Talk and Discussion on ‘Market of Rumours: Stock Market and its Regulation in British India 1914-1946’

The Socio-Legal Review (SLR), a student-run journal at NLSIU, is organising a talk and discussion on ‘Market of Rumours: Stock Market and its Regulation in British India 1914-1946’ on Thursday, April 25, 2024 from 5 pm-6pm.

The talk will be delivered by Ms. Ujjwala Sharma,  a PhD candidate in the Department of History at the University of Toronto. She works on the relation between war and finance in 20th Century British India. Ujjwala will deliver her remarks for the first 20-25 minutes followed by a Q&A session which will be moderated by Niveditha K Prasad, Editor, Socio-Legal Review.

Abstract

“I attempt to understand the relationship between war and capitalism, focusing specifically on the finance capital in British India in the period between the First and the Second World Wars. Foregrounding war as a moment of uncertainty allows us to understand the aspects of capitalism that profit from uncertainty. The regulation of the stock exchange in Bombay, in light of fall in share prices, will be a register to understand this relation. In addition to an imposition of a law, understood in the restrictive sense of the term as logos, the interbellum recommendations endorsed regulation of its activities in and through the rules of the stock exchange itself. The aim of regulations was not the foreclosure of risk, but the “governmentalization of speculation,” as Ritu Birla calls it. This was because speculative transactions on the exchanges were legitimate. During the Second World War, while there was a ban on forward trading through the Defence of India Act, 1939, the crash of government securities listed on the stock market in 1942, fostered a minimum price to be set. In this, I argue that the strong state is not one which inhibits the market operations, rather, facilitates the processes of financialization in times of crisis.”

This talk is being organised as part of SLR’s efforts this year to promote conversations on socio-legal work.