Servants: Issues of Caste and Religion in the Colonial Bungalows of British India

Abstract

The focus of the study is on servants, who constitute a noticeable and stable element of a huge number of Indian households and permeate its socio-cultural landscape. The article examines how this professional community manifested itself in British India. Europeans who arrived on the peninsula were forced to take into account the religious and caste affiliation of servants in the process of establishing everyday life. Adapting to the proposed conditions, the British chose from the local population those who could and agreed to serve their needs and requests. As a result, in the places of stay and residence of the British, a staff of servants was formed, which had not previously been encountered in such a combination. Finding themselves in a situation of double loyalty in the conditions of the imperial household - to their group and to the English patron, servants assumed the role of mediators between the two “cultural castes”, acting as agents of their mutual adaptation, which led to the emergence of a hybrid imperial order and the erosion of familiar social configurations. In this article, the study of the problems of caste, religious, racial boundaries and relations actualized through special labor practices in the intimate space of the colonial bungalows is empirical in nature and is based on the analysis of the texts of British householders.