Abstract
This essay presents a social history of power relations between domestic workers and their employers by examining the representations of servants in a wide array of Hindi print literature, including didactic manuals, popular magazines, reformist writings and cartoons, in the early twentieth-century North India. Exploring possibilities within repertoires of representation, it navigates how a contentious discourse around servant and employer developed in the Hindi print sphere. The essay links the portrayal of servants with changing class, caste and religious dynamics, in which print intersected with material circumstances to shape the hierarchical relationship between servants and employers. While imaging ‘ideal’ servants, the Hindi vernacular was also infused with their negative counterparts and anxieties around personal interactions between mistresses and servants, taking its cue from quotidian life and caste–community relations of the time. Increasing assertion by Dalits and growing antagonism between Hindus and Muslims left its imprints on portrayals of subordinate-caste and Muslim servants by dominant castes and classes. The vernacular straddled these domains of distance/desire and hate/love in the servant–employer relationship.
A didactic manual written in 1927 titled Kanyaon ki Pothi ya Kanya Subodhini, which retailed appropriate behaviour for girls and women, had ‘Jokhimon se Chetavni’ [Warning from Dangers] as its last and ‘most significant’ chapter.
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It carried the following instruction for dominant-caste, middle-class Hindu housewives regarding subordinate-caste women domestic workers:
In our houses various kutnis [pimps] keep coming and going. We have to daily engage with the malin [female flower seller and gardener], the nain [female barber], the kaharin [female water drawer], the chamarin [Chamar woman], the dhobin [washerwoman], the barain [woman betel leaf seller], the pisanharin [woman who grinds the corn], the maniharin [female bangle-seller] and the dai [midwife] for our household work. All these women also indulge in pimping. They start fights in peaceful homes. They roam about criticising others. They tell tales about depraved conducts of husbands and corrupt the minds of brides. They cause fighting between husband and wife … These kutnis work hand in glove with other wicked characters. They take money from them to trick women of decent homes … Be very careful of these women. They are notorious for telling bad and false tales. You clearly tell them that you have no time for their dirty stories. It is Ramayan and Mahabharat that are only worth listening to.
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In the same year, Stri Shiksha [Education for Women], a thin tract of sixteen pages, was written by Shiv Sharma Updeshak, a prominent pandit and member of the Arya Samaj in the United Provinces, which retailed ‘proper’ behaviour for Hindu women, particularly ordering them to keep away from Muslim men.
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Not only any intimate liaison but even day-to-day contact between Hindu women and Muslim men was perceived as a serious threat to Hindu patriarchal order and community identity. Muslim workers were specifically referred to in this context. The pamphlet thus stated that:
Do not get your clothes stitched from Muslim tailors … Do not buy toys and fruits from Muslim hands for your children. Do not buy or wear bangles from the hands of Muslim bangle-sellers … Never approach a Muslim servant without purdah [veil] and never cross him.
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The pamphlet went on to especially warn Hindu widows not to talk to Muslim servants and ordered them to be cautious of Muslim male construction workers, postmen, ekkawallahs [coachmen], servants and beggars, expressing fears of ‘abduction’, elopement and religious conversions. 6
These two quotes reflect compelling and complex grids as they epitomize the nature of anxieties about class, caste and religion that can be gleaned from the representations of subordinate-caste women and Muslim male servants by dominant-caste Hindus in popular Hindi print media of the early twentieth century. They also signify that the relationship of the domestic servant vis-à-vis the housewife became a trope through, which caste and religious boundaries of the period, along with spatial and bodily exclusions, were sharpened. This essay utilizes repertoires of representation and circuits of production to underline relationships between servants and dominant-caste Hindus in the early twentieth-century North India. It attempts to present a social history of power relations by examining portrayals of servants in fragments of Hindi print literature, including didactic manuals, popular magazines, reformist writings and cartoons. Exploring possibilities within the structure and language of representation, the essay navigates how a contentious associational discourse around servant and employer developed in the vernacular and permeated the social fabric in contradictory ways. It addresses the vernacular as a significant, if ambivalent, site for the reproduction, transformation and contestation of the servant–master relationship, which offers a discursive space of thinking and argumentation. 7 Partha Chatterjee sees the vernacular as a discursive space, which is less alienated from the popular, and lyrically states that the vernacular indulges ‘in the fabulous and the enchanted’ and mocks ‘the scientific rationality … of the academic’. 8 At the same time, the vernacular is often not counter-hegemonic or liberatory in itself; it can also offer disquieting elements that affirm everyday power relations, as reflected in the fragmentary examples of servants’ representations undertaken in this essay.
Representations of servants, to paraphrase Jacques Ranciere, are often ‘embodied allegories of inequality’. 9 Class has been the critical lens to mark this asymmetric power relationship between servant and employer. Sara Dickey has underlined that, in the context of domestic service, ‘class is reproduced and challenged on a daily and intimate basis’, enabling ‘the most intense, sustained contact with members of other classes that most of its participants encounter’. 10 At the same time, this relationship of difference and otherness is also imbued with gender, caste and religious meanings. Ann Stoler has highlighted how besides class, race divisions within the home-marked colonial domesticity. 11 Representations of domestics by dominant-caste Hindus and liberal reformers in the early twentieth-century India not only carried power relations but also rendered their perceptions, prescriptions, anxieties, practices and desires, framed around gender, caste and religious identities, into words and images. Material circumstances and changing dynamics of the period intersected with vernacular print culture to shape the relations between servants and their masters and mistresses.
The essay uses the category of domestic service to include a wide range of servants, workers and service providers, such as sweepers, midwives, household labourers, washers and gardeners. These domestics produced cracks in divisions between private–public, inner–outer and home–world, as they were both ‘marginal insiders’ and ‘intimate outsiders’ in dominant-caste, middle-class Hindu households. 12 While imaging ‘ideal’ domestic workers, the vernacular was also infused with their negative counterparts, taking its cue from quotidian life and caste–community relations of the time. Increasing assertion by Dalits and growing antagonism between Hindus and Muslims left its imprints on portrayals of subordinate-caste and Muslim domestic workers. Advice manuals, largely addressed to middle-class women, while seeking legitimization of servant–employer relationship, also expressed grave anxieties around personal interactions and illicit liaisons between mistresses and Muslim or Dalit domestic servants. The vernacular press straddled this contradictory domain of distance/desire and hate/love. The essay hints that constructions of ‘other’ and marking of difference sometimes symbolized allegories of desire and intimacy that transgressed, or at least produced cracks in, caste and class boundaries and taboos, re-crafting the relationship between servant and employer.
There have been some landmark studies on the intersections between gender, work and labour in colonial India, 13 including on prostitutes 14 and midwives, 15 but the focus has largely been on public arenas. Equally, domesticity, conjugality and intimate relationships have been significant for social histories of the period. 16 These tell us how household and family increasingly became a locus of everyday life, identity and belonging, including spheres of work, home, leisure and personal relationships. While very rich, the works have an implicit bias towards middle-class, gendered domesticity, where servants have not taken the centre stage. Scholarship on caste and Dalits 17 on the one hand and communities and Hindu–Muslim relations 18 on the other hand have also not taken into account servants as a distinct category of historical analysis. Finally, exciting studies on Hindi print-public sphere of the early twentieth century 19 have also been negligent on this front. With a few exceptions, 20 sophisticated studies on servants have mostly centred on contemporary contexts 21 or sometimes on servants and ayahs in colonial households. 22 This essay attempts to conjoin the study of gender, labour, household, class, caste and community with servants. It focuses on indigenous-domestic power relations by looking at Hindi print culture, and how middle-class, dominant-caste Hindu publicists often constructed and sustained images of servants to write everyday unequal histories of the social self.
The contentious socio-political economy of North India at the turn of the twentieth century left its imprints on representations of servants. It was a tumultuous period of decay and prosperity, insecurity and ambition, with shifting connotations for caste and community identities.
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After 1857, there was a rapid expansion of improved means of organization and communication, market production, law courts, English education, libraries, print and press, coinciding with a flourishing Hindu mercantile culture and a dynamic new middle-class in towns of Uttar Pradesh.
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New job openings and professions in law, teaching and journalism provided new arenas for upward mobility. These substantial gains, borne along by Western influences on lifestyles and corresponding to judgements of propriety, civilization and modernization, gave the upwardly mobile a larger stake in defence of hierarchies, and they evolved new ways of strengthening their claims over servants and their labour. Simultaneously, the colonial onslaught posed a serious challenge to many traditional occupations, leading to unprecedented migrations and weakening of hereditary employment.
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A sense of calamity was built up around the era of Kaliyug, and a supposed loss of golden age, denoted by loss of manliness, assertive subordinate-castes and disorderly women.
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The breakdown of taboos and ‘caste-specific’ behaviours and dispositions was lamented,
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whereby Brahmins were being forced to do manual labour and Shudras, having abandoned their obligation of servitude, were imperiously proclaiming their rights.
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For example, a Brahmin journal grieved:
bahut kanchnin ke chakar hain, table firat bajate.
bani bahu tirthan firat bhikhari, bahut shudra ghar khate!!
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[Many (Brahmins) are servants of prostitutes, and roam about beating small drums. Our daughter-in-laws have become beggars at pilgrimages, and many (Brahmins) eat in Shudra homes!!]
In spite of the limitations, the period did signal some opportunities for the subordinate castes and the poor. Census records of 1911, 1921 and 1931 of UP point to domestic service as slowly becoming an important constituent of occupation in urban UP. 30 It was noted in the 1931 Census of the region that domestic labour had emerged as an important area of employment, particularly for relatively unskilled migrant workers, and that many of the midwives and vaccinators had even found their way into domestic service. 31 It was further pointed out that men and women, including Pasis, Chamars and Bhangis, were variously engaged in providing different kinds of household services. 32 This was also because the public labour market in UP was becoming more and more crowded, with growing occupational conflicts, pressures on jobs and increasing economic insecurities. 33 Alongside, the inter-war period in UP witnessed two other important developments, which left their mark on the servant as a category of identification and identity. First, there was the emergence of the Adi Hindu movement led by Achhutanand, which acquired a huge Dalit following by the 1930s, leading to their increasing assertiveness and demands for rights. 34 Second, there was a meteoric growth in the politics of Hinduization, particularly in the immediate wake of the decline of the non-cooperation and Khilafat movements. The campaign for unifying the Hindus gained new urgency and became more aggressive and influential. 35 According to British commentators, UP witnessed a spate of Hindu–Muslim riots from 1923 onwards, more than any other province of India. 36 These developments reinforced certain tenets of Hindu praxis while challenging others and helped in reinforcing dual anxieties around Muslim and Dalit male servants. The early twentieth century was also the time of a flourishing vernacular print culture in North India, and Hindi became the dominant print language in UP. 37 In spite of the heterogeneous and fragmented nature of the Hindi public sphere, it was still largely controlled by the Hindi literati—men and women who belonged to Brahmin, Bhumihar, Kayasth, Agrawal, Khatri and Thakur castes, 38 who were also the main employers of servants. The Hindi vernacular thus provides a discursive space to understand the perceptions of indigenous Hindu middle-classes and dominant castes regarding servants. These landscapes became the troubled sites where divergent representations of servants came to be staged.
Instruction Manuals, Caste and Women Domestic Workers
In her phenomenal work on domesticity, intimacy and violence between servants and masters, Kristina Straub stresses that the subgenre of conduct or advice books held a significant part of the eighteenth-century print market in Britain, and it was infused with depictions of servants. 39 In the early twentieth-century North India too, there was a flooding of didactic books in Hindi, which principally addressed themselves to Hindu middle-class housewives and became an important means to refurbish respectable domesticities, power, patriarchy and inequality by disseminating normative images and prescriptions of behaviour. 40 These edifying tracts also helped in circulating certain ideas regarding servants, by representing them in particular ways. Many of these books distinctly marked differentiations between dominant-caste, middle-class Hindu housewives and their domestic women workers, often from the subordinate castes (chamarin, dhobin, bhangan, dai, malin, nain, kaharin), by juxtaposing the former as civilized, beautiful, cultured and superior, and the later as inferior, loud, uncultured, uncivilized and excessively sexual. 41 In her landmark study of domestic servants in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century Brazil, Sonia Roncador argues that black female servants particularly functioned ‘as a quintessential trope of otherness, serving as utilitarian counterparts’ to hegemonic models of femininity. 42 In a similar fashion, the construction of subordinate-caste domestic woman worker in colonial India was a constitutive footnote in the representation of the dominant-caste, middle-class housewife, contributing to a rhetoric that ‘naturalized’ inequality and allowed ideas of the ‘self’ and ‘other’ to be validated. The conjunction of subordinate-caste women servants in a large part of these advice books was steeped in clichés, whereby they were decoded and recoded into a ‘comfortable’ system of representation.
These manuals differentiated between housewives and women servants in terms of social status, lifestyle, dressing and behaviour. They directed housewives to cover themselves and not to speak loudly, fight or gossip. These traits were often identified with women workers. Class and caste differences were marked in profound ways through constructions of gender difference. Mediating between the street and home, and bridging the borders of public and private, many subordinate-caste women workers entered inner recesses of middle-class homes as part-time mehtaranis (sweeper women), dhobins (washerwomen) and dais (midwives), and were often privy to household intimacies. The domestic was not only a space but a set of relations. Given that many housewives had limited interactions with their husbands and in-laws, along with prevalent gender segregations, these women workers usually became their confidants, with whom they shared their everyday sorrows and anxieties. A section of polemical literature expressed deep worries about such bonds between women across caste and class, and attempted to erase markers of such intimacies. Consorting with subordinate-caste women servants was declared as dangerous, and housewives were pronounced vulnerable to social contamination from women servants. A manual named Humari Parivarik Vyavastha (Our Familial Organization) stated that the dai and the bhangan were mainly responsible for spoiling housewives, and because of them irsha (jealousy), dvesh (fight) and kalah (tension) prevailed in the family.
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Housewives were warned to be on constant vigilance against these perceived vyabhicharini (adulterous), patit (degraded) and perilous women.
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Revealing anxieties about behaviour of widows, the tract Stri Shiksha, quoted at the beginning of this essay, warned housewives not to seek support from any kaharin, nain, dhobin, pisanharin, maniharin and bhangan.
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While recognizing the role of subordinate-caste women workers in running households, these women, especially those who came from outside and were part-time, were declared ‘dangerous’ and ‘wrong’. Domestic women workers were further devalued as they departed from conceptions of true womanhood, defined by the housewife. Promoting claims of middle-class women to the prized domain of housewifery and child-care, these manuals maligned subordinate-caste women servants, who were perceived as unable to devote their lives exclusively to wifehood and motherhood. In fact, women workers were often denied the status of ‘women’ and were classified by their ‘degrading’ occupations. Two stereotypes of women were thus constructed—women who could afford not to work were defined as ideal, while subordinate-caste women workers who were remunerated for their services were denigrated, owing to the pervasive devaluation of manual labour. Such cultural patterning also aided in obscuring the sexual and economic exploitation of household female workers. In fact, subordinate-caste women workers were often constructed as licentious and immoral. Even an ethnographer like Crooke casually remarked that ‘as a rule Bhangi women bear an indifferent character’.
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Didactic manuals strengthened such stereotypes. Thus, one stated that:
If you look at the personal life of many of these lowly and labouring women who work around our household, you too will say along with us that 80 out of 100 of these women have extremely degenerate characters. Even the census reports state that many of these women workers are prostitutes in reality … Only 2 out of every 1000 such women can be said to have a chaste character.
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In tandem, many manuals expressed anxieties about sexual liaisons and illicit romances between the master and women servants. Housewives were warned to especially beware of subordinate-caste women workers who could woo their husbands, and to ensure that their men kept away from them. Stated the advice book Vivah aur Prem [Marriage and Love]:
The licentious tendencies of men are very much visible … They will not talk with their wife at home, but will laugh and talk with the jamadarin [female sweeper], who comes to clean the bathrooms at home. They will flirt with the maniharin [female bangle seller] and the chamarin, completely neglecting their wife. Dear housewives, please be cautious.
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A sermon manual Nari Dharm Shastra [Teachings on Women’s Duty] strictly warned housewives: ‘Especially beware the nain, maniharin, kaharin. They have been responsible for many domestic disasters’. 49
Didactic treatises for men, especially on brahmacharya [celibacy] and preservation of semen for the service of the nation, 50 also listed contact with the sexually ‘domineering’ women servants and workers as one of the reasons for excitement of the senses and excessive sex. One tract stated that to prevent semen loss and to avoid sexually exciting ideas, it was imperative for men to keep away from the following women who entered their households as servants: tambolin, malin, kunjri, bhatiyarin, paniharin, dhobin, nayin, gvalin and telin. 51
Negative descriptions of women workers were most visible in the case of the midwife. Women involved in childbirth were seen as ceremonially polluting and impure. Thus, largely Dalit, especially Chamar, women practiced midwifery in UP.
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They were the gatekeepers of gender and caste distinctions, which by their very presence they also transgressed, as they worked intimately with pregnant housewives. In the early years of British rule in UP, midwives were regarded as having a hand in female infanticide,
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and were also viewed as an important group of informal native informants, who could leak vital information about the private quarters of elite households.
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From the second half of the nineteenth century, with the firming up of colonial rule and the establishment of Western, allopathic medical practices, British official records, medical discourses, scientists and doctors made serious attempts to dislodge the midwife from her hereditary occupation and increasingly came to construct her as unintelligent, ignorant, dirty, filthy and debased, with an inability to learn new methods. Systems of surveillance thus came to manifest around her reproductive technologies.
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A ‘scientific’ and positivist discourse led to shifts in the grounding of discussions around midwives. The Hindu middle-class reformers and writers were not far behind, carrying a sharp attack on the Chamar dai in the vernacular in the early twentieth century. For example, a long article in Chand, a leading reformist journal in Hindi, attempted to transform the ‘morally and sexually polluting’ dai into a dirty, evil and dangerous witch of progressive India:
No low-caste woman can be a good midwife … These women are very dirty. They enter our homes in dirty clothes, full of disease and germs. The dai does not allow fresh air to enter the room … Her face resembles that of a witch, her hair is full of lice and she has dirty, soiled hands … She pulls out the child forcefully, often breaking the child’s limbs … Many a times, her sharp nails cause injury to the pregnant woman. She carries with her strange packets of herbs … She uses hair of goats and heads of monkeys.
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Another issue of Chand, which especially focused on newborn children, carried a coloured picture titled ‘Humari Daiyan’ [Our Midwives], which not only typecast the dai but also criminalized her (Figure 1). It carried a detailed message below, to make the reader doubly sure.
In this period of progress also, due to lack of educated midwives, thousands of children, as soon as they enter the earth, see their life end … We find in many regions the detestable custom of cutting the umbilical cord by a sickle. In the picture see a very old chamari of sixty years, whose hands are trembling and who is using a sickle used for chopping vegetables to cut the umbilical cord. Because of her trembling hands, it has been cut much more. Blood is oozing out and the poor, innocent child has become quiet forever. The poor woman who has recently given birth is also suffering alone and silently. Who will touch the chamari! Readers please also notice the torn mat, the floor bed and the burning fire on the side. 57
Equally, much of the ayurvedic discourse in Hindi published in the early twentieth century also regarded the dai as a vector of disease. 58 This vilification of the Chamar dai as barbaric, as dangerous for women, as the killer of children, as a witch, as usually very old and rigid in her ways, as basing her practice on non-scientific beliefs and popular superstition, as inherently dirty, unsanitary, vermin-ridden, evil and immoral, combined the logic of caste with a modern civic discourse, and was an attempt to strengthen hierarchies of gender, caste and class.
However, constant lack of finances, an overwhelming urban, middle-class bias and the much more expensive officially trained midwives ensured a regular demand for Chamar dais. In the context of a rising Dalit movement in the region in the early twentieth century and the recognition that childbirth was still largely dependent on their work and labour, many of these dais started refusing to do the work unless paid adequately, and began demanding wages in cash and increased fee for services performed. 59 In the early decades of the twentieth century, there were increasing ‘complaints’ from several regions of UP that the labour services of Chamar midwives were no longer easily available, unless they were well paid. Other subordinate-caste women workers were making similar demands. The UP Census of 1911 reported that ‘the kaharin [female water drawer], who till 15 or 20 years ago had thought herself well paid at 3 annas and a couple of chapattis, now demanded 8 annas and a rupee’. 60 Equally, the first generation of Dalit intellectuals like U.B.S. Raghuvanshi, Ramnarayan Yadvendu and Chandrika Prasad Jigyasu deployed the Hindi vernacular to offer a counter-discourse that challenged begar (unpaid labour), servitude and bondage. 61
The dominant, mainstream vernacular print culture in UP, however, reveals that subordinate-caste women workers and servants became a surrogate for refurbishing domestic inequality. Representation of women was sharply divided along caste and class lines, reinforcing not just a caste-class hierarchy but also a female hierarchy.
Governing Servants: Language of Sympathy and Subservience
These were not the only representations of servants in Hindi print culture. Writing an article titled ‘Gharelu Naukar’ [Domestic Servant] in the famous magazine Sudha, Atmaswarup Verma, editor of the Hindi daily Milap, remarked that as a result of modern civilization, the impact of British rule and substantial growth of the middle-classes in India, there was now a ubiquitous presence of, dependence on and increasing indispensability of servants in many households. He went on to voice the constant lament about the ‘servant problem’ by many, that the servants did not stay or that they were not honest. This problem, he suggested, could only be overcome through compassion, benevolence, sympathy and paternalism on the part of the employer. 62 This was interwoven with a language of constant governance, discipline, control and subservience, which ensured the loyalty and labour of servants.
Scholars have repeatedly emphasized that during colonialism, the quest for an efficient and organized domestic domain was accentuated, as a section of Indians felt that they had lost out to the British in the material, outside world. The home increasingly became the inner core of national, Hindu order and the ‘ideal woman’ the harbinger of its spiritual essence.
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Many advice books thus carried detailed instructions for housewives on how to behave with servants, admonishing them for sometimes not treating the servants properly and strictly advising a combination of compassion and control. Taken together, these ensured competent governance and a well-ordered home. For example, there were chapters titled ‘Naukaron se Vyavhar’ [Etiquette with Servants]
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and ‘Sevakaon se Bartav’ [Behaviour with Attendants] in various guidebooks.
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The housewife was repeatedly tutored to be charitable towards servants, while keeping them under constant vigilance and extracting maximum work from them.
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Tied to domestic governance, this was part of her household duty. As she was to educate her children, so she was to ensure ‘correct’ conduct and decorous demeanour of servants with whom she was associated. It was believed that servants, like children, needed constant guidance and supervision. It was further argued that in the company of mistresses, female servants could learn some traits of cleanliness and civilized behaviour and enhance their talent.
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Prescriptions to housewives regarding servants were constantly reiterated, updated and reapplied. A handbook Stri Sarvasva [Everything on Women] asserted that:
You should be polite in nature so as to ensure that servants stay in your home to do the work. Servants should not be thought of as servants. However, make sure that you extract proper work from them, while not leaving it entirely in their hands, as they can be undisciplined and cantankerous.
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Another guidebook Grihani Bhushan [Ornament of the Housewife] reiterated that:
There is a huge dearth of good and efficient servants in the present day … Look after your servants and give them decent food and clothing … Your good behaviour towards them is important … At the same time, never confide in them and never discuss intimate details of your household with them … However, overall be good towards them. After all, there are many examples in history where servants and maids have even given up their lives for their swami [master].
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Another article put it succinctly that ‘Once the scissors of compassion is used to cut the wings of the servant, he will never be able to fly’.
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The combined language of magnanimity and discipline, paternalism and control, was crowned by representations of servants as mute sufferers and romanticized submissive beings.
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Hanuman Prasad Poddar, son of a Marwari business family, and the founding editor of the famous Gita Press of Gorakhpur,
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while telling women to constantly supervise servants to prevent theft and get the work done properly, also instructed in his treatise Nari Shiksha [Education for Women]:
You should display affection towards your naukar–naukrani [servants–maids]. Poor souls do your seva [service] and hesitate in speaking in front of you. You should give them decent food … From your behaviour you should show that they are part of your family and not outsiders. Once they consider your home their home and your loss their loss, your burden of life will be considerably lightened.
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Still others pronounced that the workers were simpletons who demanded nothing except some love and decent behaviour and in turn they bestowed care unconditionally, while addressing employers as seth-sahib, babu-sahib and mai-baap. 74 The image of the unfortunate, poor, helpless and silent servant, particularly the ‘untouchable’, who endured all pain without protest, was a quintessential one (Figure 2).
The prosperous woman gives small bites, making her sit near the shoes!
This is the respect given to untouchables, who are our slaves in body and soul!! 75
The curative impulses of reformers and writers, combined with the perceived need to constantly manage and govern servants, strengthened such representations. Symbols of deference particularly came to exemplify the ideal subordinate-caste male servant. Many subordinate-caste men too entered dominant-caste, middle-class households as domestic servants, sweepers and workers. Even though segregated, they constantly intersected with familial spaces. To make them ‘fit’ to serve, their supposed sexual access was conditioned through surveillance. Exhibiting a domesticated and subordinated masculinity, they were embodied as asexual, emasculated and effeminate. Alongside, they were appreciated for their gentleness, childlike simplicity and affection. 76 The conjectural benevolence bestowed on the servants by their masters was underlined. Seva [to serve] and fidelity had a much higher status in this version of the world than naukari [employment]. Stringent critiques and apocalyptic warnings about dealing with servants functioned in tandem with their valorization and idealization under the rubric of seva, also reflected in the fictional Hindi literature of the early twentieth century. Influenced by the reformist-nationalist project, a section of Hindi fiction refashioned the domestic realm by carving a different grammar of master–servant relationship, as reflected in stories like Mahadevi Varma’s ‘Sabiya’ (1935) and Rambriksha Benipuri’s ‘Vah Chor Tha’ (1930–32). 77
Service was the form in which the poor and subordinate castes were put to labour, and in case of the servant, personal subordination was critical. The bond between the servant and his master was defined by loyalty rather than money. The dominant-caste Hindi print sphere reaffirmed the social and natural obligation of subordinate and Dalit castes to serve, also as a partial, unacknowledged response to the growing vocalization and assertion of Dalits in this period. An article titled ‘Hindu Bhangi’, published in the leading Hindi journal Chand, while ostensibly expressing sympathy for the sweepers, veritably strengthened hierarchies:
Bhangi means to serve … If the sweepers refuse to clean then who will protect the grandeur of the rich and the veil of the high-caste women? … Their homes are kept outside the villages and cities so that they can get adequate rest and their health remains fine … The sweepers are not our naukars [servants] but our sevaks [attendants].
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While excoriating caste attitudes towards ‘untouchables’ and servants, the journal delineated:
If untouchables eschew the protection of Hindus, then will you clean your own toilets? Will your women do the work of midwives? Will you do the work of washer men? Will you do all the work of Chamars?
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Many reformers were categorical in their understanding that ‘untouchables’ should not give up their traditional occupations, expounding that there was nothing inferior in cleaning excrement and dirt, and that it was necessary and ‘natural’.
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The intellectual amplitude of subordinate-caste male servants was adduced as deficient and childlike.
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Denied work of the brain, he was relegated to work of the body. It was argued that to run the society in an efficient manner, each caste should be assigned work according to their capacities, and this symbolized progress and civilization. An editorial in Chand averred:
Because of Shudras and dasas [slaves], many a high-castes were relieved of everyday problems of living, and they could devote themselves exclusively to research and thinking, creating philosophy, poetry and literature.
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Even the Arya Samaj often succumbed to this rhetoric. In an article in the magazine Sudha, Gangaprasad Upadhyay, a leading figure of Arya Samaj in UP, pronounced the distinction between ‘headwork’ and ‘handwork’, drawing distinct boundaries between the work of master and servant in terms of caste and occupation:
The achhuts [untouchables] cannot do any work themselves; they can only obey the orders of others. If they are with a student, they can upkeep his books; if they are with a soldier, they can dust and clean his sword; if they are with a trader, they can sweep his shop. These men have been referred to as our feet. We must remember that they are not unnecessary. But they cannot do any original work. They can just follow others.
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Infused with benevolent paternalism and an instrumental morality, the relationship between the master and his servant was equated with that between parent and child, virtually vindicating inequality as a rendition of love. The depiction of servants as submissive figures confined them as objects of charity, and in need of the benign intervention of their employers from above. 84 Scholars, like Wendy Brown and Amit Rai, have underlined that a language of benevolence and sympathy is often a paradoxical and protean mode of power, a form of sociality and governmentality, a mechanism of differentiation and normalization that ensures stability, whereby ideas of equality and justice are substituted with behavioural, emotional and personal vocabularies. 85 The representation of workers through idioms of kindness and affection was often meant to ensure their subservience, and effectively govern and control them. Exclusionary and unequal terminologies were built into lexicons of paternalism and altruism, which also aided in depoliticizing the personal-social sphere of the home and detaching servant–master relations from political economy and power.
Mistresses and Male Servants: Caste, Class and Religious Anxieties
To end with, this essay examines another critical representation of relations between Hindu mistresses and male workers. A section of Hindi literature was infused with caste and religious identities, which, given the larger context of the early twentieth-century North India, also expressed grave anxieties around intimate liaisons and collusions between Hindu mistresses and their servants, which could also transgress caste, class and religious boundaries. The hegemonic masculinity of the dominant-caste, middle-class Hindu male, often the household head, was already unstable, vulnerable and in crisis due to the colonial onslaught.
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Moreover, men could be away from their homes for long periods of time and sometimes migrated for work. In such circumstances, the fear of an intruder into the intimate domain of the home further aided in destabilizing masculine Hindu patriarchies, more so when it also produced cracks in caste, class and religious exclusivities. In spite of various controls, subordinate-caste and Muslim male servants particularly embodied ‘dangerous’ masculinities and sexualities. In conjunction, there were patriarchal jitters and fantasies about the autonomy and potentially dangerous sexuality of the household mistress. Interactions and close contact between them on a routine, mundane, every day and cumulative level within the intimate confines of the home-enhanced fears of illicit pleasures and prohibited relationships, and increased masculine-patriarchal insecurities of dominant-caste Hindu men. Worries regarding such intimacies went beyond questions of gender; they reflected deep-seated anxieties about sex. This was also expressed in a part of the Hindi print material, which, for example, elucidated deep uneasiness about women sharing moments of laughter and fun with male servants (striyan naukaron se thitholi karti hain),
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particularly Dalits and Muslims.
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Didactic manuals constantly ordered household mistresses to keep away from Dalit and Muslim servants, or to observe strict purdah when dealing with them. The treatise Striyon ko Chetavni [Warning to Women] cautioned:
Do not ever go in front of Dhobis, Chamars or Bhangis without purdah [veil]. Do not eat anything offered by them or wear charms and amulets given by them. In public places, never talk to them.
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Another guidebook titled Narayani Shiksha arthat Grihasthashram [Women’s Education meaning Family Life], meant especially for Vaishya women, stated that:
Why do our women observe purdah from righteous men like their husbands and father-in-laws? What they need to do is observe strict purdah in front of the neech kaum [low, vile class] like the Dhobi, Chamar and Bhangi, who have bad characters, but they often do not do so.
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The disorderly sexualities of household women were feared even more in the case of widows. There were apprehensions that some of the young widows might elope with and marry Muslim and subordinate-caste servants and workers. It was reported that two widows ran away with a Dhobi and a Bhangi, respectively. 91 It was lamented that many Chamars, Nais and Kahars were eloping with widows. 92
It has been noted that there was relative malleability of religious boundaries in the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century North India, with, for example, frequent dealings between Muslim weavers and Hindu merchants, which came under strain in the early twentieth century due to increasing religious antagonisms. 93 This was reflected in representations of Muslim male servants in the Hindi print sphere, with some publicists attempting to stop Hindus from employing the services of Muslim workers. Suggestions and advice for a code of conduct for Hindus in their hiring of Muslims became more detailed and specific over time, especially in the 1920s. In a pamphlet titled Alarm Bell, which had many versions with slight modifications, prominent Arya Samaj members of UP, most of whom were shopkeepers, traders, lawyers or teachers, instructed Hindus not to employ any Muslim servants and to have no dealings with Muslim tailors, milkmen, vegetable-sellers, bangle-sellers, washermen, nais [barbers], ekkawallahs [coachmen] and chikwas [butchers]. 94 Numerous meetings were held in various parts of UP and notices issued to that effect. 95 A linked aspect of these suggestions was to employ only Hindus as servants. 96 For example, a private meeting of Hindus held at Roorkee under the auspices of Arya Samaj categorically resolved that Hindu masters should get rid of their Muslim servants. 97 Negative appeals were followed by positive suggestions to open up new arenas for Hindus and reduce the insecurity of employment and poverty faced by the Hindu poor. 98
A section of Hindu publicists saw in the Khilafat movement and the Moplah rebellion 99 the threat of a thoroughly united, well-organized and militant Muslim population poised to wipe out the Hindus and their culture, and gave them another opportunity to argue for Hindu consolidation. 100 In UP, a number of tracts emerged in Hindi, giving vivid descriptions of what had supposedly happened in Malabar, which also had implications for the representations of Muslim servants. One pamphlet titled Bhole Swami ka Dusht Naukar [The Wicked Servant of the Innocent Master] described how the Hindu landlords of Malabar were simple and gullible, but were constantly subjected to the cunning nature of Muslim servants. 101 Class, occupation, community and sectarianism were thus woven together to demarcate the Muslim servants.
The usual suggestions given to Hindus were aimed more specifically at housewives. In the early twentieth-century North India, there was intensified surveillance of Hindu women’s day-to-day interactions with Muslim workers. 102 Every Hindu Sabha was asked to keep a detailed list of all jobs that Muslims did in which they came into contact with Hindu women, and the arena of the household featured critically in this. 103 A boycott at the level of the household could facilitate the isolation of Hindu women from Muslims and reduce the anxieties of Hindu men. Perceptibly, Muslim servants came to be perceived as ‘enemies in one’s own household’. A whole new language was employed for women vis-à-vis Muslim workers, telling them how to move, whom to talk to, where to go and what to do. Various newspapers cautioned the Hindus not to allow their women to have any dealings with Muslim servants, especially vegetable sellers and sweepers. 104 Such instructions affirmed the agenda of religious and community distinctiveness by means of social and economic separation. Commands were also endorsed through other sources. Muslim manihars at Bareilly were prohibited from calling upon Hindu women at their homes to supply bangles. Muslim bangle-sellers were also attacked; bangles were identified as a sign of Hindu women’s purity, and to have Muslims touch this purity, and by extension the Hindu woman, was regarded a sign of pollution and apprehension. 105 Hanuman Prasad Poddar commanded women to boycott Muslim manihars. 106 Cartoons were published to this effect (Figure 3). 107
A section of popular Hindi print literature in the early twentieth century thus underlined norms of seclusion for the Hindu mistress, especially vis-à-vis subordinate-caste and Muslim male workers. In spite of immense vigilance, however, the home offered a turf for housewives to develop intimate bonds with outsiders. With the wife under the regular control of husbands, in-laws and other male members of the household, the servant could potentially provide some relief and possibly produce cracks and fissures in normative regulations and social order, leading to grave patriarchal concerns. I wish to end the essay with this cartoon, which on the one hand epitomized the anxieties and varied nature of threats felt by figures of middle-class household patriarchy, on the other also personified recalcitrant intimacies between the mistress and the servant that were indifferent to regulative structures (Figure 4):
‘ Mistress: When you rub my feet with your hands, I am deeply contented. Servant: I know your pulse.
Mistress: Rub a little more …. Servant: I might sprain you ….
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Conclusion
The Hindi print public sphere in the early twentieth-century North India was deeply heterogeneous. Yet, one can discern certain trends in their representations of servants. The servant–master relationship was often represented through difference, translated into class, caste and religious superiority and hierarchy. Despite their social marginalization, servants were one of the quintessential literary tropes of otherness and difference, and instrumental markers for employers to elaborate and negotiate their class, caste and religious identities. Dalitness, in certain ways, was a shared component of servitude. The Dalit woman servant often served as a utilitarian counterpart to the hegemonic model of dominant-caste, middle-class femininity. Alongside, the cultural imaginary of servants as simple and subservient, even when couched in a language of care, affection and benevolent paternalism, reflected mainstream ideologies of servitude and subordination and aided in recasting exploitation. Simultaneously, Hindu mistresses had to be kept away from temptations offered by male servants. With the hardening of religious identities, Muslim male servants in Hindu households came to be increasingly perceived as ‘unnatural’, with an ‘intrusive’ presence in private spaces, also posing a threat to Hindu patriarchy. At the same time, constant fears of ‘contamination’ of the Hindu mistress via sexual interaction with servants also implicitly hinted at transgressive sites of intimacy and desire.