_Cutchi_ or _Meman, Kachhi, Muamin._--A class of Muhammadan merchants
who come every year from Gujarat and Cutch to trade in the towns of
the Central Provinces, where they reside for eight months, returning to
their houses during the four months of the rainy season. In 1911 they
numbered about 2000 persons, of whom five-sixths were men, this fact
indicating the temporary nature of their settlements. Nevertheless a
large proportion of the trade of the Province is in their hands. The
caste is fully and excellently described by Khan Bahadur Fazalullah
Lutfullah Faridi, Assistant Collector of Customs, Bombay, in the
_Bombay Gazetteer_. [483] He remarks of them: "As shopkeepers and
miscellaneous dealers Cutchis are considered to be the most successful
of Muhammadans. They owe their success in commerce to their freedom
from display and their close and personal attention to and keen
interest in business. The richest Meman merchant does not disdain to
do what a Parsi in his position would leave to his clerks. Their hope
and courage are also excellent endowments. They engage without fear in
any promising new branch of trade and are daring in their ventures,
a trait partly inherited from their Lohana ancestors, and partly due
to their faith in the luck which the favour of their saints secures
them." Another great advantage arises from their method of trading
in small corporations or companies of a number of persons either
relations or friends. Some of these will have shops in the great
centres of trade, Bombay and Calcutta, and others in different places
in the interior. Each member then acts as correspondent and agent for
all the others, and puts what business he can in their way. Many are
also employed as assistants and servants in the shops; but at the end
of the season, when all return to their native Gujarat, the profits
from the different shops are pooled and divided among the members
in varying proportion. By this method they obtain all the advantages
which are recognised as attaching to co-operative trading.