Snipped from What's caste got to do with business? Vivek Kaul Saturday, 23 August , 2008 http://sify.com/finance/fullstory.php?id=14745085 The community that seems to have made the most of the British rule were the Parsis. How did that happen? >From the late seventeenth century, the Paris evolved a very good working relationship with the British. At that point most Paris lived in the Surat-Navsari stretch of southern Gujarat and worked there as agriculturalists, artisans, small-time coastal traders and shipbuilders. They were not a part of Hindu or the Muslim mainstream. Other than this, they had been exposed to commercial influences because they lived very close to the ports of Bharuch, Daman and Surat. Therefore, to the British, they seemed like an ideal recruitment as native brokers, agents and shippers. In 1735, Lowji Nusserwanji Wadia, a shipbuilder from Surat was invited to set up a dock in Mazagon. For the next 200 years, nearly seven generations of Wadias, built around 400 ships in Mazagon and Bombay dockyards. In fact, the rise of Mumbai is very intimately linked to the Parsi migration to Mumbai. Almost as a part of a deliberate settlement policy, by 1800 the community owned half of the city and was even known to rent out property to Europeans. The Parsis also gained tremendously when the East India Company opened up the Chinese market for opium and cotton, in order to pay for the tea exported to Britain. In fact, a number of Parsis were even imprisoned by the Chinese authorities in the Opium War of 1839-1842. However, unlike the Marwaris, the Parsis were direct participants in export trade as shippers. Take the case of Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy. He used to send opium and cotton from Mumbai and Kolkotta to Canton, export Chinese tea and silk from there to London, and then reroute funds from China to India by importing textile and iron goods from Britain. However, over the years, the importance of Parsis as a business community has diminished. This is primarily because of Anglicisation and the thrust of economic activity shifting from foreign trade to producing for the domestic market. (more) --- Harshawardhan_Bosham Nimkhedkar