Master-Servant relations and the domestic reproduction of caste in Northern India

Abstract

The relationship between upper or middle class families and their domestic servants is an understudied subject matter in the anthropology of India. This article argues that master-servant relations are more significant for the domestic reproduction of inequality than hitherto acknowledged. Most earlier studies have discussed this inequality in terms of class, but this article argues that master-servant relations also are flavoured by caste. The employment of servants is partly motivated by the masters' avoidance of defiling tasks and substances; servants are frequently appointed according to their caste specialization; and employers maintain considerable distance from untouchable servants. Upper and middle class children, then, are socialized into a tacit world-view in which caste and inequality are naturalized and taken for granted as a part of the social order.

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