History Seminar I The 'Menial' Employee in Colonial India | Shiv Nadar University
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History Seminar I The 'Menial' Employee in Colonial India

 

The Department of History & Archaeology are pleased to  invite you to our first in-person event after two long years. Our next seminar is on 

 

Precarity and Security: The 'Menial' Employee in Colonial India c.1881- 1924

Radhika Singha, Professor (Retd.), Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University

 

 

Abstract

 In colonial India, menial was not just a descriptive term for servants dependent on one particular household, but an institutional designation, for those on the lowest rung  of civilian and military employment, who  undertook a range of specific duties, some of  which resembled house-work and others not. Official advertisements are still issued for the post of 'Full time menial/Peon', and thousands apply. Why did the designation ‘menial’ find such a foothold in the realm of official employment? What were the economies and ideologies of rule it sustained.?

In contrast to the word ‘coolie’, used for ‘unskilled’ manual work, ‘menial’ applied to those hired for specific services, some of which, for instance cleaning latrines, supplying water, or carrying palanquins, were described as caste- based ‘trades’. Under colonial rule a sarkari naukari was cast as the epitome of secure employment. In fact, a graded precarity was crucial to  the rituals of authority and the economies which structured government service. Menials were simultaneously disposable and indispensable, and the boundaries between the one situation and the other were constantly tested. This talk suggests that the escalation of imperial rivalry in the late nineteenth century and the authority which bacteriology and parasitology lent to hygienic prescriptions, tilted the balance towards indispensability. The talk draws substantially on my latest book, The Coolie's Great War: Indian Labour in a Global Conflict 1914-21 to discuss the menial or attached follower ranks of the Indian Army, but it  also includes a tentative exploration of  menial service in  civil departments, municipalities and cantonments. 

Event Date: 
Thursday, March 31, 2022 -
12:0013:45
Thursday 31, Mar 2022
12:00 PM - 01:45 PM

Room D 128

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