IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/duk/dukeec/10-55.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Economic Modernization in Late British India: Hindu-Muslim Differences

Author

Listed:
  • Timur Kuran
  • Anantdeep Singh

Abstract

The Muslims of South Asia made the transition to modern economic life more slowly than the region’s Hindus. In the first half of the twentieth century, they were relatively less likely to use large-scale and long-living economic organizations, and less likely to serve on corporate boards. Providing evidence, this paper also explores the institutional roots of the difference in communal trajectories. Whereas Hindu inheritance practices favored capital accumulation within families and the preservation of family fortunes across generations, the Islamic inheritance system, which the British helped to enforce, tended to fragment family wealth. The family trusts (waqfs) that Muslims used to preserve assets across generations hindered capital pooling among families, and they were ill-suited to profit-seeking business. Whereas Hindus generally pooled capital within durable joint family enterprises, Muslims tended to use ephemeral Islamic partnerships. Hindu family businesses facilitated the transition to modern corporate life by imparting skills useful in large and durable organizations.

Suggested Citation

  • Timur Kuran & Anantdeep Singh, 2010. "Economic Modernization in Late British India: Hindu-Muslim Differences," Working Papers 10-55, Duke University, Department of Economics.
  • Handle: RePEc:duk:dukeec:10-55
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1656038
    File Function: main text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Anand Saxena, 2013. "Transgenerational succession in business groups in India," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 30(3), pages 769-789, September.
    2. Saumitra Jha, 2012. "Sharing the Future: Financial Innovation and Innovators in Solving the Political Economy Challenges of Development," International Economic Association Series, in: Masahiko Aoki & Timur Kuran & Gérard Roland (ed.), Institutions and Comparative Economic Development, chapter 7, pages 131-151, Palgrave Macmillan.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    India; Islam; Hinduism; capital accumulation; inheritance; partnership; corporation; waqf; economic development;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • N25 - Economic History - - Financial Markets and Institutions - - - Asia including Middle East
    • N85 - Economic History - - Micro-Business History - - - Asia including Middle East
    • K22 - Law and Economics - - Regulation and Business Law - - - Business and Securities Law
    • O53 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Asia including Middle East
    • P48 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Other Economic Systems - - - Legal Institutions; Property Rights; Natural Resources; Energy; Environment; Regional Studies

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:duk:dukeec:10-55. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Department of Economics Webmaster (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://econ.duke.edu/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.