wide and the rapidly growing city of Colombo.<\/span><\/a><\/a>[xvii]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

[The \u00a0Colombo Bharathas\u2019 contribution] to Ceylon was immense, particularly through the retail stores they established in small towns throughout the island to provide the middle class and the wealthy [with] imported household goods, from food and drink to furnishing and clothing. What the British-owned shops offered in Colombo, the Bharatha shops offered in other towns in Ceylon.<\/em><\/span><\/a>[xviii]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

PETTAH: THE HOME OF COMMERCE<\/span><\/h4>\n

Pettah endures as a crucible for the collective memories of the Indian diaspora. The precinct\u2019s boundaries, enclosing approximately a square mile, are easy to make out if eyeballed from the pedestal of the iconic Khan clock tower.<\/span><\/p>\n

I have walked the streets of this district several hundred times. Today, I resolve to slow down and see them afresh, realizing that the diaspora\u2019s history informs my family\u2019s story, welcoming my ancestors to this island in a way that is deeper than a scroll in the parish register. The sociologist Ronald Takaki encourages immigrants to remember that \u2018In the sharing of our varied stories, we create a community of a larger memory.\u2019[xix]<\/a>\u00a0I love this sentiment.<\/span><\/p>\n

My nostalgia for the past spurs me to seek out the iconic names that once gave this this locale its cohesive energy, the numerous well-positioned Bharatha houses of commerce that once arose in this milieu, among them X.P. Paiva & Sons, known for imported foods and instructional books on Western classical music (full disclosure: X.P. was a member of my family); F.X. Pereira & Sons, the standard-bearer for department stores, insurance brokers and shipping agents; its subsidiary, The Rupee Stores, a worthy iteration of Woolworth\u2019s dime stores; J.L. Carwallio & Sons, retailer of high-end ladies\u2019 garments; and Victoria Caterers, exclusive provisioner of the restaurant cars in the long-distance trains of the Ceylon Government Railway.<\/span><\/p>\n

One could catalogue numerous others owned by members of the tribe, including those secluded behind nondescript signage promoting their individual specialty. A well-known example is the \u2018Fernando\u2019 businesses, including Dry-Fish Merchants on Old Butcher Street, now renamed as I.X. Pereira Street, memorializing a charismatic businessman-politician. I recognize more small and large imprints of Colombo Bharatha history in shopfronts and marquees , in transport conduits and side streets, in Pettah\u2019s pathways and aisles, in fact everywhere. And so, I accrue that history in my brain as I travel through the quarter.<\/span><\/p>\n

Pettah in the years following World War II was also the community\u2019s cultural zone, where the endogamous marriage tradition frequently surfaced, always illustrated in the simple fact that everybody was seemingly connected to you or your family. That same fact earned you a special welcome in any Bharatha household if you or a sibling were accomplished and of marriageable age\u2014and therefore assumed to be primed for \u2018an arrangement\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

Eventually I find that I have covered the main streets and the cross streets, and have gravitated to a well-attended evening service at St Philip Neri\u2019s Church\u2014the Colombo Bharathas\u2019 church where, in the immediate postwar years, my father\u2019s several siblings were baptized or married, or both. Centuries ago the shrine of Philip Neri on the western boundary of Pettah served the religious needs of the Bharatha Catholic seamen who called in at the Port of Colombo. Senior members of the community recall an opulent iteration of the feast of Our Lady of Snows, in which a statue was\u2014and still is\u2014paraded through the streets of Pettah. Rose petals would be placed in its path by pious Bharatha traders and their families. In some years, the prestigious Ceylon Police Band would provide the orchestral backdrop for the devotional and formal services through the generosity of several Bharatha families. St Philip Neri\u2019s Church persists as a cultural touchstone in a way that most religious shrines do not, reminding the remaining Bharatha families in the city to explore their ethno-religious identity, as I have come full circle to do now.<\/span><\/p>\n

Benediction and Bon Voyage<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>In Sri Lanka, the Bharatha story, in a phrase, is one of immigrant success, for which we look back with gratitude on the long-sightedness of our ancestors. Beyond Sri Lanka, Bharatha toilers, traders and entrepreneurs have continued to settle as emigres in Australia, North America and Europe especially in the \u00a0post second world war\u00a0 years , disrupting traditional barriers through assimilation or education.<\/span><\/p>\n

In these early decades of the twenty-first century, the clan is still on the move, now led by the demographic cohorts known as Gen X and the Millennials\u2014the children and grandchildren of my own generation. I now understand nature\u2019s purpose for the curious sociological \u2018rule of three\u2019. As a third generation immigrant of \u201cColombo \u00a0Bharatha \u201cancestry, I am in a unique position to both preserve the genetic memory of our proud clan, and pass it along to those whose grandchildren, born in yet another corner of the world, will ask them, \u2018So, who or what is a Bharatha?\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

***\u00a0<\/strong>Joe \u2018Malli\u2019 Vaz grew up in Colombo and was educated at St Joseph\u2019s College and Aquinas University College, Colombo. An Economics graduate of the University of London, he received an MBA in International Management from the Thunderbird School of Global Management in Phoenix, Arizona. Over the years, he has worked in banking and finance, and graduated from several banking studies programs, including the School of International Banking at the University of Colorado Boulder. For the past twenty years he has been an adjunct instructor in business studies at colleges in the Phoenix, Arizona, area, where he lives with his wife, Nimal Wickramaratne.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

** The refinement of the PIX for preesentatsion here was sorted out by Johnny De Silva of Melbourne, an old schoolmate who is not a Bharatha but a good citizen of the world.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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The \u201cColombo Bharathas\u201d: A Merchant Community \u00a0Joe \u201cMalli\u201d Vaz *** The ghosts of forgotten family histories haunt the children of immigrants, pressing us to take on the role of scribes to recover and record those enduring tales implanted deep within our childhood memories. Iruthamma De Votta kin Source:Thuppahis This experience loosely corresponds to what social […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":68115,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[35598,35599],"class_list":{"0":"post-68114","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-aside","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-articles","8":"tag-iruthamma-de-votta-kin","9":"tag-periamma","10":"post_format-post-format-aside"},"yoast_head":"\nThe \u201cColombo Bharathas\u201d: A Merchant Community<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The ghosts of forgotten family histories haunt the children of immigrants, pressing us to take on the role of scribes to recover and record\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta 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