Men, Women, and Domestics: Articulating Middle-Class Identity in Colonial Bengal

By reclaiming the historical relationship between domesticity, housework, and domestic service in colonial Bengal, men, women, and domestics contributes to a comprehensive understanding of domestic politics in the construction of national identity. Swapna M. Banerjee provides new insights into the Bengali middle-class perception of domestic workers, a subject that has not received much scholarly attention in social history writing in India. Focusing upon stories of employers and servants, she demonstrates how caste–class formation among the predominantly Hindu Bengali middle class depended much upon its relationships with the subordinate social groups, of which domestic workers formed an integral part. Examining a wide variety of literary and official sources, the book establishes that the articulation of the Bengali middle class self-identity was predicated on the definition of its women, who in turn, were carefully distinguished from members of lower socio-economic groups. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of South Asian history, gender studies, culture and social anthropology, as well as the growing readership of cross-cultural and comparative studies on the institutions of family, domesticity, domestic labour and related forms of servitude.