Professionalization of social work in colonial India: Glancing at the history of social work in India before 1936

Introduction

What shall be the entry point for writing the history of professional social work in India? Should it concern itself with professionalized ‘modern social work’ education that was started in 1936 in Bombay or should it also concern the comparatively modernist ‘social services’, beyond academic spaces, that drove the engine of social service since the early 20th century? Indian scholars of social work (Dash, 2017; Gore, 1966; Nagpaul, 1988a, 1988b) predominantly use the rhetoric of ‘professional’ in demarcating the history of social work before and after 1936 – the foundation of the first social work graduate school in Bombay by a missionary from the United States. This, however, has two predicaments: first, it territorializes any attempt to historicize the practice of modern or professional social work to universities and academic spaces. Second, it suggests an idea that ‘social work’ before 1936 was non-systematic, philanthropic, non-professional, or apprenticeship based or pre-modern, and ‘modernity’ in social work essentially arrived with the establishment of social work graduate schools. Subsequently, the non-professional social work or ‘social service’ appeared to be a ‘traditional baggage’ (Agnimitra et al., 2015) which still, at times, haunts contemporary social work education in India. However, a comparatively smaller fraction of scholars re-trace the history of social work via the history of social reforms since the mid-19th century. This was succinctly observed by Gore (1966) on how religious and philanthropic social work were ‘traditions’ of social work, as much as ‘modern social work’ was; however, he also labels the former as pre-modern. These two strands of histories do not necessarily aim to compete with one another; rather, they simply aim to expand the very gamut of what can be understood as the history of social work in India. Hence, from a pre-modern form of social service, such as religious charity or philanthropy, the ‘modern social work’ evolved. But, if modern social work is an extension of these traditional social works, then how come we find no intelligible connection of the modern social work methods with our past? How do we understand and explain this very discontinuity embedded in social work history? How do we make sense of this new biopolitics of making new disciplines and professions, the cognitive content of which evolved with keeping the ‘west’ at the center? This article answers a few of these questions, along with presenting a few accounts of how professionalization was imagined and re-produced by different actors in social work history in India.

This article uses limited archival documents at hand, housed and digitized by the DN Rao Gadgil Library, Pune. An important weekly journal titled Indian Social Reformer (henceforth referred as ISR) was thoroughly read to understand popular opinions on social work (and social service) in colonial India. Limited archives of the Servants of India Society (henceforth SIS) and Social Service League (SSL) were also used to develop the arguments. Historical writings on social service work in colonial India have been used to understand the working of SSL. Articles and materials were temporally organized and thoroughly read to extract content related to either social work or social service as MS Gore had argued that the term ‘social service’ was predominantly used for altruistic practices in colonial India. The article focuses on history after 1910 and until 1936.

Theorizing modernity

What constitutes modernity essentially remains debatable in social theory, with many associating it with an act of ‘progress’ or ‘positive change’ (Wagner, 2012). Giddens (1990) argued that modernity enabled disembedding of ‘traditional’ institutions through time-space compression/distanciation. This was achieved through rampant global re-ordering of time (such as ordering of time-zones), calendars, the making of cartographies and maps, enabled with rampant development in infrastructure (railways, sea-routes, telegram). Modernity is inextricably entangled to coloniality, as modernity in some societies simultaneously came with coloniality. Hence, Walter Mignolo attaches the idea of coloniality of power to modernity, seeing both as essentially inseparable and two sides of same coin. Modernity brewed many discontinuous categories, presented myriad risks along with expert systems to prevent those risks. In understanding how modernity influenced Indian social work, one also needs to look at the nature of modernity in India. Partha Chatterjee (1998) argues that the appearance of modernity in India was intricately intertwined with ‘coloniality’, creating ‘unintended’ consequences and patterns across institutions. What is produced was not only modern, but also this ‘modern’ stood along with the ‘traditional’ modes of social organizations (such as social service?).

Along with presenting discontinuity in history, modernity alters the very contours of what can be understood as ‘modern’ or a valid ‘history’. Hence what is lost in the process is the knowledge that is not considered as ‘scientific’ or ‘modern’. In social work, this was reflected by the production of numerous ‘disciplinary’ standards, values and norms to become a modern ‘professional’. These ideas, produced in the west, somehow globalized to become the universal benchmark for the attainment of a ‘professional’ standard.

Social work started professionalizing (and modernizing) in India much before 1936, however such professional ethos were mostly maturing outside the modern network of academic and disciplinary practices of the Universities (as social work was not taught as an academic discipline in Universities). I argue this for two sets of reasons. There was a paradigm or consensus shift from philanthropic based social work and social reforms to the provision of social services such as health, education and labor welfare. Hence, an ‘agency’ or institution became an important site of social work (or social service as it was called back then). This was reflected by the adoption of ‘settlement’ as a site for social work drawing inspiration from the Toynbee Hall. Similarly, around the 1920s, many social service providers engaged with labor welfare and started to work within industrial settings and urban slums, both of which were growing rapidly around the 1920s. Similarly, drawing inspiration from the working of western missionaries in India, numerous non-governmental organizations started working as social service providers on issues from education to rural development. However, Kidambi (2007) labels them as indigenous ‘civilizing missions’. Second, there was a gradual shift in the very methods of doing social work or social service, such as the practice was sought to be organized and informed by the discovery of ‘social facts’. This prompted social workers (or social service providers) to engage in social surveys, settlement social work, and brainstorming innovative activities for clients. Knowledge produced in sociology, politics, economics and health was used in doing an ‘informed’ and ‘organized’ social work. Similarly, ideas were also produced and circulated within the growing networks of associations, conferences and numerous training institutions.

Social work through permanent settlement houses in colonial India

When in 1923 Jane Addams visited Bombay, the SSL invited her for a short conversation with the social service workers of Bombay. The weekly journal ISR spoke of her as ‘a pioneer in the field of social service in the Far-west’ (ISR, 1923b) – particularly because of her experiments with the settlement houses in America that had inspired the League to produce a similar model in Bombay (India) in 1917.

The SSL, established in 1911, represents the early aspirations for modern social work in India inspired by European/colonial versions of modernity. The SSL instituted in 1917 the first Toynbee Hall inspired settlement house in colonial Bombay, models of which by 1923 were reproduced in a few Tribal areas also. The SSL represented a shift in the paradigm of how social service (or social work) was imagined in India, beyond the large-scale social reforms that drove social change in 19th century colonial India. At its inception, it sought to embody a new ‘public ethic of social work’ by inviting an ‘army of charitable social workers’ informed by the study of ‘social facts’ (Kidambi, 2007). Hence, the practice of social service was no longer to be driven by non-scientific discourses as it now sought to be reflexively re-organized by the study of ‘social facts’.

The SSL organized the first European inspired settlement house in India, which it called the ‘permanent settlement’ for social work. With that, it represents a rather more organic effort in organizing a modern social work in India. It organized ‘social work centers in Tardeo, Chikhalwadi and Parel’ in colonial Bombay. Later in 1917, it established a permanent center at Parel under the charge of two ‘graduate workers’ (Kidambi, 2007), followed by another in 1918 for Muslims at Ghelabhai street in Madanpura. Graduate workers had training in social work either at the SSL or Servants of India Society (SIS). Kidambi describes the initial work of the League:

This involved, in the first instance, setting up a library and free reading room; arranging lectures, firstaid classes, recreational activities such as drawing and music classes; and founding a cooperative credit society. The League’s workers also engaged in street preaching and it was reported that on Sunday evenings, ‘the singing band of the Branch attracts the passers-by into its compound, where lectures are given by various speakers on all sorts of practical and useful subjects. (pp. 231–232)

Such events, however, were also influenced by the nationalist movement in India which created a public culture of social analysis by producing ‘scientific’ knowledge (Mitra, 2019) along with engaging in social reform and social services such as schools, alternative medical systems, and civil societies. For instance, Bhil Seva Mandal in Dohad in 1923 reported health and education camps, co-operative societies and charity work for Tribals being done through the settlement model. The report argued that Bhils lived in scattered settlements and remain aloof from other communities and hence more financial aid was needed to expand the scope of the work, as ISR (1923a) surmises,

Five each centers has been opened, of which three are in Dobad Taluka and two in Jhalod. Each center is in charge of a devoted worker, who does duty both as a teacher and a preacher, with the aid of a Bhil assistant. One of the centre (Jesawada) too, In addition, a boarding house for primary school boys, 20 to 25, and has also a dispensary in charge of a competent and devoted Vaid. The majority of the worker bind themselves to work for three years certain.

Emerging professional networks of social workers

Subsequently, parallel to the League, many social workers (ISR, 1921, 1923a) and social service organizations started to exchange knowledge and practice ideas by means of conferences, trainings and publications. There was developing a close-knit network of Indian social service workers engaged in ‘professional’ practices like conducting national conferences, offering trainings for cadre, legal activism, along with many experiments for rural re-construction. In 1917, the All India Social Service Conference was held in Calcutta, the aim of which the editor of ISR described as ‘to provide a common meeting ground for workers in all parts of the field who can compare notes and devise means of bringing their activities into sympathetic correlation’ (ISR, 1928). Hence, knowledge sharing was enabled through the organization of professional networks. Further in 1923, at the Fourth session of the conference, a Bombay Council of Social Workers was formed with Sir Lallubhai as its president. Miss Engineer, present at the event, described the aim of the council as

to provide frequent opportunities to the social workers to meet and study important social problems, surveying the field of social work in the city and collecting information of the work that is being actually done by organizing conferences of the kind we are holding to-day. It is under the auspices of this Council of Social Workers that this second session of the Bombay Conference has been organized. (ISR, 1928)

The Conference enabled a horizontal exchange of ideas among numerous social workers. For instance, at the Fourth session of the All India Social Service Conference in 1923, social workers presented papers on important themes such as ‘charity organization, training of social workers, co-ordination of social work in India’. Ideas on practices were exchanged, enabling social workers to discuss practical or methodological imperatives of social work such as ‘directed games for children, vigilance and rescue work, [social work with] criminal tribes settlements, training and provision of dais and midwives, education and care of defective children and prevention and cure of Tuberculosis’ (Servants of India Society [SIS], 1926). Parallel to exchange of ideas, conferences also enabled the identification of emerging areas of social concerns. For instance, the first session of the Bombay Social Service Conference (ISR, 1925) held in 1925 thematically organized itself into the study of prostitution (sex work), village sanitation, housing, adult education, labor welfare and alcoholism hence inviting presentation and participation by social workers around those impinging problems.

Regional conferences, councils and mandals (grouping) also emerged with a view to facilitate regional co-operation and exchange of ideas among social service workers. In 1920, social workers of south India organized a ‘South India Social Service Conference’ which had a ‘representative gathering’ of many social workers in a few years. Similarly in 1923, ‘Social Workers’ Sammelan was organized in Surat Seva Mandal (ISR, 1923c). Hence, aspirations of regional conferences, councils and associations for social workers enabled its early professionalization and modernization in the colonial era.

Perception of western social work in India

Social workers (and social service providers) in India were closely observing the ‘social work’ in the west, in pursuit of ideas and perspectives. Such as in 1917, models of Toynbee Hall were replicated in Bombay and beyond. However, Gore (1997; 1997) surmises that the term ‘social worker’ was not used with reference to ‘altruistic’ activities, instead ‘social service’ was used in popular vocabulary. This had many reasons. There were differences on how the Indian intelligentsia imagined social workers in colonial India. First, social service was seen as a self-less service not seen as a vocation for employment (Gore, 1997). Its spirit was also constitutive of the ideals of nationalist struggle against colonial rule and hence it was not distinctively seen as a ‘professional’ need but as an intrinsic value to be practiced by every other profession including lawyer, teacher and doctor. This may also indicate that social work was sought to be kept away from capitalist market forces. For example, in 1928, an article in ISR ‘Professionalizing of Social Work’ indicated skepticism toward the ‘business’ and clinical turn in American social work. Hence, the editor of ISR imagined a ‘true social worker’ instead of a ‘professional social worker’, as he writes,

True social service transcends all limitations of color, caste or creed. It is an offering made to humanity; in all humanity, in the spirit of an ardent devotee without any expectation of reward or gain. Self-advertisement and self-glorification do not find any place in the code of a social worker. (ISR, 1928: 541)

However, such a set-up was not sustainable in the long run and hence others like Lallubhai Sambaldas, at Bombay Social Service Conference in 1925, observed the need for reasonable aid for social service workers to enable them to sustain social service work as a vocation. Hence, somewhere capital, in the form of charity or government aid, started to become more crucial for the running of social work agencies.

In 1928, the Bombay Social Service Conference also highlighted different imaginations behind social reform and social service. Social reforms (such as those of Roy, Ambedkar or Phule) were seen as an organic response vital for the re-structuring of the redundant traditional order, while social service was primarily elicited to enable the adjustment of the masses and the maintenance of new modernity, urbanism and industrialization (ISR, 1928; Kidambi, 2007). Reforms were traced back to the Bengal Renaissance and the abolishment of Sati. The central objects of reform were the status of women and dalits – primarily because they were seen as frontiers of ‘Hindu’ family. Social service, on the contrary was imagined as an Indian version of the western ‘civilizing mission’ (Kidambi, 2007). Issues of rural reconstruction, sanitation, labor welfare, housing, unemployment, primary education and prostitution were among the many issues intervened upon by the social service organizations. Hence, social service was more spatialized or localized at individual and community level, while social reforms transcended these boundaries. Social service essentially aimed at helping the transition of Indian masses from a traditional pre-colonial order to a modern urban and industrialized order. However, this divide is purely structural while the functional goal of these two approaches – positive social change – remains the same. Hence, they can be seen as two overlapping approaches to social work in India. Such as a 1925 article in ISR argues: ‘We cannot draw a hard and fast line between social reform and social service. Often, they overlap. Social work which does not go deep down into the root-causes of our social evils will only result in temporary remedies’ (ISR, 1925: 243).

There may be evidence to argue that the idea of rampant professionalization and standardization of social work in America was seen with skepticism by some in India. In 1928, an article in the ISR titled ‘Professionalizing of Social Work’ critiqued at the length ‘professional’ turn in the American model of social work. The article overall based its opinion on the writing of renowned social security activist of America – Abraham Epstein. Epstein’s great dissatisfaction with the ‘business’ turn in social work in the west drew skepticism against the professionalization of social work. The writer was appalled in observing the amount of capital required in the running of case work clinical agencies. It also highlighted Epstein’s vindictive questions on the ethics and infallible authority of the ‘clinical’ measurements in detecting an ‘individual’s deficiencies’. Such an image of professionalized social work could have limited the appeal of it and the case work method. Subsequently, the article claimed that western social work models were essentially ‘classed’ – catering to urban needs, along with a dominance of case work or clinical models.

Early attempts of social work training

Early attempts to historicize social work (Dash, 2017; Nagpaul, 1988a) in India remained an evolutionary patchwork of locating the history of social work vis-à-vis the academic training in the discipline. However, such thinking ties the production of knowledge and the ‘professional’ idiom in social work to the academic spaces – universities and disciplines – thereby discarding or subjugating whatsoever is produced beyond them. Hence, much before social work was assembled into the umbrella of ‘professional social work’ around the 1940s to 1950s, it was developing on the ‘borders’ – such as in social service agencies and associations.

Many have highlighted the work of the SSL and others (Seva Sadan, Servants of India Society and University Settlement House) in organizing early formal training in social work in India, however the pedagogy of training finds no place in those writings. The SSL periodically offered 11 weeks’ training in ‘social work’, followed by evaluation and examination. The training pedagogically emphasized more on learning by doing; hence, visits to the ‘field’ or social service institutions comprised a major chunk of the curriculum. Lectures were diverse covering areas like sociology, adult education, public health, co-operative movements, poverty, child welfare, rescue and vigilance, administration, labor welfare, rural social work, juvenile delinquency and the probation system. Social workers, sociologists and lawyers from various fields were invited to deliver the lectures. Field visits were organized to numerous organizations such as Thana Central Prison, Narottamdas Madbavda Mental Halpital, David Sasoon Industrial and Reformatory Institution, Ackworth Leper Asylum Hospital, Beggar’s Camp Matunga, Children’s Homes, Maternity and Children’s Hospitals, Cotton Mills, Orphanages to name a few.

Subsequent to training before employment in a social service organization, the social workers were informed by an array of knowledge that sought to build the ground for their intervention. The knowledge produced by social analysts, sociologists and economists now was to be used for a reflexive re-structuring of Indian society (or clients) by the practice of a theoretically informed social work. Hence, there was a shift from the earlier identity of social work practice as a product of the charismatic authority of public intellectuals (such as those of social reformers) or the traditional authority of charities (such as of religion) and was then imagined to be reflexively informed by the production and discovery of social facts. Notably, this was argued at Bombay Social Service Conference in 1925 by Lallubhai Sambaldas that ‘It is almost a truism to say that a social survey must precede a practical social welfare programme.’ This was achieved by employing surveys, data collection, reading of social theory, knowledge of public health, organizing co-operative societies, and so on. Giddens understands this as double hermeneutics, that the knowledge changes both the society and the very knowledge or social fact itself. Hence, training in social work reflected a new relationship between knowing and doing – hence, the idea of welfare or social service was not informed only by traditional institutions but coalesces closely with modern means of production of knowledge and facts. However, such training limited research and the development of the identity of social work as an academic discipline in India, but, nevertheless, initiated the formalization of the social work profession. Albeit short, a formal period of training, along with councils, associations and knowledge exchange activities, enabled this social work to move closer to fulfilling a functionalist definition of profession. However, this did not enable the embedding of ‘social work knowledge’ into the modern sites of knowledge/power – the Universities. Mignolo and Tlostanova (2006) identifies the modernist conviction that acceptable knowledge emerged in the Universities, enabling them to exhibit a Bourdieusian symbolic power to organize a particular ‘field’, furthering standardization and universalization of particular strands of knowledge.

In 1924 (AISSC, 1924) discussion on social work training was precipitated in the All India Social Service Conference. Diverse assumptions on what constituted ‘social work’ were reflected in the conference. Prof PA Wadia of Bombay University questioned if social work was a distinct practice or an ethics that should be embodied by every individual or profession. He thought of social work not as a ‘science’ but rather a practice that should be a part of other sciences like economics, sociology or commercial (business) studies. He considered these sciences as the ‘theoretical base’ of social work, which can be complemented by periodic training in social service work agencies. Similarly, SN Pherwani also emphasized ‘social work training’ for professions such as medicine, law and engineering. Hence, he did not conceive social worker as a different entity, rather he imagined these very professionals as social workers. Despite this, he pressed the need for any social work training to be multi-sited, with the Universities as theoretical centers and voluntary agencies as practical centers. Numerous other social workers and academics in the conference highlighted impinging thematic issues that could be taken up in social work training. Subsequently, others argued for the training by social service organizations and publication of vernacular textbooks on social work and sociology to support the infrastructure of knowledge construction. However, the committees figured a few impediments to social work training. First the University was seen as a privileged site due to mass illiteracy and budget constraints and hence social work training could not only be confined to academic spaces. Ideas on practice were to evolve through conferences, multi-sited training and practice. Patrick Geddes of the Department of Sociology and Civics at Bombay University argued for robust training in sociology and civics for social workers. This was due to the dismal number of social workers who opted for lectures in Sociology at the University, hence he persuaded social workers to join lectures at the University. Adding to this, social service work was largely retaining an urban character. Hence, Pherwani pressed for a need of demonstrative methods for rural social work. However, not much evidence of these perspectives materializing into training for social work could be gathered.

Discontinuous histories and the development of social work education in India

After 1936, the imaginary of social work radically transformed in India. With the establishment of a school of ‘modern social work’ by Clifford Manshardt, it started to become more standardized, procedural and case work oriented (Singh et al., 2011). Manshardt’s import of an academic discipline, its knowledge and methods in India, where the ideals of (indigenous) social work were still maturing, created an artificial divide or ‘turf war’ between the western model of professional social work and Indian traditional social service. As Singh et al. (2011) and Gore (1997) argue that the becoming of social work as an academic discipline (and its professional aspirations) was an inorganic event, I argue that it was also a product of unequal power relations between the west and the rest. Many western development practitioners drew on an epistemic privilege and a technical authority to intervene in the problems of underdevelopment due to their racial privileges (Kothari, 2006), as the idea of modernity, development and progress was essentially tied geographically and racially to the west. This imagined India, a colony then, as a ‘consumer’ of knowledge in social work and not as its producer. The curriculum of the social work education schools was inspired by American model and so were the books. The remedial or therapeutic approach of social work reflected the US centric global model of social work (Singh et al., 2011) and did not reflect a connect with the indigenous histories and cultures.

Chatterjee (1998) and Raghuramaraju (2010) identify the peculiar character of modernity in India – the ‘persistence’ of the past, of coloniality and traditional forms of social organizations, identities and the knowledges, along with the ‘modern’. Chatterjee also notes that injection of a foreign modernity in India presented many unintended consequences, identities and binaries. Traditional modes of social work such as religious charities and numerous grassroot social service organizations existed in India and simultaneously intervened in social problems and produced knowledge (Gore, 1966), often outside the university spaces, sometimes written in regional languages. To these discourses, modern/professional social work presented a break or a discontinuity in the time-space, a professional logic that remained inorganic and disconnected from the very past and the lived present of the east.

Discontinuity, thus, is an important characteristic of (colonial) modernity. Manshardt (1935) argued, ‘A study of the history of development of social work in other lands enables us to escape a long process of trial and to avoid pitfalls into which others have fallen’. This reflects Manshardt’s intentions of enabling a global exchange of knowledge in social work, but also at the same time this assumes the ‘universality’ of histories and knowledge of other ‘lands’, in this case America. Hence, what became imminent after 1936 was learning of the methods and histories of the social work whose evolution was spatialized in the west. However, these epistemic positions were not likely to be representative of the context and subjectivities of the people (global south) on which these new methods were to be applied. The modern social work represented continuity with American history, societies and values but a discontinuity with Indian history, modernity/tradition and values. Midgley (1981) in his writing Professional Imperialism at length observed how American modernity and liberal values influenced the ethics and value base of modern social work. Large scale philanthropies imagined social work as an application of advances in sociology and psychology and hence mobilized funding for empirical researches. Interestingly, the social work that developed in the west was itself not representative of the lived experiences and standpoint of the oppressed groups. Reisch (1998) observed patterns of the hardening of the modernist core of social work in America, with it reflecting the urban concerns of the elites as opposed to the poor or marginalized in the cities. Reisch’s historical writing also detailed how such ‘professional’ turn in social work limited its ability in meeting the needs of the people of color. Importantly, early McCarthyism or the red-scare (anti-communist movement in America around 1940s) also clinicalized social work, slowly stripping off elements of social action from it. All of these historical events had already influenced, or were in the process of ameliorating, the knowledge and episteme of social work. Hence, social work, before its becoming an academic discipline in India, had already embodied an episteme that was spatialized in the west and was not constitutive of the lived experiences and histories (including the memories of violence and coloniality) of the societies in the east. Consequences of such disembedding of the social work discipline/profession from its context made it therapeutic, individualistic as opposed to being developmental or anti-colonial.

Parallel to embodying the western history and episteme, social work imported with itself complex standards of ‘normal’ essentially constructed in relation to lived experiences of privileged subjectivities in the west. Important to mention is the feminist science studies, queer studies and the standpoint epistemologies’ robust critique of the racialized, patriarchal and heterosexist character of the ideals of ‘normal’ (Lugones, 2008). Patel (2017), with reference to the history of sociology in India, argued that modernity embedded history in spatiality – the west – and silenced the histories of violence and colonialism. As a consequence, knowledge was organized vis-à-vis the binary of west and the east. This discursive practice juxtaposed hegemony of the western knowledge system on the disconnected eastern systems, leading to subjugation of the indigenous values and knowledges. Eurocentric education thus provided the social workers and the clients with ‘new forms of language in which subjects . . . (and) their actions’ were understood (Veer, 1996). Furthermore, early social work education also remained silent on coloniality, the rural question (Nagpaul, 1988b) and the dynamics of caste (Bodhi, 2020) in underdevelopment.

The ‘discipline’ of social work

Clifford Manshardt (1935), in one of his articles in ISR, argues,

If social work is, as it is so often defined, an adjustment, the social worker must have knowledge of human nature in order that he understands the mechanisms of human behaviour. . . Since the time of the social worker is largely occupied in dealing of the deviations from the normal, he must have an adequate conception of what constitute normal human relationships.

Manshardt opined that social workers’ imminent task was to help the ‘abnormal’ adjust with the ‘normal’. Hence, the ‘professional’ social worker would employ the theoretical assumptions on human behavior, such as those concerning child development to life course development, developmental tasks and causations of social deviances such as crime and so on, while working with the client. There are two predicaments to such an approach. First, given much of the earlier knowledge base borrowed from the American curriculum (Singh et al., 2011), was knowledge on ‘normal relationship’ also constructed in relation to American culture and values? The idea of normal, and its theoretical lineages, could be predominantly ‘situated’ Eurocentric knowledge despite appearing to be ‘universal’ science of human behavior. Second, the social work of Manshardt can be argued to be emphasizing more toward individual re-adjustment rather than structural adjustment, however, many social work historians emphasized the suitability of developmental and structural approaches in India rather than individual ones.

The import of social work to colonial India created an academic discipline inasmuch as it sought to create a profession. Hence, social work was now one of the numerous modern expert systems, deducing an authority from their western knowledge, methods and university training. Paul Brass points that the power of such disciplining agents (or the professions) is not derived from democratic means, but ‘induction’ (Brass, 2000). Hence, for Brass (2000) the authority of a social worker or psychologist to ‘examine’ their case is an outcome of knowledge which is constitutive of the regimes of ‘power’ or regimes of ‘truth’. Thus, social workers employed knowledge/power to peculiarly transform their (post)colonial subject into a ‘case’ (Brass, 2000) and everyday into a ‘technical problem’ (Escobar, 1994). The cases were then

pinpointed, defined, classified. Their attitudes and opinions become not expressions of a political right or duty, but bases for making a judgment about him and whether the techniques of a body of knowledge or law need to be applied to him (or her) in order to train, correct, normalize, or exclude him (or her) from society. (Foucault, 1979: 191) (Cited in Brass, 2000: 308–309)

In Foucault’s archeology of knowledge and genealogy of knowledge/power, social work though directly finds no place, but it sporadically surfaces as a crucial element in the network and exercise of disciplinary power. Foucault argues that the empirical social sciences with dominant psychoanalytical (and often racist) theories provided an early necessary infrastructure in the west for ‘disciplining’ the body, supported with the institutions such as prisons, military, hospitals and asylums. Social work, in developing in close relations to these, embodied sophisticated technologies of disciplining bodies and producing normalized judgments through an exercise of micro-power. Foucault saw these attempts were to become an expert, akin to physician or lawyer (such as those of Manshardt), a modern expert system (or profession), embodying the new standards of modernity – objectivity, scientific rationale, standardized procedures: of values, ethics of care and methods. The episteme of ‘help’ became more (pseudo) scientific, standardized and all behaviors and embodiments charted onto a continuum of good/bad, normal/abnormal, requiring the social workers to employ value judgment from western theoretical lineages to assess them, as practical experience with the context was no longer sufficient. Dreyfus and Rabinow (1982) while reading Foucault’s Discipline and Punish (1975) present the peculiar character of disciplinary power, of it making ‘[the] individual an object and instrument of the exercise of disciplinary power’. Hence, disciplinary power produces both the social worker and the social worked (client). This production is not achieved through coercion, but rather benevolence. Methods of ‘training and distribution’ were instrumentalized through hierarchical observations, examination and normalizing judgments (Dreyfus and Rabinow, 1982: 156).

Normalizing judgments are another important element of the disciplinary power that produces standards of the normal or the acceptable in the society. Norms were key crucial factors that helped social work to enable adjustment of the individual in the society. Hence the normalizing judgments, in order to produce docile bodies for a smooth exercise of power, institutionalized normalizing norms, sets of tasks, procedures to be repeatedly performed to enable their identification as natural or normal (Taylor, 2009). Dianna Taylor (2009) succinctly notes,

. . . normalizing norms encourage subjects to become highly efficient at performing a narrowly defined range of practices . . . where subjects are divided into two mutually exclusive groups (normal/abnormal) the appropriate behaviors of which are predetermined and which these subjects are encouraged to repeat over and over again (or in case of deviances, not). In time, the repeated behaviors become embedded to the point where they are perceived not as a particular set of prevailing norms, but instead simply as ‘normal,’ inevitable, and therefore immune to critical analysis. (p. 47)

This is exemplified by the history of clinical management of intersexuality, particularly in the west. On occurrence of a deviance, such as in the case of intersexuality, the body became subject to scrutiny by the expert system; including social workers or psychologists, who were mobilized to help manage the manifest of the abnormal – but however only in binary (heterosexist) terms. Hence, there may be tendencies in the social workers to use their authority to speak the language of the regimes of power or the norm.

This, however, is one way of looking at the biopolitics of the making of disciplines and professions in colonial societies. But this analysis has a tendency to trap social work in the possibilities of being nothing but an instrument for the exercise of power and control.

Conclusion

This article presents how diverse sets of actors were instrumental in developing the idea and identity of social work in colonial India. There was no single imagination of what constituted ‘social work’ until the idea of ‘professional social work’ arrived and later universalized in India by the help of Christian missionaries. On the other hand, modernist emphasis on the search of ‘social fact’ to inform social work practice also gained prominence around 1910 in India. Subsequently, networks of conferences, social work associations and training programs can be argued to have helped in the production and circulation of knowledge for an informed social work practice. Earlier social work training programs, such as those of the Servants of India Society (in the form of fellowship) or the SSL (11 weeks’ training followed by final examination), indicated early aspirations for professionalizing social work.