The emergent Institute of Chartered Accountants of India: An upper-caste profession

Abstract

The distinctive Indian caste system divides Hindu society into a hierarchy of four varnas, each of which also has a traditional association with particular categories of occupations. This exploratory study examines the interplay between varna and the emergent organised accounting profession in India. Using the earliest available membership list of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) -being 1953, just four years after the organisation's formation -a comprehensive classification of the caste status of the Hindu membership was undertaken. Among other findings, this revealed a significant over-representation of the Brahman upper caste relative to this caste's presence in the general population. This Brahman presence is posited as having endowed a status to the accounting occupation that aided the replication in India of the British model of professional organisation. However, it also meant that the formation of the ICAI would predominantly benefit an already privileged social stratum and contribute to perpetuating traditional caste hierarchies within the modern occupation of professional accounting.

Bridging the divide: The rise of the Indian Accountant from 1900 to 1932

“…5 In undertaking this research, we also build upon the work of others who have sought to link class and professional accountancy in Great Britain (Lee 2004;Walker 2002;Kedslie 1990; Paisey and Paisey 2016; Edwards and Walker 2010) and we locate this study within this broader professional landscape. The present study will show that in imperial India the linkage between caste and accountancy had its origins in class/caste relations and was in play well before 1953, the year selected for Sidhu and West's post-independence study of the profession and caste (Sidhu and West 2014).…”

“…Following Sidhu and West (2014), we examine the Register of Accountants created by the First Indian Accountancy Board (1932) (and held at the Indian National Archive). This Register was used as a data source because it represents the first full national list of accountants practicing in colonial India.…”

Accounting for the cost of sports-related violence

“…Third, this research also expands our understanding of how communal values and beliefs inform accounting practice. While the effect of community have been acknowledged in previous accounting research investigating, for example, how relational ties based on kinship, race, caste, gender or friendship shape accounting and the profession (see Belal et al , 2017; Cadiz Dyball and Valcarcel, 1999; Komori, 2008; Sidhu and West, 2014; Spence et al , 2016; Susela, 2010), in contrast, our research focusses less on the influence of divided social groupings. Instead, we return and give substance to the claim of Puxty et al (1987) that “community” in some coordinated sense has an important role to play in mediating accounting practices:[…] modern nation-states harbour and depend upon the existence of the values and ideals of community.…”

Accounting and the history of the everyday life of captains, sailors and common seamen in eighteenth-century Portuguese slave trading

“…2 Among these, the role of accounting in facilitating the horrors perpetrated by the Holocaust/Nazism stands out for its pioneering character and compelling illustrations, with the seminal study by Funnell (1998) followed by other enlightening contributions, including Lippman (2009), Lippman and Wilson (2007) and Walker (2000). Other themes featuring in ‘dark side’ studies include the Irish Famine (Funnell, 2001; O’Regan, 2010), the Highland Clearances (Walker, 2003a), poverty (Care, 2011; Holden et al, 2009; O’Hogartaigh et al, 2012; Servalli, 2013; Walker, 2004, 2008), war and financial reporting (Chwastiak, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2001, 2008; Chwastiak and Lehman, 2008; Chwastiak and Young, 2003; Cooper and Catchpowle, 2009), indigenous dispossession (Gibson, 2000; Greer, 2009; Hooper and Kearins, 2008; Neu, 2000a, 2000b; Neu and Graham, 2004; Neu and Heincke, 2004), indentured labour (Irvine, 2004; Tyson and Davie, 2009), accounting for imperialism/accounting and empire (Annisette and Neu, 2004; Bakre, 2008; Davie, 2000, 2005a), race and ethnicity (Annisette, 2003; Davie, 2005b; Hammond and Streeter, 2013; Kim, 2004a; Poullaos, 2009; Sidhu and West, 2014), gender (Kim, 2004b; Kirkham and Loft, 2013; Lehman, 2012) and class (Walker, 2002). Despite their diversity, these studies all evidence that, far from being a neutral technology, accounting has long played an active role in dehumanising, exploiting and degrading human beings.…”