Migrating Economies: Tracing the Concept of Migration and Wealth Accumulation in Select Folktales from Rajasthan

Abstract

Folktales have formulated folk discourse of cultures and communities. The folktales written by Vijaydan Detha dwell in the discourse around the various communities of Rajasthan. One such community is the Baniya community. The tales disclose the attitude and understanding of the Baniya towards money. The concept of migration for business, of accumulating money, and of the ‘dharma’ of the Baniya is traced through the folktales in this paper. It takes into consideration the recurring images throughout the corpus of the folktales of Rajasthan written by Detha, and studies how characters belonging to the merchant class/caste in Rajasthan are accultured with the ideas of trades, and additionally, how the inherit passion towards money and for earning drives them to the very act of migration. The normalization of accumulating wealth and migrating temporarily to faraway places is ingrained in the cultural understanding. The discourse that is constructed through the sporadic presence of such characters is one that establishes a number of stereotypes and traits governing the characters and their actions, both. These can also be found in many other literary pieces, and popular culture, including the present-day cultural understanding of the baniya man and his ‘tricks’. The paper tries to establish the baniya as a folk figure of the North Indian merchant community, who carries a strong passion for wealth and business.