Going down South Masi Street from D.M. Court towards Vilakkuthoon, after Manjanakkara Street branches off, one is enveloped by textile shops and showrooms. There are hole-in-the-wall outlets with just space for bargaining juxtaposed with glass-facade showrooms, all doing brisk business amid shrill horns from the busy street, shouts of sweaty loaders and tricycles full of bales ramming their way through shoppers, cycles, two-wheelers and autorickshaws.
This energetic pocket is the stronghold of Halai Memons in Madurai, though they run their textile business all over the city.
Stress on surname
Unlike the shops of their brethren from Pallapatti, the names of the Memon shops mostly bear the surname of the founder or owner. Many of the Memons have been successful in their business so much so that shops they run such as Hajee Moosa, A.K. Ahmed, Tayubs etc have become household names in Madurai.
Their ancestry can be traced to Sindh in Pakistan from where they migrated to Halar region of Kathiawar in Gujarat. It is said that while the name Memon derived from the original word, momin (the faithfuls) after they embraced Islam in the 15th century, the prefix, Halai, is a mutant of Halari region in Gujarat. Thus, the Memoni dialect picked up words vastly from Sindhi, Kutchi, Urdu, Arabic and Gujarati, the lipi (script) of which they use for correspondence and literature.
Lineage
Says Abubakar Hasim (77), president of Halai Memon Association in Madurai, “The first of the Memons, five sons of Hajee Mohammed — Essa, Ibrahim, Ismail, Yousuf and Hajee Moosa — started a textile shop on East Chithirai Street in 1878. Over a period of time, the brothers and their descendants started shops on their own not only in Madurai but in Tiruchi and Chennai as well.”
In 1893, one of the Memon brothers set foot in Tiruchi after getting orders to supply cloth to all the 19 cooperative stores in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka of South India Railways (now Southern Railways) which had its headquarters in that city then. [ why we lost it then ?
]
Even during the ‘control period’ of the world war times, when cloth imported were first supplied to the military and the public stood in queues in front of shops to buy rationed cloth all over the country, the Madurai Memons, through their business contacts and clout in Bombay, the Mecca of textiles, were canny enough to work through the quota system to buy cloth and did a roaring wholesale business in Madurai. It took four months for the bullock carts transporting textile goods to reach Madurai then.
Difficult period
Reminiscing about the ‘Glasgow mull,’ ‘Mettur mill gaada’ and Kovilpatti mill long cloth, Mr. Abubakar says, “With good education and alluring jobs in the IT field and other cushy jobs in the Middle East and western countries, many educated Memoni youth in Madurai have veered away from their traditional textile business.” Without any remorse, he reasons himself saying, “Everything turns out for the better.”
Now, there are about 1,200 Memons in Madurai. These sunni Muslims continue to maintain contacts with their relatives in Ranavav, Porbandar and Dhoraji in Saurashtra region of Gujarat.
According to Abdul Karim Zaveri, joint-secretary of the Halai Memon Association, “Our people run shops mostly on South Masi Street, Mahal Vadampokki Street, Vilakkuthoon and Jadamuni Koil Street. A majority of the Memons reside in Anna Nagar, K.K. Nagar and Parasakthi Nagar near Villapuram where our association has built 72 free houses along with a community hall for the poor among us.”
Philanthropic activities
Listing out their philanthropic activities such as conducting medical camps, giving financial assistance to students etc, Mr. Karim, whose forebears in Porbandar employed Mahatma Gandhi and took him to South Africa, says that their charitable activities are not limited to their people but all the needy in Madurai, which is home to the largest concentration of Memons in Tamil Nadu.
Source - The Hindu MetroPlus
This energetic pocket is the stronghold of Halai Memons in Madurai, though they run their textile business all over the city.
Stress on surname
Unlike the shops of their brethren from Pallapatti, the names of the Memon shops mostly bear the surname of the founder or owner. Many of the Memons have been successful in their business so much so that shops they run such as Hajee Moosa, A.K. Ahmed, Tayubs etc have become household names in Madurai.
Their ancestry can be traced to Sindh in Pakistan from where they migrated to Halar region of Kathiawar in Gujarat. It is said that while the name Memon derived from the original word, momin (the faithfuls) after they embraced Islam in the 15th century, the prefix, Halai, is a mutant of Halari region in Gujarat. Thus, the Memoni dialect picked up words vastly from Sindhi, Kutchi, Urdu, Arabic and Gujarati, the lipi (script) of which they use for correspondence and literature.
Lineage
Says Abubakar Hasim (77), president of Halai Memon Association in Madurai, “The first of the Memons, five sons of Hajee Mohammed — Essa, Ibrahim, Ismail, Yousuf and Hajee Moosa — started a textile shop on East Chithirai Street in 1878. Over a period of time, the brothers and their descendants started shops on their own not only in Madurai but in Tiruchi and Chennai as well.”
In 1893, one of the Memon brothers set foot in Tiruchi after getting orders to supply cloth to all the 19 cooperative stores in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka of South India Railways (now Southern Railways) which had its headquarters in that city then. [ why we lost it then ?
]Even during the ‘control period’ of the world war times, when cloth imported were first supplied to the military and the public stood in queues in front of shops to buy rationed cloth all over the country, the Madurai Memons, through their business contacts and clout in Bombay, the Mecca of textiles, were canny enough to work through the quota system to buy cloth and did a roaring wholesale business in Madurai. It took four months for the bullock carts transporting textile goods to reach Madurai then.
Difficult period
Reminiscing about the ‘Glasgow mull,’ ‘Mettur mill gaada’ and Kovilpatti mill long cloth, Mr. Abubakar says, “With good education and alluring jobs in the IT field and other cushy jobs in the Middle East and western countries, many educated Memoni youth in Madurai have veered away from their traditional textile business.” Without any remorse, he reasons himself saying, “Everything turns out for the better.”
Now, there are about 1,200 Memons in Madurai. These sunni Muslims continue to maintain contacts with their relatives in Ranavav, Porbandar and Dhoraji in Saurashtra region of Gujarat.
According to Abdul Karim Zaveri, joint-secretary of the Halai Memon Association, “Our people run shops mostly on South Masi Street, Mahal Vadampokki Street, Vilakkuthoon and Jadamuni Koil Street. A majority of the Memons reside in Anna Nagar, K.K. Nagar and Parasakthi Nagar near Villapuram where our association has built 72 free houses along with a community hall for the poor among us.”
Philanthropic activities
Listing out their philanthropic activities such as conducting medical camps, giving financial assistance to students etc, Mr. Karim, whose forebears in Porbandar employed Mahatma Gandhi and took him to South Africa, says that their charitable activities are not limited to their people but all the needy in Madurai, which is home to the largest concentration of Memons in Tamil Nadu.
Source - The Hindu MetroPlus
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