Caste,food and colonialism: ‘Outcaste’ domestics in the European houses of Madras Presidency

Abstract

This article argues that in the Madras Presidency, the caste Hindus treated both the European masters and their ‘outcaste’ domestic servants as impure due to their shared practice of beef-eating. This, consequently, fostered a relationship of mutual dependence between them. Although not all servants participated in the preparation of food in European houses, they had to deal with beef in one way or another, such as purchasing and serving it, or simply working with the people who ate beef. Therefore, a willingness to handle beef was one of the essential criteria for employment in colonial bungalows that benefitted the outcastes exclusively. These new employment opportunities under colonialism created an educated ‘higher-class’ among them. This class later played a pivotal role in organising the outcastes and advocating for their rights. Though dependent on each other, the relationship between Europeans and their outcaste servants was not always cordial; there was tension inherent in it. The article further posits that attempts to maintain European racial and cultural dominance did not always succeed in the domestic sphere.

Introduction: The ‘Pariah Food’

‘Pariah food’ was how the caste Hindus described the food prepared in the bungalows of the Madras Presidency where the families of European expatriates resided. There were two reasons for this: (a) the ‘pariahs’—a common colonial phrase for the ‘outcastes’ ¹ —were usually employed as domestic servants in these bungalows and they cooked food for the European families living there; and (b) the food consumed in these bungalows closely resembled the dietary preferences of the pariahs, primarily consisting of different sorts of meat, including beef. Various attempts of Europeans, since the seventeenth century, to uphold the supremacy of their culture in the Madras Presidency could not succeed beyond a certain point. In the initial days, the Indian climate did not allow them to enjoy their preferred lifestyle and clothing choices. The non-availability of white women forced them to choose partners from among the available native women and keep them as mistresses. Above all, their choice of food, especially the presence of beef in their cuisines, barred them from sharing their cultural values with the South Indian Hindu upper classes.

For the caste Hindus, the preparation of food was very much a religious act. In 1903, Monier Williams rightly observed this: ‘We Europeans cannot understand the extent to which culinary operations may be associated with religion. The kitchen in every Indian household is a kind of sanctuary or holy ground…. The mere glance of a man of inferior caste makes the greatest delicacies uneatable.’ ² Further, various contemporary records have indicated that caste Hindus considered the Europeans as ‘white pariahs’. For instance, an American missionary has been quoted as saying that he ‘once saw a high-caste Hindu dash an earthen jar of milk upon the ground, and break it to atoms, merely because the shadow of a Pariah had fallen upon it as he passed’. ³ He further noted that for upper-caste Hindus food can be polluted ‘either by contact with one of an inferior caste, or a foreigner—which latter is viewed as on level with pariahs or outcastes’. ⁴

Therefore, in the Hindu social ranking, if Europeans were to be treated as a caste, they came last and held the rank and status that the native pariahs were given. Even those caste Hindus who converted to Christianity expressed a similar attitude towards Europeans. According to Rev. Danial Wilson, in 1860 ‘even the missionaries were accounted as unclean, and a native priest of the higher caste has been known to refuse food and shelter to two European missionaries on their journey, lest food and vessels should be defiled.’ ⁵ Another colonial account, which described the physical distance that each caste is supposed to maintain from a brahman, states that a beef-eating pariah should keep himself 64 paces from a brahman ‘who will also exhibit disgust if the shadow of a European falls on him while eating’. ⁶ Such a strong humiliating attitude of caste Hindus left the Europeans with no other option than to employ outcaste servants in their households. The caste Hindus were not willing to take up any work (even outside the household) under the Europeans due to the fear of losing their caste status. If they happened to work, they demanded extra wages as a charge for washing off the bodily pollution inflicted on them. Therefore, this unique ‘white pariah’ problem brought the Europeans and the outcaste servants into close contact. The shared practice of beef-eating was largely responsible for this process. While traditional Hindu society treated beef-eaters as outcastes and untouchables, Europeans not only gave them entry into their houses but also ate the food that they cooked.

In this context, the article explores the intricate relationship between the outcaste domestics and the European families who employed them. It discusses the endeavours of the European families in the Madras Presidency to find suitable domestic workers who had to be culturally and religiously different and inferior as well as be adept at handling everyday chores including buying, cooking and serving various kinds of meat. While the Europeans could employ servants from the outcastes who were not constrained by caste rules against touching beef or serving wine, their employment in the bungalows as well as their affiliation with the new ruling elites opened up new livelihood options, enabling them to escape the trap of subsistence-based rural bondage. The article also describes a parallel but distinct development, wherein colonial women transformed certain local food recipes initially invented by the pariah cooks in the colonial kitchens and transmitted them to the West.

The First-class Pariahs

As part of a fact-finding commission set up by the Lord Bishop of Madras in 1846 to enquire about ‘what sense and to what extent caste is held by the native agents’ of Protestant churches of Vepery District, Madras, the members of the commission asked a ‘pariah Christian’: ‘Do you belong to any caste?’ The man replied: ‘I am a Pariah; but of high Caste or of the first class amongst Pariahs.’ He was then asked what the trades followed by the low-caste pariahs and the first-class pariahs were. He said the low-caste pariahs were washermen, chucklers (Chakkiliyar), barbers and toties (sweepers), and the first-class pariahs were catechists, schoolmasters, dubashes (plural form of the word dubash, interpreter), butlers, maties (plural form of the word matey, assistant), cooks, gardeners and so on. He added that there was no low-caste pariah in Madras. ⁷

The question that arises here is whether such hierarchy among the pariahs points to the upward social mobility and economic advantage enjoyed by the outcaste domestic servants during colonial times. Domestic workers constituted a small segment of a larger and diverse colonial workforce, which included, amongst others, weavers, bleachers, artisans, construction workers, well-diggers, dubashes, palanquin bearers and boatmen. Research on this subject has, thus far, focussed more on the sectors immediately connected with the colonial administration and economy. Scholars tend to overlook the varying impact of colonialism on different caste groups as well as its variations in terms of region, sector and gender. However, a brief survey of these studies may help in contextualising domestic work in colonial South India from a perspective of outcaste upward social mobility.

Labour relations in colonial urban centres are often studied in the context of contemporary rural agrarian relations. ⁸ Taking a long view of South Indian history, the changes in the agrarian relations (perceived as traditionalisation) during the later colonial period were not unusual. The process of weakening of the traditional caste system and its subsequent reinforcement was a trend that could be observed throughout South Indian history. In addition, frequent dynastic shifts altered the texture of the caste-based agrarian society. For instance, towards the end of the Chola period, certain hill tribes acquired landownership as compensation for their role in the military. ⁹ For the same reason, during the Nayaka and Palayakarar periods, certain Tamil- and Telugu-speaking lower castes received landownership in the frontier arid zones. ¹⁰ Francis Buchanan, who traversed the whole of South India observing its social and economic customs after the Company army defeated Tipu Sultan, wrote that Hyder Ali, the Carnatic Nawab, enlisted hard-working people from ‘inferior castes’ as farmers in the Vellore region. ¹¹ Similar attempts to distribute wastelands and housing sites to the outcaste agricultural workers were also followed by the colonial rulers. ¹² The legal abolition of slavery and introduction of Ryotwari revenue settlements in the nineteenth century brought certain changes in the condition of outcastes. ¹³ In general, compared to the previous regimes, the outcastes had more opportunities for social and economic mobility under Muslim and colonial rule. Similarly, there was also constant movement of people from rural to urban regions. The medieval wave of temple urbanism encouraged certain artisans and those of craftsmen castes (such as kaikolar and kammalar) to migrate and settle in urban centres, thereby permanently severing their dependent relationship with the village community. ¹⁴ Colonial urbanism also triggered a similar process and encouraged the migration of the outcaste rural workers to cities.

Historians such as Prasannan Parthasarathi and David Washbrook have argued that agricultural workers had a better social and economic life in the eighteenth century—at the start of East Indian company rule in south India—than in succeeding centuries. Such arguments tend to undermine the differences in the social advantages of the sudra pannaial (semi-bonded farm labourers) over the outcaste pannaial and also generalise the observation based on the living standards of weavers and craftsmen. ¹⁵ Moreover, irrespective of changes in the wages or alternative economic opportunities, social mobility of the outcaste agricultural workers was of significance only if they broke their ties with the rural caste-based subsistence system, migrated to other places and took up a new occupation. To Parthasarathi, the eighteenth-century South Indian working class had ‘a superior standard of living’ and higher earnings than its British counterpart. ¹⁶ Despite the fact that there was no credible data to compare the nature of working conditions, work hours, avenues for socio-economic mobility, and so on, he argues that in South India, agricultural labourers’ customary rights to several non-monetary perquisites gave them financial security. Even though such customary arrangements might have protected the workers from impoverishment and ensured that their immediate consumption needs were met, they inevitably tied the workers to rural society, limiting their scope for upward social mobility. Washbrook, writing about mid-nineteenth–century South India states that ‘the commercial vibrancy, cultural pluralism, social mobility and intense military conflict of the earlier period were giving way to a more static, sedentarized, agrarian-based and self-consciously “Hindu” form of society’. ¹⁷ Therefore, for him, the later decades of the eighteenth century were a golden age of pariahs because they had considerable scope for economic mobility within as well as outside the agrarian sector. ¹⁸ But from a different perspective, at the beginning of colonial rule, the socio-economic conditions of outcastes were better mostly because they had multiple livelihood opportunities to work in the colonial military, mines, constructions, railways, hospitals, missionary schools and so on. Iyothi Thass, an early twentieth-century intellectual, was on point when he observed that due to the fear of losing their caste status, people from the upper castes did not initially take up these jobs. ¹⁹ However, towards the end of the nineteenth century, the initial reluctance of higher-caste servants vanished and they entered all these sectors, thereby adversely restricting the alternative labour market for outcastes to just domestic work. ²⁰ Washbrook has indicated the multiple opportunities that the rule of the Carnatic Nawabs and later the East India Company opened up to the pariahs. But he concludes that the growing beneficial ‘alliance’ between the colonial rulers and the landlords (mirasudars) in the nineteenth century limited such opportunities. ²¹

While it is true that the pre-colonial socio-economic system had limited space for the economic mobility of outcaste agrarian labourers, it also did not overtly stop their migration when there was an opportunity. Studies on migration have described the constant movement of outcaste agricultural labourers (both within and outside India) to work in colonial urban centres, mines, plantations and factories. ²² The commercial and exploitative nature of colonialism was a compelling reason for the migration. However, those who returned after the termination of their contract had money and attempted to buy land in their villages. ²³ Colonialism, therefore, possibly promoted two parallel processes: ‘traditionalising’ the local economy by strengthening the hands of landlords and thereby tightening the rural caste-based labour relations in some pockets ²⁴ ; and simultaneously loosening the same system by opening up alternative livelihood options that encouraged the migration of communities and brought a certain degree of social mobility, especially for the outcastes. While migration and mobility among lower castes have a long history, these became more widespread only during the colonial and post-colonial periods. At the end of the nineteenth century, Iyothi Thass wrote a series of articles in his magazine Tamilan appreciating the Protestant missionaries and the colonial government for uplifting the outcastes from their age-old poverty and backwardness. ²⁵ He observed that the social condition of outcaste agricultural workers in villages compelled them to migrate to cities and work for Europeans. ²⁶ Readers of his magazine were also mostly from the outcaste urban population who earned a monthly wage and thus could afford to subscribe. ²⁷

Returning to the discussion on outcaste domestic workers, this paper argues that many were beneficiaries of colonial urbanism. ²⁸ New opportunities during colonial rule not only liberated them from the trap of traditional subsistence-based labour relations but also brought them into intimate contact with the new ruling class. In South Indian history, the domestic workers, despite their lowly social condition, always had the privilege (owing to their association with the ruling families and institutions) of being recorded in the historical texts, which were otherwise representative of the social and political elites. ²⁹ Historical documents make reference to domestic servants associated with medieval temples and royal residences. In rural areas, domestic work would have possibly also been part of agricultural work. Though the caste system prohibited the lower-caste workers from entering the homes or kitchens of wealthy upper castes, the farm labourers performed part of the domestic work that did not require them to enter the house; the rest of the work was carried out by women-folk of the households. ³⁰

In his attempt to study labour relations in colonial Madras, Ravi Ahuja has noted that upon their settlement in Madras, some European households possibly used ‘imported’ slaves for domestic work, but this practice was gradually given up by the eighteenth century. He rightly argues that ‘the regional forms of agrestic slavery could hardly be made use of in the households of Madras colonial oligarchy’. Therefore, it led to the invention of what he calls ‘Christian slavery’. ³¹ Domestic slavery, in any form, was not a dominant practice. Even if it was in existence initially, wage workers from an outcaste background gradually replaced the slaves. When the colonial governments framed labour policies for Madras, it also included wage regulations for domestic workers. ³² In a significant effort to compile the histories of domestic servants in South Asia, the edited works of Nitin Sinha, Nitin Varma and Pankaj Jha have shown various aspects of domestic work since the ancient period and the multiple frameworks and sources through which it can be studied. ³³ Though they do not feature ‘histories’ from the Madras Presidency, the question of outcaste domestic servants in European houses and their social mobility, which is briefly discussed in their works, indicates the shared experience of the outcastes across South Asia. ³⁴

The Kitchen Entry

‘Since the advent of Europeans’, writes T. F. McNamara in 1930, ‘pariahs have become their servant class; for, of course, no caste man would do menial work for beef-eating Britishers’. ³⁵ Therefore, the precarious situation of European colonists in India was a significant factor that brought the pariahs into colonial houses. In 1639, when the British received permission from the local Nayaka chief to construct a castle (Fort St George) and began their settlement in Madrasapattinam (which later became the city of Madras), there were already a few Portuguese and Dutch settlements along the Malabar and Coromandel coasts in South India. The early settlers—the company officials, clerks, merchants, sailors and soldiers, among others—were expected to adopt a disciplined lifestyle and uphold the moral values and the superiority of their country and religion. ³⁶ Though such restrictions gradually evanesced for various pragmatic reasons, the authorities never formally endorsed the Europeans’ intermingling with the local populace. As a result, they had to face challenges in addressing the dietary and sexual needs of the young British expats. Unavailability of meat was a constant problem. For instance, in Surat, where the British built their trading station in the early seventeenth century, they starved for want of meat, especially beef and pork, as this region was predominantly inhabited by Hindus and governed by Islamic rulers. ³⁷ Though the situation in other regions was different, it had always been a major concern for the officials. As per contemporary records, a market at Madras in 1809 ‘offered beef, veal, mutton, pork, turkey, goose, and duck’ in addition to varieties of wildfowl. ³⁸ A decade earlier, in 1795, Colonel Lionel Place, the British Collector of Chengalpattu in the Madras Presidency, had reported that ‘European requirements for mutton were literally draining the Jagir of its animal wealth.’ ³⁹

Similarly, dealing with the issue of sexual conduct of their white male subjects in colonies also posed a challenge. At some point, it even compelled the authorities to compromise with their initial restrictive policies. The problem persisted until the majority of Englishmen employed in the Indian services began to migrate with their spouses. In Surat, the British merchants and sailors had to longingly wait for the gaze of Portuguese ladies—the only white women in their proximity. Even closeness between the Englishmen and Portuguese women was not encouraged by the authorities due to the fear that their marriage could harm and weaken the Protestant religion. ⁴⁰ Earlier, realising its necessity and concerned about the morale of their employees in the East, the Portuguese government ‘used to send out annual batches of women who had failed to find husbands at home’. ⁴¹ These women were provided with substantial dowries by the government and were encouraged to choose their marital partner among the ‘obedient officials’ who ‘might not cavil at such trifles as lack of physical attraction’. ⁴² Later, when they established their stations in Bombay, the British adopted the same practice as the Portuguese. Though they were not given dowries, the women from England were ‘guaranteed their “diet” during a year in India’. ⁴³ Eventually, by the time of establishing their settlement in Madras, they gave up this practice of what came to be known as ‘the costly Bombay experiment’ because of the additional expenditure incurred when the ‘imported’ young women failed to find a husband even after a year. Instead, they decided (as per a communication to the Indian representatives) to ‘induce by all means our soldiers to marry the native women because it will be impossible to get ordinary young women to pay their own passages’ from England to Madras. ⁴⁴ Consequently, many began to look for native slave-girls and kept them as mistresses. In many cases, impoverished parents sold their daughters to Europeans. For instance, Major H. Bevan, an English official in Madras, observed:

The paucity of English ladies in India, more especially at the remote stations, had led to the formation of matrimonial connections between European officers and native women. The mistresses are obtained from both the Hindu and Mussulman races, and they are often sold to their masters by their relatives. ⁴⁵

Although it only lasted for a short period, keeping local mistresses was a recognised practice in Madras during the first quarter of the nineteenth century. ⁴⁶ The offspring of such unions resulted in the expansion of the Eurasian population. A development that made it easier for colonial officials to bring their wives with them was the opening of the Suez Canal in the second half of the nineteenth century. It reduced the tedious six or more months of travel from England to Madras to one month. ⁴⁷ These white women (spouses of European expatriates), called ‘memsahib’ (madam-sahib) by their native servants, were the backbone of the British Empire as they managed and ensured the smooth functioning of the colonial homes.

As they gradually transformed from traders to rulers, the British moved out of their initial residences in the coastal port towns to the interiors. Their involvement in local political affairs and wars necessitated the deployment of additional European soldiers. This, in turn, lead to an increase in the white population in the presidency. For instance, in Madras, it grew ‘from about a dozen officers in 1750 to over eight hundred by the late 1780s and from a few hundred rank and file soldiers to several thousands’. ⁴⁸ Political gains helped the trade prospects which in turn brought more non-military population; their number increased ‘from only slightly more than a hundred company officials, private merchants and seaman, excluding their families, to an estimated twelve hundred persons by 1800’. ⁴⁹ They acquired ownership over surrounding villages. A different range of residential buildings was built with the help of European engineers and native construction workers. Wealthy officials preferred to move from the Fort and the White Town (early settlement areas) to suburban garden houses which resembled the upper-class English country estates. Garden houses were initially, since the time of the Portuguese, intended for pleasure and leisure. By 1780, there were over 200 garden houses, which expanded to 400 by the early 1800s. ⁵⁰ They ‘ranged in size from merely a few acres up to substantial estates of fifty and even more acres’. ⁵¹ Apart from the garden houses, several other types of dwellings were also built to fulfil the demands of Europeans from different social backgrounds. Thus, in the centuries that followed, major cities had exclusive White Towns, Black Towns, Civil Lines and cantonment zones. Similarly, the district headquarters had resident bungalows. and there were also bungalows for travellers in the urban areas and planters in the frontier regions.

Like the food and the lifestyle of Europeans, which gradually developed into a hybrid mode, ⁵² the architecture of the colonial bungalows also showed mixed features of the West and the East. ⁵³ A typical eighteenth-century bungalow ‘was a single storied building made of sundried bricks with a thatched roof, high ceilings and a verandah with wooden posts’. ⁵⁴ Later, they had tiled or concrete roofs, an additional kitchen, servant quarters and herd-sheds separated from the main building. All these structures, along with a sizeable garden area, were enclosed by a protective brick compound wall. In some cases, the government servants seemed to have found both the rent and the cost of these bungalows to be expensive. In England, writes Edmund Hull, ‘a comfortable suburban, or country townhouse, sufficient to accommodate a quiet, moderately-sized family, may be rented at between £40 and £60 a year. In Madras, a residence affording the same accommodation would probably be £160 or £180’. ⁵⁵ However, house rents varied according to the size of the building and its location. Some company servants also attempted to purchase their own bungalows. A report of the Select Committee of the House of Lords indicates that the temptation to purchase bungalows in Madras caused indebtedness among military officials. ⁵⁶

The bungalows allotted to or rented by the British civil and military officials of different scales and managed by their wives became the ‘microcosm of the Empire’. ⁵⁷ The kitchen was an important place within the bungalow complex that connected a range of servants involved in the everyday maintenance of the house and the complex. In most cases, they were separated from the main building to avoid the heat seeping into the latter. Among many other things, the kitchen received different sorts of meat every day, which were cooked and served to the masters. Many workers managed their own food from the leftovers of the kitchen. The kitchen was a place where ‘imperial authority was often undermined’. ⁵⁸ It was a space for much-relaxed interaction between the memsahib and her domestic servants. The number of workers employed in the colonial bungalows varied. Some of the high-ranking officials have been reported to have as many as 58 workers, if not more. ⁵⁹ Evidently, such luxury was practically not possible to all; after paying house rent and workers’ wages they had to live in a hand-to-mouth situation. ⁶⁰ To protect its servants in India from falling into debt, in 1757 the court of directors had ruled that ‘a junior civilian without a family should be allowed only two servants and a cook, and he should not keep a horse or have a garden house.’ ⁶¹ In the eighteenth century, for a comfortable living, an Englishman had to ‘have twelve or fifteen’ servants, and even the humblest among them, ‘could not do with less than three’. ⁶² In the nineteenth century, an average middle-class European family in Madras had to engage 20 to 30 servants. ⁶³

Contemporary accounts have blamed the Hindu caste system for creating a situation wherein the foreigners needed to employ so many workers. When Mrs S. T. (Sarah Tucker) wrote a letter to her ‘young friend’ in the 1830s, she mentioned that ‘the number of servants will at first surprise you, partly on account of caste, and partly from other causes; there are two or three times as many required here as in England’. ⁶⁴ Such issues continued even towards the end of the colonial period in India. For instance, Birgitte Valvanne, at the beginning of the twentieth century, wrote: ‘Although the caste system is officially abolished in India, a lot of servants are still needed, as they won’t touch each other’s work. There is no doubt that two Finnish or Danish maids could do exactly the same work of all my servants.’ ⁶⁵ Several years later, one Mrs Furness put it more aptly: ‘The domestic help question is something of a problem, not because of the scarcity, but rather because of the large number one has to keep.’ ⁶⁶

A few European families did bring their native domestic servants along. Some of them even brought in enslaved Africans to work in their houses. But these workers were very expensive compared to other locally-available options for domestic work. ⁶⁷ There were also a few isolated incidents of Europeans purchasing children from their impoverished parents to use them for domestic labour. ⁶⁸ Even if there was evidence of domestic slavery among European households in Madras as late as the eighteenth century, as Ahuja contends, ‘most of the domestic workers were rather wage labourers than slaves.’ ⁶⁹ There are in fact a number of contemporary sources—especially the household manuals and the notes and letters of memsahibs—which give detailed accounts of wages paid to their domestic servants. ⁷⁰ These workers, as will be shown in the following pages, were by and large first-time wage labourers coming from families with a rural outcaste background. If the quest for wage work served as an inducement for economic mobility of outcastes, it was the colonial kitchens that played a substantial role in providing them with this opportunity.

The nature of food preferred and cooked in the colonial kitchens disgruntled the caste Hindus who avoided touching meat, especially beef, and the Muslims, who were not comfortable with cooking pork and serving wine. ⁷¹ Similarly, the Europeans were not happy employing Eurasians and converted Christians, because they belonged to the ‘Masters’ caste’—Christianity. ⁷² Therefore, the Europeans accepted the pariahs as the only available and cheap option for domestic work and welcomed them into their kitchens. The pariah servants also used this opportunity and developed their skills in housekeeping. ‘They spoke a broken English peculiar to themselves, in which English words and Tamil idiom and construction entered into an unholy alliance on their artful lips,’ wrote one source on their newfound bilingual linguistic skill. ⁷³ In a broader sense, the outcastes’ entry into the colonial kitchen was a watershed moment. It, above all, helped them to challenge the Hindu cultural and religious beliefs that had held the outcastes in a state of backwardness and bondage for generations.

Praying for Master

A response letter to a job advertisement, written in waggish ‘butler English’ by a pariah aspirant from Madras, was reproduced in many newspapers and magazines under the heading ‘Praying for Master’. ⁷⁴ The letter first appeared in November 1936, and many times thereafter, with the following note: ‘a contributor to a Calcutta paper advertised for a cook, a butler and also a table servant. One of the candidates was apparently willing to take up all three jobs on 16 ½ rupees a month, plus his daily midday rice.’ Then the letter followed:

Your Excellency, —I done seed your vertisement about wanted cooke, butler and table boy, and Master please don’t be angry me asking Rs 16 ½ and grapping nice (rice). I knowed every business and done passed every examination. Madras boy rogue. I only good boy and am got plenty certificates from Nobilities and cards, same like your Excellency. I very honest boy Sir, and am tea toller and drink only hot water. I got six he and two she children, who are all praying for Master’s long life and plenty to eat. I can ride Master’s motor cycle and post master’s letter. I am pariah cask (caste) but can cook English, French and Italian puddings for master. ⁷⁵

English newspapers and magazines in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries published many interesting anecdotes from India that entertained their readers. Such stories ranged from the superstitious beliefs of domestic workers to how an ayah (housemaid) ‘who knew a smattering of French and English’ united two European lovers who were unable to communicate with each other. ⁷⁶ The above letter, while reprinted for its entertainment value to contemporary readers, helps the historian to comprehend the ambitions of a pariah cook under the changed conditions of colonial rule. A century before, however, the situation was very different.

As noted in the preceding section, the requirement for engaging a larger number of servants, owing to Hindu caste norms and practices, was a constant problem for the Europeans. In 1799, a petition submitted to the company government by outcaste servants listed out nearly 18 ‘menial servants to the Gentlemen and Ladies’. ⁷⁷ The list included butlers, butler’s maties, cooks, cook’s maties, dog boys, coachmen, palanquin boys, horse keepers, grass cutters, dry and wet nurses, water wenches, scavengers, cart drivers, toties, women sweepers and lamp lighters. Upon entering the Madras Presidency in 1836, a memsahib’s initial impression of the domestic servants employed in European families was as follows:

There is one great convenience in visiting at an Indian house,viz—every visitor keeps his own establishment of servants, so as to give no trouble to those of the house. The servants provide for themselves in the most curious way. They seem to me to sleep nowhere, and to eat nothing,—that is to say, in our houses, or of our goods. They have mats on the steps and live upon rice. But they do very little, and everyone has his separate work. I have an ayah (or lady’s maid) and a tailor (for the ayahs cannot work); and A—has a boy: also two muddles―one to sweep my room, and another to bring water. There is one man to lay the cloth, another to bring in dinner, another to light the candles and others to wait at table. Every horse has a man and maid to himself—the maid cuts grass for him; and every dog has a boy. I inquired whether a cat had any servants, but I found she was allowed to wait upon herself; and, as she seemed the only person in the establishment capable of so doing, I respected her accordingly. Besides all these acknowledged and ostensible attendants, each servant had a kind of muddle or double of his own, who does all the work that can be put off upon him, without being found out by the master and mistress. ⁷⁸

Though such a demeaning view of the local domestic workers gradually disappeared, the number of persons required for domestic work remained unchanged. After almost 35 years, in 1871, Edmund Hull gave a list of 22 servants―18 men and 5 women―‘required in the house of a married couple, without children, in comfortable pecuniary circumstances’. ⁷⁹ The total payments made to all servants would amount to between 135 and 150 rupees. ⁸⁰ Hull further stated, ‘indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that the Madras servants, like the Madras houses, are, taken altogether, the best in India’. ⁸¹ Therefore, it is reasonable to suppose that a significant portion of the Madras servant class were employed in the domestic work sector during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

To know about the social background of these servants, we need to rely primarily on the scattered references in colonial archives. These documents vaguely mention that they were pariahs, lower classes, outcastes, people from sweeper castes, grass-cutters castes, toties, and so on. In Madras, when the British established Fort St George and White Town, they also created an adjacent Black Town for the native servant classes to reside in as well as conduct their daily business. As the population of Europeans in the White Town grew, so did the number of inhabitants of the Black Town. According to Susan Neild-Basu

by the early 1800s the untouchable population of Madras may have included as much as one-fifth of its total population of approximately 250,000 to 300,000 persons. From the establishment of the colonial port town, they constituted probably the major part of its unskilled labour force. ⁸²

They were in all probability first-generation wage workers. Colonial reports mention agricultural workers like paraiyars (pariahs) ‘deserting their masters in the annexed as well as in more distant villages to work as wage labourers in the town’. ⁸³ The Black Town included a large paraicheri (settlement area of paraiyars). When new settlements were established around the area as a result of the expansion of urban space, it made the paraicheri the central part of the Black Town, which was very unusual if we consider the usual location of paraiyar settlements in villages. ⁸⁴ Agricultural labourers from rural areas continued to migrate to Madras. When the Black Town could no longer accommodate them, many relocated to the suburbs, where Europeans already had garden houses. ⁸⁵ As one might expect, a substantial portion of the Black Town residents were engaged in household work. Further, the demand for domestic servants was not just in Madras but also in other locations where Europeans resided and worked. Similarly, the Christian missionaries, working in different interior areas, also had to depend on outcaste domestic workers for basic needs and chores.

Employing outcaste men and women for in-house work for a monthly wage was a significant departure from various forms of traditional labour practices that were prevalent at the time. For instance, in 1896, Colonel Pollok recounted that ‘although slavery had been abolished in our territories, it still existed in my childhood in the independent native states…. Our ayahs and most of the domestics were all slaves, though not treated as such.’ ⁸⁶ Similarly, European wills included instructions to leave some property to their ‘slave girl’ and ‘slave boy’, though they claimed to have never looked on them as such. ⁸⁷ These sources suggest a transitory phase when slavery was being phased out of British-controlled areas and domestic servants began to receive relatively better treatment. Receiving cash wages, severing ties with the rural caste-based social system and affiliation with a European family cleared the way for social and economic mobility for the domestic workers. Pollok noted, ‘There was not one, from the highest to the lowest, who was not proud to belong to a Sahib’s household.’ ⁸⁸ In the 1830s, Mrs S. T. observed that ‘many of them live in the “compound”, sometimes to the number of twenty or thirty families, turning into quite a little village.’ ⁸⁹ Similarly, a few decades later, while discussing her servants, Birgitte Valvanne wrote, ‘they all wanted to stay in-house’. ⁹⁰ The desire of the servants to reside within the bungalow complex was perhaps an effort to enhance their social standing.

Before the opening of the Suez Canal, which made Bombay the gateway to India, the entry point for most of the ships coming from Britain was Madras. European travellers, the future residents of India, met the locals even before entering the shoreline. Upon noticing or learning about the arrival of European ships, the natives approached them using their country boats. Among them were ‘respectable looking men’ known as dubashes―the ones who spoke two languages. They were the first servants to be employed by the Europeans. Historians have made detailed studies of ‘Madras Dubashes’. ⁹¹ Their research, however, has primarily focused on a select few prominent dubashes who had long-term affiliations with influential colonial officials or merchants and maintained their personal accounts (for example, Ananda Ranga Pillai, Rayasam Papaiya and Muthukrishnan). One may contend that there were also lower-ranking dubashes, who for a short period offered their services to newly-arrived European families to set up their stay in Madras. For instance, ‘with the rise of the colonial administrative service in the early 1800s’, writes Neild-Basu, ‘the position of Dubash lost its power and prestige and was reduced to an office or household staff job’. ⁹² Similarly, according to Kanakalatha Mukund, ‘the English classed all employees from household servants to man of affairs under one common rubric—Dubash—without making a distinction as to their relative status in society’. ⁹³ Dubashes, therefore, played a significant role in household work, at least in some instances. ‘In the households of the higher-ranking Europeans in Madras’ they served as the head steward. ⁹⁴ Attempts to investigate the caste of dubashes thus far have revealed that before the eighteenth century, they belonged to merchant castes such as chetti, while the later ones were from the vellalar, idaiyar and brahman castes. ⁹⁵ Nonetheless, there is also evidence to suggest that some of the dubashes were from outcaste communities. The missionary document about ‘high-class pariahs’ referred to earlier suggests that this category included dubashes as well. Similarly, at the end of the nineteenth century, Iyothi Thass, whose grandfather served as a butler to a colonial officer (Lord Arlington), noted that among the pariahs in Madras city, there were 148 butlers, 112 dubashes, 201 cooks and 108 maties. ⁹⁶

Colonial chronicles sporadically mention such common dubashes. In her autobiographical work, Mrs Sherwood recounted the arrival of dubashes as viewed from her ship:

These men were arrayed in long muslin dresses, bound about the waist with ample bands of muslin. They wore large turbans and gold earrings and chains, their beards being trimmed and cut with great nicety, and their faces in many instances were marked with yellow or white streaks or spots. ⁹⁷

She further observed:

While we were doubting respecting the grade in society of these our elegant but extraordinary visitors, they soon settled our opinions by the profound salutations which they bestowed three times upon the ship’s officers and other gentlemen, by bending their bodies so low that they touched the deck with the back of their hands and with their foreheads. These persons were, in fact, nothing more than stewards, or head servants—such persons in Calcutta are called Circars or Khaunsaumans, and at Madras Debashes.… These fine personages were therefore come to get situations amongst the passengers, and in a very short time more boats arrived, until the deck was covered with men of this description. ⁹⁸

Going by various accounts of travellers, the services of dubashes were temporary and were utilised during the initial days. Those who came for a short visit to Madras, or broke their journey there on their way to Bengal or other places, hired dubashes to take care of their local travel, boarding and lodging. In this regard, in 1811, James Wathen wrote that

notwithstanding my predilection for pedestrian exercise…I was under the necessity, partly on account of the extreme heat, but more in compliance with etiquette and the custom of the place, to hire a palanquin and bearers to carry me in my visits. My Dubash soon procured this convenience. ⁹⁹

And for those who wanted to settle in Madras for a longer period, dubashes helped them get familiarised with the new place. ‘They generally speak a little English; and though they are known to be great rogues, yet it is impossible to do without one of them, for a little while at least’, observed Mrs Sherwood. ¹⁰⁰ A few decades earlier, in 1780, Mrs Fay noted:

On your arrival you are pestered by Dubashees, and servants of all kinds who crouch around you as if they were already your slaves, but who will cheat you in every possible way; though in fact there is no living without one of the former to manage your affair as a kind of steward. ¹⁰¹

Therefore, dubashes were the immediate beneficiaries upon the arrival of European families. The next set of beneficiaries were the actual domestic workers. The household manuals and guidebooks published in London for the benefit of families intending to migrate to India suggested taking time and exercising caution before appointing domestic servants. Accounts indicated that there would be hundreds of people holding different sorts of experience and conduct certificates from their previous masters and seeking employment with the newly arrived families from the West. ‘They will produce excellent testimonials,’ wrote Eliot James ‘from so-called former masters, some genuine perhaps, but to greater parts false and bought for a few pice in the bazaar’. ¹⁰² Yet, she urged them to resist being influenced by the prejudicial remarks about servants:

You will be told that they are all thieves, that they speak the truth only by accident, that they are the greatest trouble in life, and so on. To all these remarks, I would say, take them with a grain of salt to season them. ¹⁰³

Edmund Hull similarly argued: ‘True, he is not strictly honest or truth-loving, but are the uneducated people of the lower orders of any country (England for example) greatly noted for these characteristics?’ ¹⁰⁴ But these were initial troubles. In many cases, various personal accounts indicated a strong and long relationship between masters and domestic servants.

The butler, the cook and the ayah were perhaps the most important among the battalion of domestic servants. The butlers were the most expensive of all. They supervised all other servants, maintained accounts of purchases and communicated with their masters in the best possible ‘butler English’. Within the servant community, the butler was given a high status. Engaging a butler was a sign of prestige and luxury for the European families in India as well. However, many of them did not keep a butler; instead, they had a ‘head-servant’ or ‘head boy’—the ‘modified species of butler’. ¹⁰⁵ A lady resident advised her friends not to engage a butler since ‘a good head boy’ answered the purpose far better. ¹⁰⁶ The butler also employed, on behalf of his master, other menial servants whom he dismissed and engaged at will. ¹⁰⁷ Because of his supervisory role, influence and closeness with the masters, the relationship between the butler and other servants of the household was not cordial. For example, Wyvern observed: ‘Some cooks do not care for the butler’s interference, and in many establishments, the cook and butler do not pull on.’ ¹⁰⁸ Henry Dodwell noted that in 1765 ‘a butler at Madras got from 1½ to 3 pagodas a month, while one at Calcutta would get 5 rupees upwards’. ¹⁰⁹ As with dubashes, the significance of butlers might have faded in subsequent centuries.

Among the servants of the memsahibs, the ayahs held a special position as they provided multiple services. For those who needed to stay for a longer period in the Madras Presidency, the ayahs served as the in-house maids whose prime duty was to take care of the needs of the memsahibs and their children. ‘Ayahs are, as a rule, very fond of babies, and gentle and patient to a degree which would astonish the rough and ready English nurse-maids’, wrote a lady resident. ¹¹⁰ Ayahs also acted as bearers or cook during the absence of these workers. ¹¹¹ An ayah was ‘not only willing to wait upon her special charge but also perform many little offices about the house when required’. ¹¹² She often fed the children curry-rice and sat with the memsahib at her leisure to chat about various things; the ayah was the main source of information regarding native customs, caste rules and healing practices. When the family went on tours, the ayah accompanied them. According to one contemporary account, she was loyal to her mistress’s interest to such an extent that

[s]he generally quite identifies herself with her mistress, looks after her properly with a jealous anxiety, and is always ready to report any improper proceedings which may be going on among the other servants—against whom, if necessary, she will unhesitatingly range herself on her mistress’s side. ¹¹³

For the European and Australian lady travellers who came for a short visit to India, the ayah was an assistant as well as a companion. She accompanied them on all their travel adventures and assisted them in their train journey to other places such as Bombay, Calcutta and Delhi. For example, a lady traveller from Australia who came to Madras for the Delhi Durbar in 1911 was reported to have said that her ayah was ‘a delightful Madras woman who had been twelve times to England’. ¹¹⁴ Madras ayahs were generally preferred by the English women, even if they had to travel or settle outside the Madras Presidency. A handbook for travellers in India, Burma and Ceylon suggested that ‘Madras ayahs though expensive are considered the best’. ¹¹⁵ C. Dutton stated that Madras ayahs required better wages than Bengali ones; however they were well worth the money. ¹¹⁶ Similarly, when a memsahib, alone or with her family, returned to her home country, her ayah assisted her and took care of the children on the ship. These women, referred to as ‘travelling ayahs’ by Olivia Robinson, were comparable to sailors and boatmen. ¹¹⁷

In all probability, ayahs belonged to a beef-eating outcaste or lower-caste community within the hierarchy of outcastes. Various personal accounts indicated that food was a major hurdle against the memsahib’s desire to appoint a ‘caste woman’ as ayah. ‘The ayah’s caste’, writes Indrani Sen, ‘was in fact, one of the problematic areas for the memsahib. White people were considered “outcastes” and generally only women belonging to the sweeper caste were willing to work for them as ayah—a fact that imperial mistresses found mortifying.’ ¹¹⁸ In many cases, the ayah was the wife of a sweeper or the butler employed in the bungalow. Sweepers being the lowest among the outcastes, the ayah’s caste background had been an issue not just for the memsahibs but also to other servants. The writers of household manuals for prospective colonial wives in India advised them to ensure that the ‘ayah is treated with respect by the other servants, even if she be of the sweeper caste’. ¹¹⁹ Steel and Gardiner advised: ‘Whether she be a sweeper or not, it should be generally understood that you hold her to be the equal of any other servant in the house.’ ¹²⁰ Citing these examples, Alison Blunt argues that ‘an ayah’s unique position as the only female servant enabled her to transcend the limits of her lowly caste’. ¹²¹

While the white children in the Madras Presidency grew up with the affectionate care of ayahs, memsahibs temporarily appointed ammas or tayammas (wetnurses), from among caste women when breast-feeding was necessary. ¹²² While the next section discusses more about the cooks of colonial kitchens, we do not have enough documents to know about the lower-ranking servants like the dog boy, sweepers, and gardeners. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, European households were not required to employ as many workers as they had two hundred years previously. However, the demand for domestic servants from Madras rose in western countries. As mentioned earlier, the ayahs were perhaps the first Indian women who crossed the sea to experience the other world—the West. European countries even had evolved legal mechanisms to address their grievances. ¹²³ Though the stay of travelling ayahs was transitory in the early days, in subsequent years, both the female and male domestic workers began to settle in western countries for a considerable time. Countries like Australia discussed ‘coolie immigration’ policies especially to facilitate the flow of domestic workers in their countries. ¹²⁴

The labour relations in the European households of the Madras Presidency were quite different from other sectors like agriculture, industries, transport and mines. Outright exploitation of labour was difficult due to the mutual dependency of European masters and their outcaste servants. Moreover, various factors kept transforming the relationship between the two. The aforementioned petition of Iyothi Thass in 1895 indicated how the early phase of colonialism created various job opportunities for outcastes, so that they could educate their children and have a better living standard. But these job opportunities, he contended, were later seized by the caste men, who were previously unwilling out of concern for their caste. He went further to describe the misery of outcaste domestic servants in the countryside, which drove them to relocate to cities to work in European houses. He wrote:

Though they thus work hard and conscientiously for their masters, the caste men give them in return not even permission to draw fine drinking water from their wells. These unhappy people are forced to drink filthy rain water which collects itself into ponds and pools and to fall victims to various diseases. The rest of them, who leaving their abodes in their villages enter a town to seek living, take appointments as domestic servants under Europeans and receive wages from 6 to 12 rupees a month…. God only knows the hardships they and their families undergo on account of food and clothing, in the interval between quitting an appointment and getting another. In this state they continue to serve their European masters faithfully and diligently and also share their pleasures and sorrows even from the time of their arrival from Europe. They work daily from 6 in the morning to 10 or 12 in the night thus awaking for several hours every day. Sometimes they have to perform along with their masters long and tedious journeys through jungles and across mountains, and to accompany their masters even as far as England. Though in this manner they serve their masters faithfully through weal and woe, they can get nothing to support them in their old age and by continual starvation they meet death at last. Neither are they in a position to educate their children. Their masters always keep knocking about from place to place, stopping, for instance, for 6 months in Madras, 6 months at Ooty, 2 months at Cuddapah, 4 months at Salem and so on. They (servants) are unable to leave their children behind to remain always in one place getting education, as they have no money to meet the expenses in the shape of food and clothing, school fees and books, required for their children. So they take their wives and children always with them wherever they go. In consequence the children when they grow to manhood are fit only to follow their fathers in their profession. ¹²⁵

Iyothi Thass’s petition intended to show the deteriorating condition of domestic workers. Despite their services to the Europeans, enduring all adversities, the domestic servants had no social security after their retirement. Moreover, without proper education of their children, domestic work became hereditary. European writings similarly note the changing situation of domestic servants but in a different way. For instance, immediately after the First World War, a columnist of a women’s magazine in Madras provided a comparative opinion about the domestic workers in India. She stated that in days gone by, a servant would typically stay with one master his whole life, the master returning to him after every furlough. At the gate, the faithful servant ‘would be waiting to welcome his returning master with a thick garland of jasmine to throw around his neck. But these little scenes grow rarer every day’. ¹²⁶ Unfortunately, we have very limited documented evidence to explore this changing relationship.

Nonetheless, the insistence on retirement benefits and the right to education and healthcare in Iyothi Thass’ petition was, in fact, an indication of outcaste leaders’ awareness about civil and labour rights and colonial legality. Aparna Balachandran, who studied collective petitions of outcaste servants to the colonial government, has observed that such demands for basic civil rights began in the late eighteenth century. ¹²⁷ As a significant consumer of outcaste labour, it was expected that the government should accede to their requests. In analysing one petition dated 1799, Balachandran has observed that it ‘highlights the place that outcaste servants had in the intimate spaces of European establishments—as cooks and wet nurses for instance—something that would have been impossible in a native, upper caste home’. ¹²⁸ As their services were crucial to the colonial home and, thus, administration, they could hold considerable bargaining power.

Madras Curry

‘Madras Curry could win, but reached third place on 9 January 1924’—most of the Australian newspapers published on that day carried this news with other titles such as: ‘Madras Curry lacks Seasoning, but Makes Good Market’. ¹²⁹ Madras Curry was the name of a horse that participated in a race held at Victoria Park under the 14.1 maiden handicap category. ¹³⁰ The name symbolised the fiery, spicy and invigorating quality of real Madras curry—a Madras cuisine that the pariah cooks prepared for their European masters. The Portuguese and British settlers pronounced the word ‘kari’ (hot sauce in local languages such as Tamil and Malayalam) as ‘caree’ and subsequently as ‘curry’. Any hot Indian dish with a gravy texture was henceforth referred to as curry. ¹³¹ The Madras curry was a product of a colonial process that brought the two different social classes of the world—the outcaste domestics and the European expatriates―together. From being a ‘pariah food’ of European houses in Madras to becoming a celebrated Asian dish in the West, its history has been one of evolutionary nature.

Anecdotes concerning Madras curry are numerous. All explain the esteemed position it held in the global cuisine culture. It became popular not only among expats who happened to live in the Madras Presidency or their European relatives but also among those who tasted it at diners in England or Sydney and/or attempted to prepare it on their own, aided by cookbooks. Its impact was felt across social sections―from an ordinary soldier longing for Madras curry during his travel on a ship ¹³² to the Prince of Wales, who ventured out in search of the curry during his visit to India. ¹³³ In June 1876, newspapers in India and England reported:

When the Prince of Wales was in Madras, His Royal Highness expressed a desire to have a good tiffin of Madras curries. He was accordingly invited to the club and expressed complete satisfaction with the manner in which tiffin at the club was served, and it appears that he asked the club committee to send a Madras cook to England, to enable His Royal Highness to have curries served in Madras fashion at the Royal table.

Colonial authorities in Madras managed to send a cook to England at the cost of ₹105. The news report concluded, ‘Happy Prince! Still happier cook!’ ¹³⁴

Theorising Victorian culinary culture has led to the perception that ‘from the mid-nineteenth century the imperial ethos became so strong that many English families from different socio-economic backgrounds began to include Indian food in their diets’. ¹³⁵ Though the earliest evidence of curry being served in coffee houses in England goes back to 1733, ¹³⁶ it became widespread only during the mid-nineteenth century. Adopting oriental food was part of the growing cosmopolitanism in the West, confined initially to the elite sections. However, developments such as improvement of naval technology and transport, the shortened travel distance and time to the East, the introduction of the commercial printing press, and the ready availability of curry powder and other spices facilitated its rapid spread. Additionally, the economic and nutritional concerns played a role in its diffusion across different layers of society.

As Nupur Chaudhuri has argued, ‘the memsahibs—the wives of colonial officials and staffs in India—were a major force in nurturing this newly acquired culinary taste’. ¹³⁷ Memsahibs initially exchanged their acquired knowledge of native dishes through personal letters to their relatives and friends. Later, as the demand increased, they began to write recipe columns in weekly women’s magazines, newspapers and other popular periodicals. They were the main sources for the cookbooks and household manuals published in the nineteenth century. In many cases they also interacted with readers of their recipe notes, clarifying doubts and suggesting new ways of cooking the food of the colonised. Therefore, by transmitting Indian culinary culture, the memsahibs transformed those of their home country. ¹³⁸

Answering how the memsahibs acquired this knowledge brings us again to a discussion of the colonial kitchens of Madras and the pariah cooks employed there. As mentioned earlier, the colonial kitchens were places of learning and experimentation. The taste for Indian food initially germinated there before its transmission to England or Australia. The Ramasamys and Muthusamys, the typical names of cooks employed in colonial bungalows of the Madras Presidency, were responsible for transmitting the knowledge to the memsahibs, who were initially reluctant to allow the entry of local dishes into their kitchens, but were later compelled to, as their attempts to cook food of their own country did not succeed. Wyvern noted that ‘unless amicable relations exist between the cook and mistress or master, the work will never be carried out satisfactorily.’ ¹³⁹ He further wrote, ‘there can be no doubt that in our Ramasamy we possess admirable materials out of which to form a good cook’ and ‘for all we know that Ramasamy’s domestic curry often gains, whilst we lose’ ¹⁴⁰ and ‘the moment you betray irritation and hastiness in your manner towards Ramasamy, he ceases to follow you.’ However, on some other occasions, Wyvern, who was often criticised for his Eurocentric views, ¹⁴¹ tells his white audience, ‘the native preparations in the majority of cases could scarcely be eaten by civilised Europeans.’ ¹⁴² Kenney Herbert felt that ‘good curries, from our standpoint, are the result of a blend between European and Asiatic cookery, and whenever you get a specially nice one, depend upon it the credit is more due to the mistress of the house than to the cook’. ¹⁴³ But there were also incidents when the cooks overruled the decision of memsahibs in the affairs of food. ¹⁴⁴ Therefore, both the memsahibs and the pariah cooks of the colonial kitchens had an equal contribution in transforming the culinary culture of England towards the end of the Victorian era. The pariah cooks passed on their local expertise of food to the memsahibs who, in turn, seasoned, improved and further transmitted it to the European world.

Preparing the curry paste with proper texture and ingredients was a challenge to cooking curry in the West. Although there were encouraging notes, like ‘I see no reason why the ingredients could not be obtained in England, with the exception of the fenugreek and green leaves’ and ‘Indian dishes are not beyond the power of the average cook,’ ¹⁴⁵ it was generally accepted that good curry could rarely be obtained in England, ‘unless at the house of someone who has passed a good many years in India’. ¹⁴⁶ The invention of readymade curry powders and pastes could partially solve this problem. Records suggest that the import of curry-powder products from Madras steadily increased towards the end of the nineteenth century. Many manufacturers gradually entered this market. In his note, Wyvern advocated for the use of Barrie’s Madras curry powder and paste. ¹⁴⁷ An advertisement in 1857 stated that Barrie and Co., Vepery, Madras, had arranged a regular supply of curry powder and other products ‘to late residents in India’. It was, as per the advertisement, ‘to enable their old correspondents returning from India to continue the use of the celebrated condiments’. ¹⁴⁸ In Australia, the Vencatachellum Madras curry powder was very famous. ¹⁴⁹ At the Melbourne International Exhibition, held in 1880, Vencatachellum traders exhibited nearly 30 products including Madras curry powder, Madras curry paste and Mulligatawny paste, as well as different types of chutneys. ¹⁵⁰ Such products were also exhibited by the same trader at the Vienna Universal Exhibition held seven years earlier in 1873. ¹⁵¹ While there was another trader from Bombay selling Madras curry powder and paste, curry powder of no other provinces was exhibited in these exhibitions. ¹⁵² Therefore, in the nineteenth century, to most of the Europeans settled in different places in the West, ‘curry’ would have meant the Madras curry. Imported Madras curry powder helped European restaurants to promote curry. It was marketed as a secret of the East, not easily acquirable by the West. ¹⁵³

Discussion on Madras curry should not overshadow the popularity of Mulligatawny, ‘one of the most popular Anglo-Indian dishes said to have been invented in Madras.’ ¹⁵⁴ Mulligatawny was the Englishmen’s pronunciation of the Tamil phrase milaguthannir which meant pepper-water. It was a simple native dish of Madras eaten with rice after the curry. Its resemblance to soup and the economical way of making it easily attracted the Westerners. When asked to prepare soup, ‘the Madrasi cooks inventively added a little rice, a few vegetables, some meat and transformed the broth into what they locally called rasam’. ¹⁵⁵ Like Madras curry, Mulligatawny also had its anecdotal history and was equally represented in colonial letters, cookbooks and recipe columns in magazines. According to Wyvern, it was a dish of poor natives of Madras and prepared with the following ingredients: tamarind, red chilli, garlic, mustard seeds, fenugreek, black pepper, curry leaves and onion. In 1898, in support of this recipe, Mrs Roundell wrote, ‘Mulligatawny is often so badly made in England that the name “pepper-water” is painfully appropriate. But by following the recipe of Wyvern, himself long resident in the Madras Presidency, an excellent Mulligatawny soup can be made.’ ¹⁵⁶

Summing up the discussion on curry, whether the indigenous knowledge of food was ‘fabricated and commodified’ by the masters, ¹⁵⁷ or if it was, without commercial intention, simply ‘appropriated and modified’ to enhance the quality, ¹⁵⁸ or it was a product that emerged from the experiments of the native cooks who altered its original composition so as to suit the masters’ taste, ¹⁵⁹ its popularity in wider food-commodity markets has been evident since the eighteenth century. Although the pariah cook’s contribution to it was never acknowledged, colonialism made it possible for the global communities to experience the taste of pariah food. The discussion on Madras curry, indeed, provides further insight into the outcaste cooks of colonial households and their relationship with the colonial wives.

The Little Hindus

Although the relationship remained reciprocal, there was always an undercurrent of anxiety and tension between the outcaste domestic servants and the European masters. From the beginning, European writings tended to present contradicting views about their servants. They were sketched as culturally inferior and prone to cheating, lying and lazing around while also being portrayed as reliable, lovable and hard-working. The perceptions about domestic servants also varied according to the social backgrounds of Europeans. For instance, in the nineteenth century, when the majority of expatriates were from middle and lower-middle–class backgrounds, the prejudicial views about servants were reduced. It was also a period when radical Protestant missionaries, who were also from a similar social background (in Europe), actively engaged with the caste question and argued in support of social justice. ¹⁶⁰ Further, with a growing understanding of labour rights and legal rules at the end of the nineteenth century, the outcaste servants began to demand better wages and other benefits. This would have brought a certain measure of uneasiness to the relationship. As a result, the Europeans believed that the traditional loyalty of servants had been lost.

In addition to this, the extensive reliance on outcaste domestic workers sparked a completely different problem that some Europeans thought was grave. Many English children in the Madras Presidency began to eat curry-rice at an early age. Furthermore, they easily picked up the native languages even before properly pronouncing English words—a trend that made memsahibs nervous since they feared that their children would grow up as ‘little Hindus’. ¹⁶¹ The memsahibs could practically observe the validity of the arguments of cultural nationalists, doctors and Christian missionaries that the children’s attachment to the servants, especially to the ayahs, could make them ‘superstitious Hindus’. In 1870, a Madras-based physician warned the memsahibs about the potential danger of ‘their servants replacing them in their children’s affection’. ¹⁶² Howard Kingscote, in 1893, advised them to have their children as much as possible with them, therefore to ‘counteract the different bad results arising from association with native servant’. ¹⁶³ In 1923, Platt wrote: ‘children left to the care and companionship of native servants run a serious risk of acquiring bad habits, of becoming unmannerly, and of developing in undesirable ways.’ ¹⁶⁴ Above all, what posed a serious threat to the Westerners was the white children speaking their ayahs’ tongue more fluently than their mothers’ tongue. Speaking the native language was equated with adopting the culture associated with the language. There was a fear among Europeans that this could lead to the breakdown of imperial authority and racial distinction.

Faced with the prospect of being accused of poor parenting, and accepting their inability to nurture children without the help of ayahs, most of the memsahibs reacted by sending their children to their parents or relatives, and if that was not possible, to the boarding schools in their home country. Julia, in her letter to her sister, wrote about her daughter that she intended

as much as possible to prevent her learning the native languages: though it is rather difficult— most English children do learn them, and all sorts of mischief with them, and grow up like little Hindoos…. I hope to bring her home before it becomes of any consequence, and meanwhile, I will keep her as much as possible with me. ¹⁶⁵

In an interview at Fremnatle, Mrs Hawkings said:

I believe in getting children away from the country as soon as possible. Children are influenced by the atmosphere of India—the lying, thieving and the convenient moral code. I do not approve of the practice of employing Indian ayahs. They have the Indian outlook and do not understand our morals and ideas. An ayah is alright for babies, but toddlers need to be taught and corrected, and the ayah, although nearly always devoted to her charge, is quite incapable of directing a child. The Indians are very fond of children, but spoil them hopelessly. ¹⁶⁶

The English did recognise the partial futility of their attempts to prevent their children from mingling with the native servants and learning native languages. ¹⁶⁷ Some of them, as Nupur Chaudhuri pointed out, might have brought British women and employed them as nurses for their babies. However, it was expensive and impractical for most memsahibs. ¹⁶⁸ While, in Madras, ayahs and other servants were accused of Indianising the English children, in Australia, it was feared that it would cause another level of civilisational crisis if they were brought as domestic workers. A participant in a coolie immigration debate stated that

every person who has lived in tropical lands will know the low moral tone that generally prevails, and to bring good-looking coolie girls—many of whom are really handsome and attractive, especially the Tamil race, and who are naturally partial to Europeans―would do great injury to our colonial youth. ¹⁶⁹

The relationship between the Europeans and their native servants in Madras, therefore, does not neatly fit into a single pattern; it is, in fact, incredibly complex. As mentioned, there was always fear among English women and men about the potential consequences of their proximity to the outcaste servants. Such anxieties continued to be prevalent even during the twentieth century, but despite all the allegations and demands, the dependent relationship between Europeans and their outcaste domestics was never really severed.

Conclusion: The Adi-Dravidan Intelligentsia

Looking at this development from the standpoint of the outcastes, colonialism offered an opportunity for socio-economic mobility, at least to some sections of them. They could get employed in the colonial households as dubashes, butlers, cooks and ayahs. They broke the caste rules, escaped from agrarian bondage, became wage earners and city dwellers, and above all, began associating themselves with the new ruling class. Their entry into the colonial kitchen disrupted the conventional Hindu stereotypes about outcastes and gave them self-confidence. Though they never got due credit, their knowledge of food went beyond the colonial kitchens of Madras and got wider global attention and recognition. As it reached Europe as a simple, healthy and yet cosmopolitan food option, it helped the middle- and lower-class English families of the West to cope better with their financial situations and to improve their living standards. The pariah women, who were employed as ayahs, could break the caste as well as patriarchal norms. They could earn good monthly wages and enjoy economic independence. Though they were accused of converting the English children into ‘little Hindus’, they were nonetheless hugely appreciated for their patience, love, care and trustworthiness—the essential qualities for a caregiver’s job. They were perhaps the first Indian working women who crossed the seas and travelled outside the country for work. Domestic work got the outcastes access to education. It consequently enabled them not only to benefit from the available legal mechanisms but also to assert their civil rights.

As Neild-Basu has pointed out, the first generation of upper-caste politicians and freedom fighters emerged from the Madras dubashes. ¹⁷⁰ Similarly, it is possible that the first generation of outcaste political leaders and intellectuals emerged from the families of domestic servants. Iyothi Thass was one such intellectual and public figure. He began publishing a Tamil periodical in 1903 to champion the cause of outcastes. He even altered the traditional social identification of the outcaste (pariah) by referring to them as adi-dravidan. His close relative, Rettaimalai Srinivasan, was also a famous political leader. In 1891, Srinivasan founded the political platform ‘Paraiyar Mahajan Sabha’ and launched the monthly newspaper Paraiyan. ¹⁷¹ S. S. Periyasamy, who moved from the Madras Presidency to Ceylon to work as a butler for a colonial police official, organised the migrant outcaste community there. ¹⁷² He also supported the publication of a monthly magazine, Adi-Dravidan. The opportunities afforded by colonialism were best utilised by these first-generation leaders, who laid the foundation for the outcastes’ social movements which rose exponentially during the twentieth century. ¹⁷³ Therefore, considering colonial rule from the perspective of outcastes, it appears to have been more advantageous than oppressive.

Historians of colonial domesticity in India tend to approach the subject from two perspectives. The first perspective demonstrates how colonial homes in India were expected to reinforce the racial supremacy of the whites and imperial authority of the West at the domestic level, and therefore within the home, the memsahibs did what their husbands attempted to do outside it. Here, the ‘private spaces of home and public spaces of the empire’ were inseparable. It has been argued that the household guides and manuals not only provided instructions on how to run the colonial homes and kitchens but also advised the English wives to maintain an unequal relationship with their native servants along the lines of the ideology of the empire. ¹⁷⁴ The second perspective argued how such an attempt to maintain an unequal relationship was in reality not successful at the domestic level. Therefore, ‘the colonial home was not only a site of imperial power, but also a site for imperial anxieties and insecurities.’ ¹⁷⁵ In aligning with the second perspective, the article has demonstrated that European’s dependency on native servants to manage domestic affairs heightened their insecurities. ¹⁷⁶ Furthermore, their dietary preferences, specifically the consumption of beef, made them as ‘untouchable’ in the Hindu-dominated Madras Presidency. Though unwilling, it compelled them to form a relationship based on mutual dependency with the outcastes, who, for the same reason, had long been treated as ‘untouchable’. This essay presented evidence from colonial and missionary documents where Europeans expressed their anguish at being treated on par with the pariahs. In a sense, for the outcastes, beef-eating was not only a source for their oppression and humiliation by the caste Hindus but also a catalyst for vitally important upward mobilities under colonialism.