Jhamandas Watumull’s move from Hyderabad, Sindh, through Manila to Honolulu began a family retail enterprise that grew from a downtown shop into a major Hawaiʻi business. The Watumulls sold aloha shirts and later commissioned design work, linking the family to the islands’ apparel history—but the available accounts do not establish them as the shirt’s sole inventors or popularisers.
How Jhamandas Watumull began in retail
According to the South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA), Jhamandas Watumull was the son of a brick contractor in Hyderabad, Sindh. He moved first to Manila, where he lived with an older brother, worked in textile mills and began a retail business specializing in imported goods. SAADA’s retrospective family-history account says that, after economic difficulties in the Philippines following World War I, he moved to Hawaiʻi in 1914 and opened a downtown Honolulu store with Dharamdas. The account calls the business the East India Store.
In 1917, Dharamdas returned to India, and Jhamandas’s brother Gobindram became his business partner. This early history is drawn from a family account donated to SAADA by Indru Watumull, so its dates and descriptions are best understood as an archival narrative rather than an independent corporate ledger. SAADA: “Watumull’s 100 Years (1914–2014)”.
From a Honolulu shop to a larger retail enterprise
The East India Store sold imported goods including raw silk and aloha shirts. SAADA describes it as growing into a major department store, with later branches in Waikīkī and downtown Honolulu. Gobindram built the Watumull Building in 1937 to house the company’s headquarters.
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SAADA’s account provides two dated measures of the business’s footprint. In 1957, the Watumull properties included ten stores, a Waikīkī apartment house and assorted commercial developments. By 1973, the store count had reached twenty-nine. These are the archive’s reported counts for those years, not a measure of the family’s personal wealth. SAADA’s family-history account.
What the Watumulls contributed to aloha wear
The family’s place in aloha-wear history is clearest in two documented roles: retail distribution and design commissioning. SAADA records that the East India Store sold aloha shirts. A 2014 fashion timeline in HONOLULU Magazine says that in 1936 the store commissioned artist Elsie Das to make hand-painted floral designs on silk for interior decoration, adding that her clothing designs came later. The timeline therefore supports a connection between the business and fashion design, but it does not say that Das’s 1936 interior designs were shirts. HONOLULU Magazine: “History of Hawaiʻi Fashion”.
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The broader chronology includes other businesses and makers. HONOLULU Magazine reports that Musa-Shiya used the term “aloha shirts” in a June 28, 1935 advertisement, and credits Ellery Chun with trademarking the aloha shirt and beginning mass production in 1936. The timeline also says Watumull’s bought Royal Hawaiian Manufacturing Co. in 1955. These are distinct contributions: advertising, trademarking and production, retailing, and commissioned design should not be collapsed into a single claim of invention.
On this evidence, the Watumulls belong in the story of how aloha wear reached customers and developed as a local business, but the family should not be described as the sole originator of the garment or its name. The magazine timeline describes the shirt as shaped by multiple cultural influences; its account is a secondary overview, while the store’s sales are also recorded in the SAADA family archive.
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Business leadership and philanthropy
Jhamandas’s son Gulab Watumull was born and educated in India, according to a SAADA biographical item. He came to Hawaiʻi in 1948 to continue his education, joined the family business, and became head of Watumull Brothers, Ltd. in 1956.
The biography says Gulab arranged the J. Watumull Fund, established in 1965. It supported educational institutions in Hawaiʻi, the continental United States and India, endowed Honolulu art programs, and promoted Indian-Hawaiian exchange. SAADA’s family-history account also lists the Rama Watumull Fund, J. Watumull Estate and Watumull Foundation among the family’s educational and philanthropic institutions. SAADA: “Brief biography of Gulab Watumull”; SAADA: “Watumull’s 100 Years (1914–2014)”.
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Ellen Watumull’s civic work
The SAADA family account says Ellen Watumull, Gobindram’s wife, worked with the League of Women Voters in Hawaiʻi to rescind the Cable Act of 1922, which denied U.S. citizenship retention to American-born women who married non-citizens. It also says she worked with the Watumull Foundation and Margaret Sanger to organize the first International Planned Parenthood Conference held in India. Those activities are presented here as the archival account describes them; the source does not establish that Ellen acted alone in either effort.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Why the family’s story matters
The Watumull history joins migration, retail growth and civic giving in Hawaiʻi. Its apparel connection is specific rather than exclusive: the East India Store sold aloha shirts, the business commissioned design work, and later acquisition activity tied it to a local manufacturer. The timeline of the garment also names other advertisers and producers, making the Watumulls one part of a broader commercial and cultural history. The University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Library similarly frames the family through its Honolulu business and philanthropy in “The ʻĀina We Call Home – Pilina: Cultural Exchanges”.
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