Kelavi Chetti

Kelavi Chetti was one of the most successful cloth merchants in early 18th century Madras. He provided cloth for the English East India Company (EIC) and also loaned money for the EIC to operate.

He emerged as a main supplier for the EIC at Madras in 1704, when he and Venkata Chetti were entrusted with the supply of cloth for the EIC in the Fort of St George. The next twenty years marked a period of steady increase in the demand for cloth by the EIC. In the following years Kelavi Chetti, Venkata Chetti, Sunku Rama Chetti and Karanappa Chetti formed a partnership for procuring the cloth to the English. The merchants were procuring cloth with their own money, which meant that any risks of loss were borne by them. The Company at Fort St George was evidently very short of money and owed the merchants large sums for cloth supplied and for money borrowed from them.

At Madras there were often disputes between right and left hand castes. Since 1653, Madras was divided to specified areas belonging to right and left hand castes. In the years of 1707-8 one such dispute broke out over rights over physical space. Opinion of the Kelavi Chetti, who was the leader of the left caste division, was that it had little to do with physical space and more with the fact that he and other left division merchants had near monopoly over the EIC’s investments. In one of such disputes of 1716-17, Kelavi Chetti and Venkata Chetti led the exodus of the left hand caste from Madras. Although for this Kelavi lost the contract with the English, he did not lose the social status of the merchant among his reference group. He remained one of the most prominent and wealthy merchants of Madras.