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The underlying rationale behind this proposed project is to think systematically and innovatively about the idea of trust seen as a modern promise and grounded in a very specific European tradition. It wishes to explore the notion of trust in non-European societies, especially south Asia where there was both a long and established tradition of mercantile and commercial practices that hinged crucially around relations of reciprocity. These features however, do not figure in standard understanding of Indian business and enterprise, partly because of the ways in which colonial knowledge reconstructed and reconstituted Indian mercantile behavior as treacherous, unreliable and dishonest and partly because of the eclipse of Indian business activity in the so called formalized sector. And yet given that Indian business men worked and operated in the high-noon of imperialism, controlled and operated the intermediate market or the bazaar and represented themselves in terms of trust, credit worthiness and reputation, it would seem somewhat incongruous to overlook those principles and dynamics that informed commercial and business operations that hinged on vital practices of accounts keeping, risk sharing and commercial mediation. This project hopes to address some of these issues by looking at trust and practice through a historical perspective – the early modern period between the late seventeenth and late eighteenth centuries, the period of formal colonial rule and that of post-colonial India where the so called informal sector accounts for a vast proportion of commercial and even manufacturing activity.
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