Know Your City: Ahmedabad Stock Exchange building tells a story of a bygone era

While the first stock exchange came up in erstwhile Bombay, then in Gujarat being part of the Bombay Presidency where securities were traded to raise capital for public infrastructure, the Ahmedabad Stock Exchange has its roots in 'curb-trading' which was believed to be done under a banyan tree.

The stock exchange building was built in 1919 facing Mahurat Pol, the first pol of the city in Manek Chowk, and named literally after the 'auspicious hour'. (Express Photo)

Written by: Avinash Nair

5 min readAhmedabadJul 9, 2023 02:24 PM IST First published on: Jul 9, 2023 at 10:18 AM IST

The cries of buyers and sellers involved in transactions that once reverberated through the large halls of the 104-year-old Ahmedabad Stock Exchange building fell silent nearly two decades ago.

Though the public attention has shifted 30 kilometre away to the new international exchange and bullion exchange at GIFT City, this colonial structure—at the centre of the city square of Manek Chowk in the walled fort city of Ahmedabad with a bust of King George V—stands testimony to a bygone era that existed before electronic trading replaced physical transactions.

While the first stock exchange came up in erstwhile Bombay, then in Gujarat being part of the Bombay Presidency where securities were traded to raise capital for public infrastructure, the Ahmedabad Stock Exchange has its roots in ‘curb-trading’ which was believed to be done under a banyan tree.

Hailed as the second oldest stock exchange of India, the Ahmedabad Stock Exchange was founded in 1894. Riding on the back of Ahmedabad’s flourishing textile industry, the exchange came into being as a Public Charitable Trust just two decades after the Bombay Stock Exchange, now BSE, was formed.

Built with sandstone shipped from Dhangadhra in the Surendranagar district which gave it its ornate carvings, this dilapidated structure today stands partly sandwiched between a police chowki and a public toilet at the centre of Manek Chowk. Once lined with cars of influential traders and brokers, the road in front of the exchange is now packed with two-wheelers and hawkers, and jostles for space in the midst of concrete outgrowths and advertising hoardings.

“The building is not open to visitors. If one wants to see it from inside then written permission from the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation is needed,” says Mansingh Rajput who sells tea at the east corner of the exchange building that seems to have fallen victim to disrepair and abandonment. “We only keep this place clean,” says Rajput who identifies himself as the uncle of the guard who currently lives in a small portion of the building.

On the other side of the building is a snack vendor whose shop is named after the stock exchange. His red signboard reads “Juna Sharebajar Chavanawala” (Old Stock Exchange Snack-seller) in Gujarati. “My great-grandfather had opened this shop about 100 years ago. Though the stock exchange closed long ago, we continue to sell snacks from the same place as Manek Chowk continues to be a hub for jewellery during the day and a food court after dusk,” said Vikram Nagar, who currently operates the outlet.

“Very few people come to see this building. Nobody is allowed inside. Those who come, click photos from outside and leave. The building is dilapidated and only a guard lives in a corner of a hall on the ground floor,” Nagar added.

The stock exchange building was built in 1919 facing Mahurat Pol, the first housing cluster of the city in Manek Chowk and named after an auspicious hour. Today, the old wooden entrance and the signboard of the pol continue to welcome visitors. However, the pol inside is largely filled with shops of jewellers selling gold and silver ornaments.

Surrounded by three historical sites, the Jama Masjid, and the mausoleums of Sultan Ahmed Shah, who founded Ahmedabad, and his queens (Badshah no Hajiro, Rani no Hajiro), the Ahmedabad Stock Exchange building was built in neoclassical architectural style with a ground floor and two floors above it. The building with alternating balconies, also has three large halls, stacked one above the other, for the congregation of a large number of people in the stock exchange. The only portion of the building that is free from hawkers is the front porch with faded timber doors.

The arch on top of the timber doors reads, “The Ahmedabad Share and Stock Brokers Association”. On the floor above, the inauguration date of the building is written as Vikram Samvat 1975, or 1920 by the English calendar. The bust of King George V flanked by a lion and horse is on the topmost floor.

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Both the stock exchange building and the Muharat Pol are on the list of 22 places along the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation’s two km-long heritage walk. The latest to take this walk were foreign and national delegates who came to Gujarat for the U20 mayoral summit.

The Ahmedabad Stock Exchange was formally recognised as a stock exchange by the Central Government in September 1957 and it was granted a permanent recognition in March 1982. It functioned from this same colonial-era building until 1996. Thereafter, the exchange shifted to the Kamdhenu Complex in the Panjrapole area on the western side of the Sabarmati River. This exchange went live from the new premises in December 1996. It continued to stick to its old logo of the swastika.

In 2018, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Semi) formally permitted Ahmedabad Stock Exchange to exit the bourse business. Today, the exchange exists as ACML Capital Markets Ltd, a brokerage firm associated with the National Stock Exchange and BSE, said an official of ACML Capital Markets that continues to operate from the same building at Panjrapole.