Gokaldas Khimji: A Twentieth-Century Banyan Merchant in Muscat

Hindu Indian, particularly Kachchhi, merchants have played a central role in the commerce of Oman for several hundred years. Acting as brokers, importers, exporters, retailers, and financiers, “Banyans” inhabited the port towns of Oman from Sohar to Salalah and connected the Omani interior to the wider Indian Ocean and global economy. These merchants eventually brought their families and established a community in Oman that maintained roots in both their adopted and native homes. Sometime in the nineteenth century one Khimji Ramdas, from Mandvi, Kachchh (in modern Gujarat, India) became a trader, sailed to the coast of Oman, settled there with his family, and established a company in Muscat, Oman’s principal port. From the 1920s to 1970, Khimji’s son Gokaldas became the dominant figure in this community and one of the country’s richest merchants.

Gokaldas’s commercial origins were humble enough: exporting dried dates to India. From these beginnings, Gokaldas became a central link between coastal Oman and the interior in two important ways. First, dates were the economic livelihood of Omani farmers and their only source of income. In providing rice, sugar, coffee, and other consumer goods in exchange for their dates, Gokaldas fueled local markets. Second, in traveling through the interior, Gokaldas established personal links with many of Oman’s tribal leaders. This came at a time when political authority was divided between the Sultan in Muscat and the Ibadi Imam in Oman, and Gokaldas became an important link between Sultan Saʿid b. Taymur and these tribal leaders. In time, these contacts helped in the expansion of the Omani economy as Gokaldas became the government labor contractor in Royal Air Force construction projects during WWII, sole government contractor following the reunification of Oman, and a major retail establishment.