A 200-year old chapter ends
With the headline "Decks cleared for VRS disbursement at Binny" and the announcement that a rehabilitation scheme for the ancient company had been cleared by a financial agency, it's the end of a chapter in the life of one of the three surviving Indian corporates with roots in the 18th Century.
The good news is that the name Binny Ltd. will survive — and remain in the textile business. The sad news is that its spinning and weaving operations will move to suburban Singaperumalkoil, near Maraimalainagar, and the Buckingham and Carnatic Mills properties, where the city's industrialisation began, and to which North Madras owes its growth, will become... well, there's been some uncertainties about that. I only hope that many of the Mills' buildings, homes and clubhouse, all deserving of being listed as heritage properties, survive any future plans.
There has also been the same uncertainty about Binny's headquarters building in Armenian Street, and I hope that this historic site too, where the Binny story began, does not fall prey to development. Binnys from Scotland lived in Madras from as far back as 1682, but it was John `Deaf' Binny, who arrived in 1797, who established the name in business in 1799. Deciding that serving the Nawab of the Carnatic and lending money to His Highness held no future at a time when the scandal of the Carnatic Debts was causing a furore in the British Parliament, John Binny decided to establish an agency house in his rented home in Armenian Street.
No sooner had Binny's become Binny and Dennison in 1800, John Binny moved into a house and property that had been a part of Amir Bagh (where the Indian Overseas Bank is now headquartered). Binny paid Rs. 28,000 for this garden house on whose site the Hotel Connemara was later developed. Binny and Dennison bought its Armenian Street home in 1804 for Rs. 35,000 and, as Binny Ltd., established in 1814, bought the rest of the property in bits and pieces for less than Rs.15,000 over the next 55 years, mainly from migrating Armenian merchants.
Binny's foray into industry in Madras was to take another 10 years. It was spurred by Governor Lord Napier's statement in 1869, "India is not a preserve of Manchester and the Government and people of England would repudiate a calculated neglect of the industrial capacities of this country". For one reason or another, it took the thought time to percolate into implementation and it was 1876 before the Buckingham Mill Co. Ltd. was registered. A garden house in Vyasarpadi, Eddystone Lodge, and the adjacent Stephenson property were both purchased for less than Rs. 20,000 and the mill buildings built to Robert Chisholm's design by Parthasarady Naick. The mill went on stream as a spinning unit in 1878 with a complement of 300 employees. With the demand for textiles increasing, Buckingham added weaving to its capacity in 1893. Meanwhile, the Carnatic Mill Co. Ltd. had been floated in 1881 and had gone on stream as a spinning and weaving unit in 1884, across the Otteri Nullah from the Buckingham Mills. Together, the two made drill, particularly khaki drill, which became world-famous.
With the largest khaki dyeing plant in the world, Binny's ensured that khaki became synonymous with the Company's name. A significant memory in the troubled times of today is that khaki was first used by the Guides — Indian border scouts — in the Northwest Frontier region in 1848, after the First Afghan War, and grew in popularity thereafter.
While it has never really been spelt out who at Binny's acted on Lord Napier's suggestion and made Buckingham and Carnatic happen, two names appear frequently in the affairs of the two Companies at the founding, Charles Ainslie and Clement Simpson, both almost Biblically bearded. But what is significant for the times is that, from the first, both mill companies had Indians on their boards: P. Somosoonthram Chetty, Abdulla Badsha Saheb, Ismail Sait, Abdul Rahman Sait and Abdollah Abooboukir.
The fall of the House of Arbuthnot on October 22, 1906, changed the close-to-the-soil way Binny's had developed. The crash almost sank Binny's and only a takeover by James Mackay, later the first Lord Inchcape, George Mackenize and Duncan Mackinnon of B.I. Steam Navigation kept it afloat until better times.
Courtesy : - Sri S.MUTTIAH
