An illustration from an 1850 book “Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta” by John Welsh Dulles showing a temple in Chintadripet, Chennai.
If you’ve ever driven past the narrow lanes of Chintadripet in central Chennai — now lined with hardware shops, workshops, and temples — you’re passing through what was once one of the earliest planned textile villages in colonial South India.
In the mid-eighteenth century, the East India Company called it Chindadry Petta. But it was founded not by British officials, but by Tamil weavers who built it, managed it, and gave it life.
A Village of Looms and Promises
Around the 1730s, Company officials at Fort St. George decided to finance a village for textile production. They wanted a site where weavers could be organized, monitored, and financed for export work, a kind of proto-industrial settlement designed to feed Europe’s hunger for Indian cotton. To make this happen, they turned to two local men: Narryn and Chintomboy (Naran and Chinnatampi in Tamil I presume), hereditary weavers who were brothers. They were promised privileges: tax exemptions, freedom to manage their affairs, and a small grant of 300 pagodas to build houses for the weavers. These privileges were the same as the Company provided their father Timan.
Their efforts succeeded. The new settlement, called Chindadry Petta in British East India Company records, soon hummed with over 600 looms producing chintz, moorees, and ginghams. Every piece of textile from this village when exported bore a stamped mark: “Chindadry Petta.” But Chindadry Petta wasn’t just a Company worksite. It was a community. The brother built temples for weavers who settled there to worship at and tanks to help with cloth washing and other needs. They convinced nearby merchants to contribute annual donations for religious upkeep, and even obtained a parwana from the Nawab of Carnatic, Safdar Ali Khan, thus guaranteeing a steady allowance for the temples.
War, Loss, and a Plea
Then came the French attack on Madras in 1746 in the First Carnatic War. Chindadry Petta was plundered. Warehouses were looted, cloth worth thousands of pagodas was destroyed, and homes and temples were burned.
When peace returned, the sons of the two founder brothers, Jaggoo and Chengalroyah, submitted a petition to the British Deputy Governor in 1750. Their fathers, they wrote, had “taken great trouble” to make the village flourish. They had borrowed money to pay weavers and keep the looms running even during crisis.
Now everything was gone.
They asked for recognition, and for compensation for the losses “their fathers sustained by the loss of Madras.” Their words are deferential, yet deeply human: a quiet record of artisans trying to rebuild after empire’s wars.
A Living Legacy
Nearly three centuries later, Chintadripet still bears the traces of that history. The old temples of Siva and Perumal, the grid-like street plan, and the enduring presence of small-scale workshops all echo its origins as a planned weaving quarter.
Their petition from 1750, preserved in the British Library’s India Office Records, reminds us that the foundations of colonial Madras were not laid by imperial engineers alone. They were woven, quite literally, by the hands of local artisans who made the city — and its textiles — their own.
Suggested Citation
Murali, Deepthi. “The Weavers of Chindadry Petta: A Petition from the Heart of Colonial Madras.” Connecting Threads Digital History Project (2025). Based on British Library, India Office Records, IOR G/18/15, pp. 191–192. CC BY-NC 4.0.
🧵 Context Note: What Was Chindadry Petta?
Chindadry Petta, the colonial name for today’s Chintadripet, was established around 1734 under East India Company supervision.
It was designed as a “weavers’ village” supplying cotton goods for export to Britain.
Hundreds of looms, dyers, and spinners lived within its walls, working under hereditary leaders who negotiated directly with Company officials.
Its Tamil name, often written Chinna Tari Pettai — “small loom quarter” — captures its identity as both a production hub and a living neighborhood.
When the French destroyed it in 1746, local weavers rebuilt it almost immediately — a testament to the resilience that continues to define Chintadripet’s working-class heart today.