• The Ramayana and many plays from the Gupta period and Tamil Sangam literature write in detail about the trade guilds or shrenis.
• These were professional bodies of jewellers, weavers, ivory carvers or even salt-makers, who came together to control quality production, create a sound business ethic, maintain fair wages and prices, sometimes operated as a cooperative and controlled the entry of newcomers by laying down high standards of craftsmanship and enforcing rules regarding apprenticeship.
• Each guild had its own chief, assisted by others. These functionaries were selected with great care. Guild members were even entitled to impeach and punish a chief found guilty of misconduct.
• The shrenis were not necessarily restricted to a locality and were known to move from one town to another, over a period of time.
• Occasionally, the shrenis (of merchants and artisans) came together in a joint organisation, called the nigama, or the equivalent of a chamber of commerce and industry. Some nigamas also included a class of exporters, who transported the specialities of a town over long distances and sold them at higher margins of profit than those they could obtain locally.
• By all accounts, the shrenis were very sound and stable institutions, and enjoyed considerable moral and social prestige, not only among their own members, but in the society at large. This conclusion is borne out by their records, preserved in inscriptions all over North and South India.
• The institution of guilds came under severe strain over the last five centuries. Writing in 1880, Sir George Birdwood observed, “Under British rule… the authority of the trade guilds in India has necessarily been relaxed, to the marked detriment of those handicrafts the perfection of which depends on hereditary processes and skill”. Artisans’ guilds are almost unheard of in India today. The cooperatives promoted by the government, may be viewed as the modern avatar of artisans’ guilds, but their success, so far, has been limited.
