Watumull: The Indian family that built a business empire in Hawaii from scratch

Jhamandas Watumull, a 29-year-old American investor, arrived in Hawaii’s Honolulu island in 1915 to set up a retail store for his transfer business with his companion Dharamdas.

The two registered Watumull &amp, Dharamdas as a company on Honolulu’s Hotel Street, selling unique items like silks, pearl arts, brassware and another collectibles from the East.

Jhamandas Watumull sent his nephew Gobindram to maintain their Honolulu shop while he ran their business in Manila after Dharamdas passed away from cholera in 1916. As they strengthened their business, the boys had travel between India and Hawaii over the course of the next few years.

The Watumull brand is still widely used on the islands now; from education to art philanthropy, the home is inextricably linked to Hawaii’s rich history.

They are now one of the island’s wealthiest people and were the first South Asians to immigrate from India.

“Slowly, slowly, that’s how we did it,” Jhamandas told a local Hawaiian publication in 1973.

Born in pre-independent India, Jhamandas was the son of a brick contractor in Sindh province’s Hyderabad (now in Pakistan). The family was educated but not wealthy. After an accident paralysed his father, Jhamandas’ mother bought his passage to the Philippines where he began working in textile mills. In 1909, he began his own trading business in Manila with his partner Dharamdas.

J.D. Watumull, J.D., claims that after the US, which at the moment was occupying the Philippines, curtailed relations with foreign companies, they moved to Hawaii.

Shortly after Jhamandas ‘ nephew Gobindram began running the business, their Hawaii company was renamed East India Store. According to SAADA, a online library of South Asian American history, the company expanded into a significant department shop with branches in various parts of Asia as well as Hawaii in the years that followed.

In 1937, Gobindram built the Watumull Building in Honolulu’s Waikiki village to building the company’s office. According to SAADA, the multi-million-dollar company had expanded to 10 shops, an apartment property and miscellaneous business developments by 1957.

The Star-Bulletin news describes products at the shop- linens, underwear, brass and teak wood curios- as woven with “romance and mystery” that transported one” to far lands and interesting scenes”.

In the 1930s, shirts in striking colors with area patterns, known as the” Aloha shirt,” gained popularity as a sought-after souvenir as Hawaii gained popularity among wealthy tourists.

The Watumull’s East India Store, one of the first on the island to bring designs made in Pacific patterns, is a recognized expert in Hawaiian textiles and patterns, Dale Hope claims.

The designs were second commissioned in 1936 by Gobindram from his musician sister-in-law Elsie Jensen.

“Instead of Mount Fuji, she’d have Diamond Head, instead of koi [she’d] have tropical fish, instead of cherry blossoms [she’d] have gardenias and hibiscus and all the things we know here,” Hope said.

According to Nancy Schiffer in her book Hawaiian Shirt Designs, the models were shipped to Japan where they were handblocked onto fresh fabric.

” These delicate floral designs, modern and dynamic in principle, were the first Hawaiian models to be produced commercially”, Schiffer information.

In his book Paradise of the Pacific, William Devenport writes,” They were sold by the boatload and were exhibited as far ahead as London.”

Gobindram’s child Lila told Hope that the Watumull’s Waikiki business had British film stars Loretta Young, Jack Benny, Lana Turner and Eddie” Rochester” Anderson coming to purchase these tops.

“More and more we are finding out that Watumull has become a synonym for Hawaiian fashions,” Gulab Watumull said in a 1966 interview in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.

The Watumulls soon bought the Royal Hawaiian Manufacturing Company, where the first matching family aloha wear was created.

Despite their success, it would be decades before the Watumull brothers – Jhamandas and Gobindram – received US citizenship. Their early years in the country were marred by discrimination and difficult immigration laws, the Hawaii Business Magazine wrote.

In 1922, Gobindram married Ellen Jensen, an American, whose membership was stripped under the Cable Act for marrying an refugee who was not available for US citizen. In 1931, Jensen would later work with the League of Women Voters to overhaul the laws and reclaim membership.

In 1946, Gobindram had become a citizen when a law allowing Indians to get citizens through naturalization was passed.

His nephew Jhamandas, however, continued to cut many of his day between India and Hawaii.

During India’s 1947 partition, the Watumull family moved from Sindh to Bombay ( now Mumbai ), leaving much of their property behind, SAADA says.

Gulab, Jhamandas ‘ child, finally arrived in Hawaii to work for the family business and serve as its head.

The sons split the company in 1955, with Jhamandas and Gulab keeping control of the wholesale division while Gobindram’s home took control of the real estate division.

Jhamandas entirely relocated to Hawaii in 1956, a few years after the passing of his family and one of their children, and immigrated to the US in 1961.

The community has continued to care about India’s future and its citizens over time. In Making it in America, Elliot Robert Barkan writes that Gobindram frequently traveled to Washington to help the country’s cause for self-reliance. He was a key member of the Committee for India’s Liberty.

Gobindram’s residence in Los Angeles was” a Mecca for individuals concerned with Indian freedom”, Sachindra Nath Pradhan information in the book India in the United States.

In 1946, Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, who afterwards became India’s leader, gave a series of lectures at American universities under the auspices of The Watumull Foundation.

Gobindram’s wife Ellen was instrumental in bringing an international parenthood conference to Delhi in 1959, leading to the establishment of the country’s first birth control clinics.

The family’s philanthropic activities include funding for Hawaii and India’s academic institutions, endowments for Honolulu-based art programs, and promoting Indian-Hawaiian change.

Many of the children of the Watumull boys are employed in and around Hawaii.

In the past few years, as the family business shifted focus to real estate, the last Watumull retail store closed in 2020. The company thanked its customers “for years of good business and good memories”.

Watumull Properties purchased a 19,045 sq m (205,000 sq ft) marketplace in Hawaii last year. JD Watumull, the president of the company, said, “The Hawaiian Islands continue to be our family’s focus today and in the future.”

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