In the crowded economic history of colonial India, the spotlight is often trained on a familiar cast: the Parsis of Bombay – Tatas, Wadias, Godrejs; the Marwari financial giants of Calcutta like the Birlas; and Hindu industrial houses. These communities unquestionably shaped the contours of Indian capitalism. Yet this focus obscures the contributions of other groups who played pivotal roles in connecting India to global circuits of technology, finance and communication.

One such story is that of the Chinoys, a Khoja Ismaili Muslim business family from Bombay. Their rise from the China trade to the helm of India’s international wireless communication network illuminates a distinctive moment in India’s economic history – one in which indigenous capital, imperial technological ambition and flexible, cross-community partnerships came together to produce what we may call cosmopolitan capitalism.

This story not only unsettles the notion that Gujarati Muslim traders were confined to Indian Ocean commerce; it shows how local entrepreneurial families could position themselves at the centre of the empire’s most advanced technological systems.

The Chinoys: a family emerges

Like many Bombay merchant families, the Chinoys began in maritime trade. Their patriarch, Meherally Chinoy, started in the mid-nineteenth century as an apprentice to the Khoja merchant prince Jairazbhoy Peerbhoy. Through repeated voyages to China and Japan, he built a reputation for commercial acumen and established both capital and credibility. His sons consolidated and expanded this base.

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By the 1920s, the family firm – Fazalbhoy Meherally (F.M.) Chinoy & Co. – had diversified into wheat, pearls, kerosene, postal contracts, cinema exhibition and, most famously, the Bombay Garage, one of India’s earliest and most successful motor car agencies.

Diversification, community networks and political visibility placed the Chinoys among Bombay’s prominent business families. They sat on the Municipal Corporation, held the Sheriff’s office and participated in legislative bodies. This broad civic footprint would soon prove crucial when new technological horizons opened.

The opportunity of empire: wireless communication

By the early twentieth century, the British Empire faced a strategic challenge: the submarine cable network, long considered the Empire’s “nervous system”, was overstretched. Radio communication offered a faster and cheaper alternative. The Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company proposed in 1910 an ambitious ‘Imperial Wireless Chain’ linking London to its colonies through long-wave radio. Yet Britain hesitated. Monopolistic power for a private company raised political alarms, and various government committees stalled progress.

Meanwhile, the Government of India – more pragmatic and less suspicious of private enterprise – was open to experimentation, provided the enterprise was Indian-led and financially sound. Into this space stepped the Chinoys.

In 1921, Sultan Chinoy travelled to England to negotiate with the Marconi Company and secure rights for India. It was a bold move; a single Bombay firm seeking to collaborate with one of the world’s pre-eminent technology companies was far from routine. But the Chinoys had two advantages: capital and credibility. Marconi demanded stringent terms, including a steep price for patents and proof that at least half the investment would be raised in India.

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Understanding that they needed support beyond their own family, the Chinoys assembled a board that looked like a snapshot of Bombay’s commercial elite: the Parsi industrialists Cusrow and Ness Wadia, the Hindu financier Sir Purshottamdas Thakurdas, and the respected Muslim leader Ibrahim Rahimtoola, among others.

This coalition reassured the colonial state that the venture was both financially stable and politically broad-based. The resulting company, the Indian Radio Telegraph Company (IRTC), represented one of the most ambitious examples of cross-community capitalist cooperation in the late Raj.

Beam wireless comes to India

In 1925, the IRTC secured a ten-year licence from the Government of India. But just as the long-wave system was ready to proceed, Marconi announced a breakthrough: shortwave or “beam” wireless, capable of transmitting messages 95% cheaper and three times as fast. The IRTC pivoted immediately, abandoning the long-wave model in favour of the beam system. By 1927, the India–England beam service opened to great fanfare.

Within a week, message traffic exceeded expectations; within a year, the company handled millions of words of international communication. Beam wireless rapidly undermined the older cable telegraph companies, leading to a merger in 1932.

The new entity, the Indian Radio and Cable Communications Co. (IRCC), managed virtually all of India’s external traffic. In short order, an Indian-led company had assumed control of India’s most sensitive international communication infrastructure.

The IRTC succeeded because the Chinoys excelled at uniting Parsi, Hindu and Muslim capitalists, ensuring political legitimacy and financial strength. The brothers also recognised that mastery of cutting-edge communication technology would give Indian business unprecedented leverage.

Bombay was a major centre for the Khilafat movement, and many Muslim merchants faced financial ruination because of their association with the pan-Islamic movement. The Chinoys, however, stayed away from politics generally and the movement specifically, and prospered. The Khilafat movement was seen as a threat by the empire.

The Chinoys also led the Indian Broadcasting Company (IBC), launched alongside the IRTC. But while beam wireless thrived, the IBC collapsed. The reasons were structural. The government could not agree on the scale and scope of broadcasting, the sector required heavy infrastructure investment. Besides, the company was undercapitalised.

By 1930, it was liquidated; by 1936, its successor became All India Radio. Yet even this failure generated influence. Sir Rahimtoola Chinoy became president of the All India Radio Merchants’ Association, a powerful industry group, positioning the family at the centre of radio trade and regulation.

The legacy of cosmopolitan capitalism

The wireless story reveals a great deal about Bombay’s business world. In an era of rising nationalism and sharpening communal boundaries, major commercial projects still relied on inter-communal coalitions. The IRTC’s leadership – Khoja Muslim entrepreneurs partnering with Parsi industrialists and Hindu financiers – represented an economic cosmopolitanism that was both pragmatic and visionary.

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The Chinoys used this moment not simply to participate in imperial networks but to shape them. Their stewardship of India’s international communication system lasted until 1947, when the newly independent state nationalised the IRCC. By then, they had already secured their place among the country’s leading capitalists and public figures, holding senior positions in banks, municipal bodies and national economic delegations.

The Chinoys’ story disrupts familiar narratives of Indian capitalism. Gujarati Muslim traders were not merely marginal or ocean-oriented merchants; they were capable of driving technological transformation at the very heart of colonial infrastructure. Their story underscores how families could convert commercial networks, political relationships and technological foresight into durable economic power.

For readers interested in the full archival study and the complete analytical argument, the original research article is available in Indian Economic and Social History Review.

Danish Khan is a historian and journalist based in London. His DPhil thesis is under contract to be published by Cambridge University Press.

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