Makrand Mehta (1931-2024): Historian who studied a period of tumultuous change in Gujarat

The death of Makrand Mehta on the morning of September 1 draws the curtains on an era of Gujarati historiography, an era when Gujarat produced very few historians of note.

Makrand Mehta completed his formal studies with a doctoral dissertation on the textile industry that emerged in Ahmedabad after the 1850s. But to label him a business historian would be to confine him to a very narrow compartment. He emerged as a historian of modern Gujarat, with a particular focus on the nineteenth century. He would foray into the seventeenth century to find material to bolster his theories; he could also venture into the twentieth when the subject demanded it, but his primary interest was the period between 1800 and 1900 when Gujarat was in the throes of change in every arena – political, financial, religious and cultural.

Though largely restricted to Gujarat, Makrand Mehta’s research followed Gujaratis wherever they went. And the Gujarati diaspora was global. From Gujarati enclaves along the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf in the 1600s to permanent settlements in Mumbai from the 1800s, Mehta tracked Gujarati communities everywhere. When they moved further afield to Africa and Britain, he followed them there too.

Mehta taught history at Gujarat University in Ahmedabad for most of his academic career. After his retirement, he was associated with the MS University, Vadodara as Professor Emeritus. A bilingual historian who could write with felicity in English and Gujarati, Mehta’s output, in a career spanning five decades and more, was voluminous: a score of books and innumerable essays and articles for the popular press.

Becoming a historian

After obtaining a master’s degree in history in 1955, Makrand Mehta began researching the literary traditions of Gujarat and how they evolved in the modern period. He was particularly interested in the role of the Gujarati poet, Dalpatram Dahyabhai, who had a ringside view of all the major literary and reform movements in nineteenth century Gujarat.

However, a second master’s degree in business history in 1965 gave a new direction to Mehta’s research. The field of business history had hardly been explored in India and Gujarat was a particularly fertile arena for business research. Gujarat’s numerous business communities, their prominence for centuries in the Indian Ocean trade, and their reinvention as industrialists in the nineteenth century afforded sufficient material for research.

Mehta’s major publications in this arena are The Ahmedabad Cotton Textile Industry: Genesis and Growth (1982), which was adapted from his doctoral dissertation, and Indian Merchants and Entrepreneurs in Historical Perspective: With Special Reference to Shroffs of Gujarat, 17th to 19th centuries (1991), a collection of essays which examined the careers of a few prominent Gujarati businessmen: Shantidas Zaveri, Virji Vora, the Parekh dynasty of merchant brokers and the banking family of Travadi.

While he was willing to engage with the conventional theories of entrepreneurship formulated by Western scholars, Makrand Mehta came to the conclusion that “successful men of business [in Gujarat] drew strength from their caste and sect.” He went on to “formulate, although roughly, the concepts of the Jain and Vaishnava ethic” that challenged then prevailing theories of business.

During the 1970s and ’80s, Mehta was a regular presence at the annual Indian History Congress and was elected the president of the modern history section in 1987. In his presidential address, he surveyed the fledgling field of Indian business history and outlined further areas for research.

He warned against the perils of theorisation: “Model-building is a useful exercise indeed, but sound theoretical constructs and models by themselves are not likely to lead a historian too far. Manipulated generalisations may even prove counterproductive.” He instead advocated that business historians “concentrate on the micro-level problems, revive our narrative craft, and describe step by step what actually happened and how this happened”.

Mehta expressed the hope that a “large number of micro-studies dwelling on specific activities of the promoters of economic activities in the British territories and the princely states and also in foreign countries would … present a more realistic and balanced view of the situation in a critical area of human endeavour”.

Makrand Mehta largely ploughed a lone furrow. His wife, the historian Shirin Mehta, was a sounding board and an occasional co-author. Another kindred soul was Dwijendra Tripathi, a business historian affiliated with the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. They not only co-authored a few monographs but also organised a series of seminars on business history.

A turning point

It was inevitable that Mehta’s interest in all aspects of nineteenth century Gujarat would lead him to engage with the reform and religious movements which were then emerging in the region. In his article on “Vaishnava Banias as Merchants, Sharafs and Brokers”, Mehta notes that he “had started with a theory that the founders of a new religious sect possess great organisational talents which are similar to the business entrepreneurs. They perceive opportunities, exploit them, and build up an organizational network to take advantage of the opportunities.”

Perhaps the most important movement to emerge in this period was the Swaminarayan sect, which Mehta had been researching since the 1960s in connection with his work on the Gujarati poet, Dalpatram Dahyabhai. He had published a few essays on the sect in English earlier but when an article, framed in terms of his entrepreneurial theory, appeared in a Gujarati journal, it proved to be a turning point, not just for Mehta but for the practice of history in modern India.

Writing in the Economic and Political Weekly, Sujata Patel notes that “The recent decision of the government of Gujarat to give permission to eight citizens from the Swaminarayan sect to initiate proceedings under Section 295 A of the Indian Penal Code against Makrand Mehta. Ghanshyam Shah and Achyut Yagnik, author, editor and publisher of Arthat, a journal of social science research published in Gujarati by the Centre for Social Studies, Surat, can be seen as yet another act of the Congress Party to appease the Hindu majority and the fundamentalist religious section that claims to speak for it.”

Unlike contemporary historians who might find themselves isolated in such situations, the Indian History Congress, in its Dharwad session held in November 1988, was quick to condemn this development and recognise it as a portent for the future:

“The government’s sanction for prosecution without a proper enquiry demonstrates an ominous trend which consists in the readiness of those in authority to exploit for their narrow political ends, the forces which have a vested interest in taking our nation back into the pre-modern age. Besides violating the freedom of thought and expression in general, the sanction is particularly violative of academic freedom. It seeks to emasculate scientific research and a country with a long and continuous history may not be left with any genuine history at all.”

Though warrants were issued twice, Mehta and his colleagues were not arrested and the case never came to trial. The threats of violence to life and limb were more immediate and Makrand Mehta thought it prudent to make his peace. Things were never the same for practitioners of Indian history. With environmental conditions constricting with every passing year, they found themselves becoming gradually self-censorious.

Later years

Makrand Mehta sought to emerge from this episode by focusing on new areas of research. He was one of the first Indian historians to seriously engage with diaspora studies. Field research took him to Kenya and the United Kingdom. And from it emerged two books: Gujaratiyo ane Poorva Africa, 1850-1960 [Gujaratis and East Africa, 1850-1960] and Britainma Gujarati Diaspora (2009), co-authored with Shirin Mehta, which examined the historical perspective and contemporary trends of the Gujarati diaspora in Britain. As a trustee of the Darshak Itihas Nidhi, Mehta organised a series of conferences which explored the relation between Gujarat and the Arabian Sea.

Ahmedabad, his janmabhoomi and karmabhoomi, held a special fascination for Mehta. After decades of studying the personalities and institutions that shaped the growth of the city, Mehta, in a new avatar, began studying the local history of the ancient precincts of Ahmedabad. Writing regularly in Gujarati newspapers for a popular audience, Mehta excavated the micro-histories of the pols and chowks of Ahmedabad which had been in existence for centuries.

Around the same time, he also began writing biographies in Gujarati on business icons based on his earlier work. This series included books on Ranchhodlal Chhotalal who established the first textile mill in Ahmedabad and twentieth-century industrialists such as Ambalal Sarabhai and Kasturbhai Lalbhai. Another book on the same theme was Gujaratna Ghadvaiya [The Shapers of Gujarat] (2007), a two-volume behemoth of biographical sketches.

When the proposal to rename Ahmedabad as Karnavati began to gather momentum in 2017–18, Makrand Mehta was at the forefront of those who opposed the move. As a historian, he had studied the ancient records and had come to the conclusion that Karnavati was an imaginary city. For Mehta, the proposed renaming was “a distortion of history”.

Perhaps the most significant work from the later period was his writings on the Dalits of Gujarat. It was for the first time that a writer, using historical methods and sources, sought to uncover the conditions in which a large section of the Gujarati population was forced to live. His essays on the oppressive regime which Gujarati Dalits faced, both during colonial times and after Independence, paved the way for deeper research into dalit history.

Makrand Mehta kept an open house for scholars and students alike. A passing researcher, working on any field connected with Gujarat, would find it worthwhile to seek him out. They would be ushered into his basement library where Mehta, sitting on a well-cushioned swing, held court. Generous to a fault, he would share his critical insights in their area of research and, if called for, trenchant criticism.

Mehta believed that “history is the only discipline which can provide an integrated perspective of human action.” Though he had a bleak view of the prospects for the practice of history in Gujarat, Makrand Mehta harboured the hope that a few scholars would eventually emerge from the quagmire.

Murali Ranganathan is a historian and translator.