Gold in India
Commodity, Culture, and Economic Circuits

This book delves into the socio-economic significance of gold in India and studies its enormous cultural currency.

Anindita Chakrabarti (Edited by), Barbara Harriss-White (Edited by)

9781009521710, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 4 September 2025

230 pages
24 x 16 x 2.5 cm, 0.6 kg

'Groundbreaking and fascinating! Finally, we have a major work on the multifaceted roles of gold in India's economic life. Bringing together evidence from historical archives, policy documents and ethnographic observations, the eminently qualified contributors from different fields reveal intricate, and often surprising, connections between the global economy, monetary policies, kinship and gender relations, cottage industry and informal trade throughout modern times. This book also lays solid foundation for future research on gold, which is likely to gain more attention given the deep uncertainties in the global economy in the early 21st century.' Biao Xiang, Director of Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Germany

India is developing as a global gold powerhouse. Yet its intricate web of trade and transformations remains largely overlooked in scholarly research. This book delves into the economic significance and cultural currency of gold in India. Drawing on insights from economic sociology, political economy and history, it combines comprehensive fieldwork with archival research to explore the circuits of gold – looking at legal and illegal imports, refining, trade, craft and mechanised production, retail and re-export. Through multidisciplinary research, it relates the roles of gold in the building and sharing of familial and gendered wealth, in the diversity of rural economic life and in women's sexuality, subordination and agency to a range of issues in state policy. It shows how exploring the quiddity of gold offers a perfect plot to deepen our understanding of the socially regulated Indian economy.

Introduction
Acknowledgements
1. A Political Economy of Gold In India Barbara Harriss-White
2. A New Sheen to the Barbarous Relic? A Long View of Monetary Gold in India Bazil Shaikh
3. Gold and Money Laundering in India Sreekumar Gopalakrishnan
4. Goldsmithery and Goldsmiths: How India's Informal Gold Jewellery Manufacturing Sector Works Sruti Kanungo
5. Gold Trade and Gold Traders: The Subarnabaniks of Bengal Anindita Chakrabarti and Madhuparna Nayak
6. 'Silk Reelers Know the Pawnbroker Well': Gold and Capital in a South Indian Town Nithya Joseph
7. The Political and Moral Economies of Gold as Money in Rural Tamil Nadu Isabelle Guérin, G. Venkatasubramanian and Elena Reboul
8. Malabar Gold: Relational, Reproductive Saving, Gendered Property, and Wealth Accumulation among Kerala Muslims K. C. Mujeebu Rahman and Anindita Chakrabarti.

Subject Areas: Political economy [KCP]