The Calcutta Kerani and the London Clerk in the Nineteenth Century: Life, Labour, Latitude [1 ed.] 0367145723, 9780367145729

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THE CALCUTTA KERANI AND THE LONDON CLERK IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

This book examines the location and representation of the colonial clerk, or the kerani, in the cultural and social space of nineteenth-century colonial India. It provides a comparative history of the clerk in Calcutta vis-à-vis the clerk in contemporary London in order to understand the manifestations of modernity in these two disparate but intimately related spaces. The volume traces the sociohistorical life of the clerk in the newly emerged city-space of Calcutta and reveals how the Bengali kerani became a complex and distinct figure of bureaucratic and colonial modernity. It analyses the techniques of surveillance and ethical training given to the native clerks and offers insights into the role of education in the production and dissemination of knowledge and hegemony in the colonial setting. The author, through a reading of clerk manuals, handbooks, and literary representations, highlights the class and cultural identity of the English-educated colonial clerk in the new city-space. He also focuses on the ambivalence and unreliability of the clerk, or colonial babu, who became complicit and gave legitimacy to the empire while personifying a complex modernity in the networks of the colonial administration. This book will be of great interest to students and researchers of colonial and imperial history, literature, cultural studies, city studies, British studies, area studies, commonwealth studies, and South Asian studies, particularly those interested in colonial Bengal. Sumit Chakrabarti is a professor of English at Presidency University, Kolkata, India.

THE CALCUTTA KERANI AND THE LONDON CLERK IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Life, Labour, Latitude

Sumit Chakrabarti

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Sumit Chakrabarti The right of Sumit Chakrabarti to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-14572-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-09469-2 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

F O R S U B I R DAT TA F R I E N D, M E N T O R , TA S K M A S T E R

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

viii

Introduction: tracing a genealogy 1

1

The social and cultural location of the kerani in the empire

19

The clerk in British India: a short survey of the life of the Calcutta kerani

40

The life and times of the London clerk: necessary perspectives

63

4

The sahib writer in Calcutta: a different discourse

88

5

From manuals to manifestos: discipline and agency

113

6

Writing clerks, clerks writing: representations in literature

130

The significant omission: the female clerk

159

Conclusion

168

Bibliography Index

173 179

2

3

7

vii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

For an academic who has generally loved his classroom more than his writing desk, the idea for this book had been sitting in my mind for a while before I could bring myself to put pen on paper. I should perhaps thank Professor Sambudha Sen for a cutting remark and then a gentle suggestion that an essay I had written on the Calcutta kerani had in it the possibility of a book. It was only when I began with the work that I realized both the paucity and the scattered nature of materials that I had to collate before I could begin to write. This book would not have been possible without the generous grant of the Faculty Research and Professional Development Fund provided by my employer, Presidency University. This fund helped me to visit libraries and archives across the globe for material that I used to write the book. I am grateful to Adnan Malik from the South/Southeast Asia Library at the University of Berkeley, US; Barbara Roe and Kevin Greenbank (archivist) at the Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge, UK; Claire Welford-Elkin (Rare Books Superintendent) and members of staff at the Cambridge University Library, UK; the staff of the British Library, London, UK. Without their generous help and support, this book would not have been written. Back home, Bidisha Chakraborty and Sarmistha De at the State Archives of West Bengal were generous with their help. I also begrudgingly acknowledge the help I received from the National Library, Calcutta. It was often a difficult journey. I remain grateful to Arijit Dutta Choudhury, the director general of the National Library, for his help and support. A special note of thanks to Rosinka Chaudhuri for generously permitting me the use of the library and archives at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. I also thank all the staff members of Presidency University Library for their continuous help. I especially acknowledge Mrinmoy Mukherjee, who discovered books and documents for me from unknown corners and forgotten shelves. I warmly acknowledge the help and support of my colleagues at Presidency University: Anupama Mohan, who always inspired me to write, and Souvik Mukherjee, who has always amazed me with his spirit of enquiry. viii

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Resourceful and ever eager to help, he would keep sending me articles, book chapters, newspaper clippings, and archival material. It was the sheer joy of research and the spirit of fraternity that I discovered in this colleague of mine: Soumen Mukherjee, from the Department of History, one of the earliest readers of my manuscript. A meticulous scholar and a learned colleague, I have benefited immensely from his observations and input. I also acknowledge the generous help of Arpita Mukhopadhyay from Burdwan University. Biswajit Ray from Visva-Bharati University was a constant comrade and would untangle difficult knots during the writing process. Nikhil Sur, whom I met briefly, was an inspiration. A quiet scholar and an untiring scavenger for new material on nineteenth-century Bengal, he would always hide his immense scholarship behind his unassuming personality. Such scholars are rare, and I hope he reads my work. It is not easy to afford research assistants in this part of the world. But I had a sincere and interested band of students who saw me through difficult periods. No word of acknowledgement is enough for Soham Deb Barman, student and comrade, who generously offered to copyedit the entire manuscript and set it to stylesheet requirements. Sourav Chattopadhyay, scholarly undergraduate, was always ready to find a book or an article that would help an argument. Anashya ‘Ruru’ Ghosal would send me material from faraway Cambridge, even if I asked for them at ungodly hours. Simool Sen from the Department of History at Jadavpur University also extended his generous support. I am grateful to Professor Gautam Bhadra for having taken a lively interest in the process of writing of the book. He meticulously went through some of the chapters, issued suitable and strong reprimands, and opened newer worlds of thought every time we met to discuss the book. He was kind enough to lend me books from his personal library and called regularly to register my progress. I cannot say how grateful I am to him. Professor Swapan Chakravorty is my guru forever, who also read large parts of the manuscript and offered new insights and valuable suggestions. Every discussion with them was humbling and a learning process. This book is dedicated to Subir Datta. It was in his study that most of the ideas that went on to form the book germinated. Always the first reader and the foremost critic, he has been a part of this book like no one else. We have fleshed out every idea together, and he has suffered all my insecurities and apprehensions. This book belongs to him. Last, but not the least, I thank my wife and companion, Nandini, whose comradeship I cannot overemphasize. Simply put, I was able to write the book because she was there. I also thank the anonymous reviewers of the manuscript for their valuable suggestions. The journey with Routledge has been wonderful, and I thank Shashank Sinha, Antara Ray Chaudhary, and Shloka Chauhan for being patient with me and for carrying the project through.

ix

INTRODUCTION Tracing a genealogy

In this book, I have attempted to write a cultural and social history of the kerani, the ministerial office staff of native origin, in nineteenth-century Bengal, first under the rule of the East India Company and subsequently under the direct control of the imperial government. I have used the comparatist mode, trying to read the location and the representation of the kerani in Calcutta vis-à-vis the clerical worker in contemporary London, trying, in the process, to understand the manifestations of clerical modernity in these two disparate but intimately related spaces. The debate has been placed in a narrative of history and its various epistemological tropes of modernity, colonial modernity, the premodern, and the early modern, but the argumentative lens has been trained primarily on the social and literary cultures of the time. The narrative has moved through the historiographical mapping of an emergent site of modernity entrenched in a dynamic of colonialism, trying to fine-tune the consequent reading of culture, occasionally taking recourse to new historicist strategies to get a better perspective on the space of analysis. The occasional literary references, and a full chapter dedicated to literary readings, emerge from my training in the literature classroom, although I believe that I have still left much unsaid on this particular subject. There is a considerable body of work on nineteenth-century Bengal, including the general historical analyses of an interesting period in the history of Bengal, the emergence of the sciences and reassessments of the history of medicine, cultural and social reorganizations, minor histories of class and gender, popular culture, and literary taste. There have been serious engagements with the lives of major political, literary, and cultural figures—those instrumental in engendering important upheavals in the cultural logic of the times. Although many of these narratives have referred to the figure of the kerani in passing, none of them has comprehensively engaged with him or tried to write a history of the crucial role that the kerani played in a fraught sociocultural space in nineteenth-century Bengal. My initial interest in the subject was incited through this realization of the absence of the kerani figure in almost all major discourses of the time, although they clearly played a pivotal role in the administrative apparatus, as is evident in 1

INTRODUCTION

the proliferation of documents during British rule in India and what I have called its managerial modernity. In a recent book on the subject of documents and scribal culture in nineteenth-century Madras, Bhavani Raman (2012) calls this a government by writing: The government by writing installed under colonialism stemmed from the East India Company’s peculiar ‘corporate sovereignty’. From its very inception in the seventeenth century, the British East India Company’s political dominance was forged by the sword, built on the spine of the accountant’s ledger, and held together by written correspondence. (pp. 8–9) The role of the kerani in Calcutta was therefore not one that could be easily overlooked. However, neither in literature nor in the historical-cultural discourse has there been any comprehensive attempt to write about the kerani life of nineteenth-century Calcutta. This book is an attempt both to trace the sociohistorical life of the kerani of that period and to examine the reason for this interestingly conspicuous absence.

The organization of this book In the first chapter, the presence and the location of the kerani in the newly emerged city-space of Calcutta is examined. The chapter tries to explore and understand how Calcutta as a city, born directly out of administrative and business needs, was essentially different as an urban space compared to such older and more generically evolved urban spaces as Dhaka or Murshidabad. In it, I try to understand the class identity of the kerani in this parvenu commercial space of a new city where the emergence of the middle class was somewhat unlike other, older urban milieus. I determine, in this context, whether the kerani could be called a bhadralok and whether his location could be read in the current associations of bhadraloki. Still trying to fit the kerani in the cultural logic of the city, the second chapter focuses on the life of the kerani in the city-space, attempting to read his daily life and everyday existence as markers of identity formation. The chapter discusses the nature of English education and its ramifications on kerani life, his salary, and living conditions, from evidence in government reports and commissions and read through a postcolonial lens. The second chapter also examines whether the kerani is a better fit to being a babu or a bhadralok, or neither. It also looks into whether the gradually emergent participatory logic of colonial modernity kept the kerani out of its prescribed fold of the ‘educated middle class’. The third chapter initiates the comparatist mode by trying to read kerani life as offset by the life of the contemporary clerk in London. The chapter 2

INTRODUCTION

traces the trajectory of the gradual modernization of clerical practice from the Dickensian counting house to the modern office in nineteenth-century London, and it includes important debates on class identity, differences between the salaried clerk and the waged labourer, and whether the clerk was a gentleman. This chapter is used as a crucial counterpoint to read the life of the Calcutta kerani through a comparative lens and situate the question of his representation in a complex debate on modernity and colonialism. The fourth chapter complicates both of the preceding questions of modernity and colonialism by examining the presence of the British writers (ministerial staff) in nineteenth-century Calcutta. An analysis of their extravagant social lives and irresponsible professional lives unsettles the modernity debate and underscores the fraught nature of clerical modernity, which refuses to be defined by either racial or geographical classificatory modes. Neither the lowly clerk in London nor the indigenous kerani in Calcutta could have anything in common with the curiously anachronistic figure of the writer in colonial Calcutta. In the fifth chapter, I attempt a close reading of some of the clerk manuals and handbooks, published either in London or in Calcutta, to examine the commonalities of techniques of surveillance and ethical training that was considered to be an intrinsic part of clerical training in Victorian England and its colonies alike. I try to understand whether there were significant differences in the model code of conduct for clerks in the two spaces, where the dynamics of power were significantly different. This chapter discusses the rise and proliferation of organs and journals in England that lent a voice to the clerical workforce in the nineteenth century, clearing a space for counterdiscursive possibilities in an otherwise-panoptical space. In the same breath, the chapter discusses the embedded masculinity in such counter-discourse, where the language of the demand for rights is unfailingly that of the man, in spite of the fact that women had already joined the clerical workforce in England. The chapter also talks about how such narratives of dissent were still an impossibility in the colonized space. The sixth chapter examines the contemporary literature on clerks, both in London and in Calcutta. Literary tracts were written both about and by the clerks. In it, I try to understand whether it is possible to trace a commonality of representation in both the early and the late-Victorian delineation of the character of the clerk in London on the one hand and the possible similarities of the London clerk with the Calcutta kerani of the nineteenth century on the other. The seventh chapter briefly addresses the question of the female clerk in London, arguing that the comparatist model becomes redundant here, because women in Calcutta was still a few years away from a working life. This book may thus be seen as an attempt of a scholar of literature to write a cultural history of the Calcutta kerani in the nineteenth century as refracted through the lenses of the colonial/postcolonial debate and the debates on modernity. 3

INTRODUCTION

The genealogy: scribal practices of the immediate past Throughout the book, I view the figure of the Calcutta kerani of the nineteenth century as a new entrant into the narrative of cultural and professional history. I suggest that the Calcutta kerani belonged nowhere and came from nowhere. The kerani has been read as a figure of lack who was born out of the peculiar necessity of colonial and imperial governance, born in situ, purely for the purpose of lowly clerical work, and dispensable at no peril to his employer. The Calcutta kerani, as I have seen him, did not have a tradition of scribal practice to fall back on, was not trained in specialized disciplines that had a prescribed body of texts, and was not following a trajectory of ancestral continuity that could suitably be used as reference in his work. I claim for the kerani in nineteenth-century Calcutta a unique place in history, bereft of a past, not claiming any agency of tradition, existing like a phoenix, a perpetual marker of ambivalence in the face of identitarianism and historicist traceability. I have consciously called him the kerani throughout the book and never used the word ‘scribe’ for him. In an important essay written on scribal practice and culture, Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam (2010) referred to scribes in the Mughal period as clearly belonging to a middle or a professional class (p. 395). They further argue that the eighteenth century was the century of the scribe in South Asian history: Scribes had existed long before, and scribes would exist afterward, even with the advent of print; but in this century, they came—more or less everywhere in the sub-continent—to take on a truly protean quality, using their scribal profession as a point of departure to embark on the conquest of a number of new horizons. (Alam & Subrahmanyam, 2010, p. 395) The person of this scribe, variously called the secretary, the interlocutor, the spokesperson, or the accountant, was deeply implicated in the politics of the eighteenth-century court. Sometimes the umbrella term munshi has been used for them, although, as Alam and Subrahmanyam (2004) claim, the term munshi ‘has shifted semantically over the years’ (p. 61) and eventually acquired the meaning of ‘pundit’ or ‘teacher’ in the mid nineteenth century. In the initial years of Company rule, the munshi (in the older sense of the term) used to play a crucial role in matters of administration: The real interlocutor for the Company official . . . was the munshi, who was mediator and spokesman (vakil), but also a key personage who could both read and draft materials in Persian, and who had a

4

INTRODUCTION

grasp over the realities of politics that men such as Warren Hastings, Antoine Polier, and Claude Martin found altogether indispensable. (Alam & Subrahmanyam, 2004, p. 61) The munshi was thus not merely a writer but an interlocutor and an interpreter as well. Well versed in the politics of the times, they often acted as agents of the native government and had the agency of states, persons or diplomats in crucial political negotiations. Christopher Bayly (1996) writes, The most dynamic social formation of the period was not a class defined in a simple economic sense, but the writer’s office (munshikhana) whose members combined respectable status with access to the charisma of writing. These people, although dependent and humiliated, were to play an important part in the establishment of British rule. (p. 44) It is not difficult to trace a genealogy of these munshis, most of whom came from Hindu clans of kayasthas and khatris and often brahmins as well. They were all well trained in Persian language and literature and joined the Mughal court as various kinds of ministerial workers: mutsaddis, muharrirs, bakshis, and munshis. Most of them either hailed from a family of educated scholars and statespersons or were beginners of a lineage of philologists, poets, grammarians, or commentators. Celebrated among them were Harkaran Das, Chandrabhan ‘Brahman’, Madho Ram, Sujan Rai, Bhupat Rai, Anand Ram ‘Mukhlis’, and Bindraban ‘Khwushgu’: From the middle of the seventeenth century, the departments of accountancy (siyaq), draftsmanship (insha), and the office of revenue minister (divan) were mostly filled by . . . Kayastha and Khatri munshis and muharrirs. . . . Selections and specimens of their writings formed part of the syllabi of Persian studies at madrasahs. They produced excellent works in the eighteenth century in the philological sciences: the Mir’at al-Istilah of Anand Ram ‘Mukhlis’, the Bahar-i ‘Ajam of Tek Chand ‘Bahar’ and the Mustalahat al-Shu ‘ara’ of Siyalkoti Mal ‘Varasta’ are among the most exhaustive lexicons compiled in India. (Alam & Subrahmanyam, 2004, p. 62) It is not difficult to imagine that this world of munshis of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that I am deliberating on here was far removed in every manner of imagination from the quotidian world of the common kerani in nineteenth-century Calcutta. Although, apparently, the kerani was

5

INTRODUCTION

doing the same kind of work as the munshi in the Mughal courts—those of drafting ability and accountancy—the nature of their social or political influence belonged to entirely different worlds and perspectives. In a letter written to his son Khvajah Tej Bhan, the celebrated munshi Chandrabhan ‘Brahman’ lays down some of the basic tenets of being a perfect munshi. He advises his son to first be acquainted with the Mughal system of norms (akhlaq) by studying the Akhlaq-i Nasiri, Akhlaq-i Jalali, Gulistan, and Bustan, some of the foundational texts on the subject. He insists on the importance of coherent drafting and good calligraphy. He also urges Tej Bhan to learn accountancy (siyaq) and scribal skills (navisindagi). He emphasizes the importance of books on norms, ethics, and history, such as Habib al-Siyar, Rawzat al-Salatin, Zafar-namah, and Akbar-namah, among others. Chandrabhan also tells his son to read the master poets so that he will acquire the skill of elegant language that will stand him in good stead in the company of the learned (for a detailed content of the letter see, Kinra, 2015, pp. 60–64). Alam and Subrahmanyam (2004) write on the elaborate reading list that Chandrabhan passes on to his son as necessary training for becoming a good secretary: The extensive list . . . is remarkable both for its diversity and programmatic coherence. The list begins with texts on statecraft and moralia, touches on the question of accountancy and epistolography, then moves quickly to a set of histories and chronicles, before ending with an extensive list of poets both old and new . . . many Hindu scriptures and other Indic texts were rendered into Persian, and these too joined the cultural accessories of the typical Kayastha or Khatri. (p. 63) The kayastha or khatri caste, and occasionally the brahmin, were the typical professional accountants and recordkeepers of the Mughal court. Evidently, family lineage and training were matters of utmost importance in the selection and subsequent career graph of these munshis. Most of them came from families of munshis or bakshis who had an elite class of patrons and were respected and wealthy courtiers. They were invested as intellectuals in the administrative system trying to develop a tradition and mode of engagement through received knowledge and the political contingency of the period. By the late seventeenth century, ‘these newly arrived scribes and intellectuals were feeling sufficiently confident of their position to propose changes in received models of history-writing and new framings for old histories’ (Alam & Subrahmanyam, 2010, p. 420). In fact, although many of them were masters of technique, rules, and accounts, some of the more celebrated munshis engaged philosophically with questions of governance. One of

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INTRODUCTION

them was Nik Rai, about whom Alam and Subrahmanyam write at the end of their 2004 essay: The philosophical universe within which he conceives of all matters—including issues of social and religious conflict—is impregnated with Persian, and with all the richness of the ‘secular’ tradition that Indo-Persian represented by the seventeenth century. It is in this sense that we must understand what it meant to become, and to be, a munshi in the later Mughal world. (p. 71) Evidently, with the gradual consolidation of Company rule, and later under the British Empire, the emergence of a discourse of managerial modernity led to the inevitable decline of this tradition of scribal scholarship and culture. British rule naturally followed its own narrative of modernity, based on the model of a corporate understanding of administration that was stratified on the basis of more-clearly defined power structures and more professional relationships. The gradual transformation of the nature of work and the meaning of the word munshi is symptomatic of this change in the nature of governance. The transformation from the feudal to the corporate power structure led to the systematic devaluation of the system of patronage that provided necessary security to the tradition of secretarial practice and led them to become scribes and scholars at the same time. In many cases, the munshi now became a teacher, mostly of Persian, and his important role in administration gradually became a thing of the past. The kerani of nineteenth-century Calcutta belonged to a different universe, far removed from the hallowed world of these celebrated munshis. The chha-posha kerani (the kerani who is only good at breeding children) or the macchi-mara kerani (the kerani who swats flies in the office having nothing better to do or someone who kills a fly and sticks it to their copied text as there was a dead fly in the original text—that is to say, a mechanical and unthinking copier) as he was had no claims to such tradition, education, or wealth as the munshis of the Mughal courts. Although mostly belonging to the upper castes, the typical caste identity of the kaysatha or khatri or brahmin as the professional kerani with a lineage and tradition was not particular to the Bengali kerani in the nineteenth century. Most of them were keranis by chance, not by choice or family lineage. The selection of keranis was mostly random, and they formed a dispensable part of the administration, with many qualified candidates vying for the job of this lowly functionary of colonial administration. As the book will make clear, there was almost no prestige or social value attached to the job of the kerani in colonial Bengal. It is crucial to understand why and how this shift in the nature of scribal practice happened in the first place. Bhavani Raman (2012) makes an

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INTRODUCTION

important point in her book on administrative practices of the British East India Company in the Madras presidency in the nineteenth century: From the late eighteenth century, the Company instituted a government of writing under parliamentary pressure to perpetuate the mastery of the Indian subcontinent for the metropole’s finance and manufacturing empires. . . . The Company’s bureaucratic state coincided with a time when the conceptual term ‘bureaucracy’ acquired currency as a powerful organizational form of office holding, expertise, corporate management, and rule-based government. Continuous writing in these years became the idealized solution to the problem of managing trust and reliability across distance. (pp. 2–3) In this book, I term this process ‘managerial modernity’. The bureaucratic temper of the administration led them to import forms of modernity from the metropole, and the act of writing was one of them, a process of systematic documentation of every administrative action that would help the colonizer comprehend the newly acquired space on the one hand and act as a form of surveillance technique on the other. This required a regular supply of clerks or keranis with basic training in accounts and language to handle the simplest of bureaucratic chores but apparently with little comprehension of the motives of surveillance and control. Raman calls it papereality, ‘the exclusive reliance on official written documents to represent the world’ (Raman, 2012, p. 3). The kerani thus occupies a contingent space, marked on the one hand by his dispensability and on the other by his agency as the subject that prepares the document. The iterable qualities of writing and the micro-practices of documenting that gradually developed across the colonized space makes the kerani a crucial figure, ambivalent and unreliable, in many ways unlike the scribe of the past. The kerani, I argue in this book, is therefore distinctly a product of European colonialism. His predecessor was unlike him and, in fact, belonged to a different cultural paradigm. As Raman (2012) writes, The story of the colonial clerk or babu is intimately braided with the historical problem of how a small group of Europeans established everyday control over a vast colony with the assistance of native subordinates. It is thus that the collaborating babu, the infamously complicit Indian clerk, serves as an iconic metonym for a split modern subjectivity birthed by colonial ledgers, the English language, and European-style schools. (p. 6) The kerani figure that I have taken up for analysis in this book is contingently born at a crucial juncture in the history of colonialism, bereft of a 8

INTRODUCTION

past, and complicit in the papereality of the empire, in a network of an incomprehensible modernity and hanging from the fringe of every possible representation. It is possible to argue that in spite of certain basic similarities in job description and patterns of service, an attempt to compare the kerani with the upper-class munshi of the Mughal courts is tenuous and unnecessary. In terms of class identity, financial status, conditions of employment, training, and lineage, the scale of comparison will be untenable. The munshi was never in the kerani’s league. While it is imperative to trace a genealogy of native scribal tradition, one cannot totally disagree with such a contention. However, even among his contemporaries in other parts of India, such as the presidencies of Bombay or Madras, the Bengali kerani stands out in certain ways as a uniquely ahistorical subject of history. In nineteenth-century Bombay, for example, most clerical jobs were monopolized by the brahmans and the banias, although lower-caste clerks were also not unknown. However, the best-paid clerical jobs were in the hands of the prabhus, who could claim a certain lineage in the profession: In the beginning of the seventeenth century, when the English settled as traders in Surat, they found Prabhus established as clerks to the Portuguese, and ever since then Prabhus have from their readiness to learn English, their honesty, and a certain freedom of customs and dignity of manner continued to be liked and trusted by the English. (Hindu Clerks, 1879, p. 5) Although not as powerful as the prabhus of Bombay, even the lowly scribes of Madras, the karanam (or the kanakkuppillai) had their own set of skills quite unique to their profession. Writers of Persian, Telugu, or Modi scripts, they would use palm leaves (olai), and their origin may be traced to the Pallava, Pandya, and Chola dynasties of the past: The textual tradition that flourished around palm leaf was restricted to a small circle of stylus wielders and prized the ability to recite— particularly to recite from memory. Prosody, poetics, and grammar were taught along established teacher-disciple lineages. (Raman, 2012, p. 12) That is to say, many of these lowly indigenous scribes had at least some specialized skill sets that played a role in their choice as clerks of some kind in the empire. Moreover, both Bombay and Madras were older city-spaces than was Calcutta, and thus, it was possible to trace a tradition of training even among the lowly scribes of these places. It is perhaps the fact that Calcutta was a new urban space and that most people who came for professional 9

INTRODUCTION

reasons, or otherwise, to the city in the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries were a category of fortune seekers, intermediaries, businesspeople, or service providers of random disposition that makes it not possible to trace a tradition of the keranis of various kinds, even if they had any. Their choice as keranis was as random as their presence in the city, and it may be said that the subject position of the Calcutta kerani was perhaps more individualized than that of clerical workers in other, more ancient urban spaces. In this book, I try to examine this subject position of the kerani in nineteenthcentury Calcutta, one that was unable to appeal to a collective set in the past or claim for itself the authenticity of a cultural narrative embedded in a premodern past.

Trying to trace a genealogy in Bengal: a literary exploration Before I try to trace a genealogy of the kerani in Bengal, I briefly deliberate on the etymology of the word ‘kerani’. The idea of clerical labour had various natures in Mughal or Muslim Bengal, or what we may call premodern Bengal. Thus, the English umbrella term ‘clerk’ would incorporate in its fold different types and levels of clerical workers in a pre-industrialized or a premodern economy belonging to categorically different professional spheres, such as the court, the revenue office, or the collectorate. The munshi, the muharri, the vakil, the duftaree, the tehsildar, the mamlutdar, the sheristadar, the poddar, the nazir, the gomosta, the mutsaddi, the nakalnabish, the khasnabish, and so on were all therefore doing clerical work, and in many cases, these nomenclatures were retained by the colonial administration. The list of such workers will seem endless, and their duties and responsibilities often overlap and have minor functional differences. ‘Kerani’ seems to be a new entrant in the lexicon of Bengali words and does not seem to have been much in use in Mughal Bengal. Into the nineteenth century, William Carey’s Dictionary of the Bengalee Language (1828) still gives the meaning of the word ‘clerk’ as a munshi or a muharrir (p. 62). Ram Comul Sen’s Dictionary in English and Bengalee, published in 1834, also translates the word ‘clerk’ as advisor, muharrir, writer, nakalnabish, or mutsaddi (p. 158). It is only in the later dictionaries of the Bengali language that one finds the word ‘kerani’. Jnanendramohan Das, in his dictionary Bangala Bhasar Ovidhan (1917), traces the route of the word ‘kerani’ or ‘kyarani’ to the word ‘kanni’ in the Sunyapurana. However, he also notes that the word was used to describe Eurasians or firanghees after the arrival of Europeans in Muslim India. He also incites the possibility of the word being derived from the Portuguese word for clerks: ‘escrevente’. Thus, Jnanendramohan Das leaves both the root and the meaning of ‘kerani’ ambiguous. Haricharan Bandopadhyay, in his Bangiya Sabdakosh (1934/1966), also refers to both the words ‘kanni’ (Sanskrit) and ‘escrevente’ (Portuguese) as the possible roots of the word 10

INTRODUCTION

‘kerani’ (p. 677). Interestingly, he clearly asserts that a kerani is a writer in an ‘English office’ (p. 677), thereby indicating towards a postcolonial use of the word in the Bengali language. However, both Jnanendramohan and Haricharan refer to the Sanskrit word ‘karan’ as a possible root of the word. The word ‘karan’, though, is multilayered and has multiple meanings, including the writer, the calligrapher, the body, the site, the kayastha caste, and others, which would lead to a complex philosophical deliberation on the many possible meanings of the derivative word ‘kerani’. Most of the writers, editors, and compilers of dictionaries have either maintained an ambiguous root for the word kerani or have simplified it to simply mean ‘clerk’. Some dictionaries, such as the Samsad Bangla Ovidhan (1964), have also used the word ‘karanik’ as the meaning of kerani (p. 191). Both the words can possibly be traced back to the Sanskrit root ‘karan’, although neither Jnanendramohan nor Haricharan have referred to ‘karanik’ as a meaning for ‘kerani’. Nor is there any linguistic or grammatical basis of connecting the two words. However, in bureaucratic and popular Bengali parlance, the words ‘kerani’ and ‘karanik’ are sometimes used interchangeably. On the subject of the milieu of nineteenth-century Calcutta, from which the kerani hailed or emerged, it may be said that there was considerable deliberation on the idea of a job or chakri. The word ‘chakri’ has inevitable connotations of being a chakor or a servant. On the one hand, having a job meant both a steady salary and a sense of security; it also had the accompanying implications of servitude and lack of freedom or agency. Such a pejorative implication was further complicated by the question of subjection to a colonial power. Having a chakri, therefore, implied a kind of double subjection: the native subject was already under colonial rule; serving the Company or the government meant another set of compulsory directives. On the other hand, exposure to enlightenment modernity opened up a different universe for the English-educated bhadralok. For him, this meant a continuous refashioning of the self through exposure to a new form of textual culture, and ideas of nationhood, nationality, dissent, and subversion gradually acquired currency and redefined earlier notions of sovereignty, consciousness, and selfhood. The Bengali bhadralok of the nineteenth century was caught in the web of a veritable mélange of influences, each of which qualified the other in a confluence of discourses. His English education opened up for him a range of texts, culturally alien, but invested with enlightenment ideas that influenced him considerably; his idea of the self and selfhood were churned by the narratives of modernity; the idea of nation and nationalism formed another important strand of dissent that was nurtured in a separate but related discourse of colonial modernity; a sense of the past and a revival of traditionalist notions of identity was a narrative stoked, curiously, by his exposure to Western education. While the different formations of modernity incorporated into native discourse by the colonial master redefined notions 11

INTRODUCTION

of education and culture, it was through this exposure that narratives of dissent were also foregrounded by the Bengali bhadralok. A typical example of such a blend of influences can be found in the character of Neemchand Datta in Deenabandhu Mitra’s farce Sadhabar Ekadashi (1866). Neemchand is English educated and is widely exposed to Western literary texts: ‘I read English, write English, talk English, speechify in English, think in English, dream in English’ (Mitra, 1866/1943, p. 44). However, he refuses any form of chakri, is a drunkard, and is sheltered in the house of a relative. The implications of Neemchand’s stance in the play create a complex discourse of meanings which might go on to clear some space for exploring the problematic genealogy of keranidom in the context of Bengal. In the first place, Neemchand is deeply disdainful of the native servant of the imperial government, as is apparent from his behaviour towards Kenaram Ghosh, the deputy magistrate, and his brother-in-law. As he quotes from Othello, ‘You are one of those, that will not serve God, if the devil bid you’, he asks ‘How many Ghotiram deputies like you are there?’ (Mitra, 1866/1943, p. 43). He calls Kenaram a ‘kyabla hakim’, or an unsmart magistrate, and expresses deep suspicion about both Kenaram’s intelligence and command of the English language. This is a complex moment in the play. In the same breath, Neemchand celebrates the liberal humanist aspect of Western education by quoting Shakespeare and critiques the native for succumbing to the snares of a job offered by the colonial master. His liberal education and the subsequent faith in the ideas of freedom and nobility (he refers to both these qualities in the play) contradict the notion of servitude symptomatic of the native keeping a job with the colonial administration. Kenaram becomes, for him, the representative of the servile native who succumbs to the humiliating trope of subservience by accepting the chakri doled out to him by the white master. Paradoxically, the Western-educated and English-speaking liberal Neemchand draws on the past glory of the kayastha clan as a counternarrative to the meek submission of the likes of Kenaram. He refers to the story of the five brahmans and five kayasthas visiting the court of King Adisura of Bengal. Both the castes were hierarchically similar. However, as the king asks the kayasthas about their relationships with the brahmins, all of them except one admitted to being the bhritya (servant) of the brahmins. Only the representative of the Datta clan (whom Neemchand considers to be his rightful predecessor) refuses servitude to the brahmin and declares, ‘Datta karo bhritya noy’ [Datta is no one’s servant] (Mitra, 1866/1943, p. 52). However, this claim to the historicity of the Datta identity that Neemchand makes is not historically tenable. The brahmins and the kayasthas who came to the court of Adisura hailed from either Kanauj or the south of India and hence were not Bengalis. In an informed study of the kulajigranthas (documents on lineage) of the times, Dineshchandra Sarkar (1982) talks about the varying accounts of this event and its historical unreliability (pp. 137–138). However, there is no doubt that neither the brahmins nor the kayasthas were of Bengali 12

INTRODUCTION

descent. In a succinct discourse on the subject of Neemchand’s allusion to the event, Biswajit Ray in his 2002 essay complicates this further by bringing in the predicament of the author of the play into his analysis: Neemchand doesn’t have a job. In Adisura’s court Ghosh had admitted to being the brahmin’s servant, but Datta did not admit to servitude. Whereas, in the nineteenth century the jobless Datta, Neemchand, stays in his brother-in-law Kenaram’s house.  .  . . By virtue of his Western education Neemchand was able to identify the ‘independence’ of the Datta in Adisura’s court; while, in spite of having to bear insults, the creator of Neemchand, Deenabandhu Mitra, had to keep his job with the very imperialists who had brought Western education to the native. (p. 19) Ray (2002/2010) also brings in the case of brahmin Deputy Magistrate Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay and the character Kamalakanta Chakrabarty (another brahmin) into his analysis (pp. 14–15). While Kamalakanta loses his job as a kerani, his maker, Chattopadhyay, has always kept his job. Likewise, although Neemchand does not have a job, his maker, Mitra, is a postmaster-general with the imperial government. Ray writes, ‘Bankim was a brahmin, Deenabandhu a kayastha. In earlier times they would have led comfortable lives by virtue of their caste identity (jatikaulinya). But in times of the supremacy of capital, maintaining a job was the only solution’ (p. 14). This intervention by Ray opens up multiple strands of this complicated debate. In the first place, it is evident that administrative jobs were not traditionally related to caste identity in Bengal, unlike in many other parts of the country. The subservient kayastha figure from the past, ready to be employed by the brahmin, is undercut by the Datta figure, who refuses to serve under anyone. Neemchand ahistorically revives that resistant figure of the Datta to justify his refusal to have a job. However, he shows off his pride as a ‘Datta’ and not as a kayastha. His disdain for the deputy magistrate is based not on caste identity but on how he imagines himself to be the descendant of that singular Datta at Adisura’s court. He uses this agency merely to undermine the chakri of his brother-in-law. If the native deputy magistrate is a figure of ridicule for Neemchand, it is not difficult to imagine his opinion of the kerani in a similar context. If one were to briefly digress and examine the literature of Bengal from the earlier centuries, the genealogical mapping of a consistent scribal practice would not be consolidated either. The kayasthas in Bengal, for example, are not depicted as a community of scribes, although it is possible to find an occasional individual. One of the most talked about figures of a possible scribe is Bhnaru Datta, who appears in Mukundaram Chakrabarty’s sixteenth-century text Kabikankan-Chandi or in the Chandimangal, written 13

INTRODUCTION

in the tradition of the mangalkavyas. Bhnaru Datta is distinctly different from the other kayasthas who arrive at the court of King Kaalketu seeking patronage. The kayasthas arrive as a clan (or jati) and claim to be educated bhadraloks who have come to invest the new-found kingdom with the prestige of education and distinction: ‘Kono jon siddhokul Keho sadhyo dharmamul/Doshheen kayasther sobha/Prosonno sobhare bani Lekhapora sove jaani/Bhovyojon nogorer shova’. [The kayasthas are erudite and well read in the scriptures, faultless, educated and would be a distinguished addition to the new kingdom] (Chakrabarty, 1579/1962, p. 354). Their claims to erudition and distinction are quite similar to that of the brahmins, who have already staked their claim to a livelihood in Kaalketu’s kingdom. Both these castes will invest the kingdom with much-deserved prestige and dignity. Interestingly, although the kayasthas claim education and erudition, there is no reference in the text to prove that they were scribes or that they hailed from any scribal culture. Bhnaru Datta, a kayastha himself, seems to be clearly separated from his clan. He is dismissed by Kaalketu from his court on charges of betrayal and deception. Bhnaru decides to take his revenge on Kaalketu by instigating the powerful Kalinga king against him. The poet depicts the lonely figure of Bhnaru, separated from his clan but hailing his kayastha ancestors: ‘Ekela cholila pothey keho nahi sathe/Horidatter byata hoi, Joydotter naati’ [Bhnaru is alone, without a companion, but hails his father, Hori Datta, and his grandfather Joy Datta] (Chakrabarty, 1579/1962, p. 367). Bhnaru Datta dresses up carefully before he arrives at the court of the powerful colonizer, the king of Kalinga: ‘Mostoke bandhilo pag nahi dhake kesh./Mrittikar tilok koilo ronjit koilo besh. /Koifiyoti pnajikhaan nilo sabdhane. /Sreehori boliya Bhnaru kolom gnoje kaane.’ [Bhnaru dons his paagri (traditional headgear popular with keranis), takes his book of rhetoric, and places the pen behind his ear] (Chakrabarty, 1579/1962, p.  368). This is the classic symptom of being a scribe: the headgear, the book of rhetoric and the pen behind the ear. Consequently, the kayastha figure of Bhnaru Datta becomes a classic example in Bengali literary history of the figure of deceitfulness, betrayal, and insincerity. The Bengali kerani could be associated with all these qualities, but that is only incidental. However, when Neemchand has to search for an ancestry of the kayastha-Datta clan, he does not mention the sixteenth-century figure of Bhnaru Datta but instead goes back to the earlier figure of the kayastha who refuses subordination. For the Western-educated and enlightened Bengali male, Bhnaru is perhaps the figure of the native succumbing to a colonial master, while the Datta in Adisura’s court is a rebel who refuses subordination. Ironically, though, this Datta was not of Bengali descent. It is possible to draw a few important inferences from the foregoing discussion. In the first place, it is difficult to establish a direct link between caste identity and scribal culture in Bengal. Also, as evident at least from the Chandimangal, the kayasthas as a clan did not claim scribal practice as a 14

INTRODUCTION

major profession, although they belonged to an educated class of gentlemen. Also, even if Bhnaru Datta is admittedly a scribe and a kayastha, he is clearly separated from the rest of his clan and stands as a singular figure of cunning and disruption. Also, other than his attire, there is no other reference in the text to prove his scribal identity. Nor do the kayasthas arriving at King Adisura’s court lay any claim to scribal practice. Thus, the link between a caste identity and scribal practice that could easily be established during the Mughal period in north or western India, or later on in the south of India, is generally absent in the case of Bengal. Moreover, nineteenth-century Calcutta was a conglomerate of people from myriad social and caste orders, and the emergence of the kerani figure had a randomness that belies any castebased classification. The creation of characters such as Neemchand Datta or Kamalakanta Chakraborty was symptomatic of a confused reaction to the novelty of a professional life that could be censured by a reference to the past, though accepted by the contingency of the present. My contention here is to suggest that the figure of the kerani in nineteenth-century Calcutta was an arbitrary but necessary presence, whose lineage could not be traced to traditional scribal practice, and that there was considerable ambiguity in the bhadralok profession. Both Neemchand and Kamalakanta, educated and upper-caste elites, render expression to this ambiguity.

Is the kerani a subaltern? A necessary question In the larger scheme of postcolonial historiography and the representation of the marginal figure in history, the question of subalternity and its complex relationship with forms of modernity has been an important discussion. Much humanities scholarship across disciplines in postcolonial India has engaged with the analysis of the subject position of this marginal figure and tried to grapple with forms of representation or the lack of it in the larger contexts of class, gender, and caste. Across the chapters in this book, the nineteenth-century kerani in Calcutta is presented as a marginal figure, caught in interstitial spaces, straddling different identitarian discourses, trying to locate a place of his own in the deterministic structures of history. Therefore, I examine whether it is possible to lay a claim of subalternity for the nineteenth-century Calcutta kerani as a subject of history. Dipesh Chakrabarty (2000) argues in his essay ‘Minority Histories, Subaltern Pasts’ that in the discipline of history the act of choosing a subject depends on a certain kind of rationality and a consequent understanding of the ‘real’ and thereby the ‘exclusions are ultimately epistemological’ (p. 98). I argue in this book that the many histories and narratives on nineteenthcentury Bengal have either mentioned the kerani in the passing, used him as a humorous aside, or summarily neglected his presence for other matters of greater or more-immediate relevance. The ‘real’ in the colonial or postcolonial historiography of nineteenth-century Bengal has always excluded the 15

INTRODUCTION

figure of the kerani. This exclusion, Chakrabarty argues, is not arbitrary but epistemological, and hence, it will follow that the presence of the kerani as a subject of history will not ‘give us rationally defensible principles for narration’ (p. 98). No wonder, then, why I see the Bengali kerani in nineteenthcentury Calcutta as an absent presence. Later in the essay, Chakrabarty formulates the reason for the minoritization of certain pasts in the larger rational narrative of history: Some constructions and experiences of the past stay ‘minor’ in the sense that their very incorporation into historical narratives converts them into pasts ‘of lesser importance’ vis-à-vis dominant understandings of what constitutes fact and evidence (and hence vis-à-vis the underlying principle of rationality) in the practices of professional history. Such ‘minor’ pasts are those experiences of the past that always have to be assigned to an ‘inferior’ or ‘marginal’ position as they are translated into the academic historian’s language. (pp. 100–101) Perhaps my training in literature led me to see beyond the principle of rationality, and its consequent epistemic manifestations; to underscore this absence; and to try to tell the story (if not the history) of the Calcutta kerani. Beyond the supposed inferiority or marginality of the position of the kerani in historical narratives on nineteenth-century Bengal, the near absence of this figure in most cultural critiques on the subject stoked my curiosity. Is it that the understated homogeneity of postcolonial critique, in the choice of its many marginalities, refuses to chart the implicit ambiguities of certain experiences that are epistemologically challenging or suspect? The fundamental query, then, on the matter of the kerani and the categorization of the subaltern will be as follows: is there a ‘denial of consciousness’ involved in the question of the subject position of the kerani in the ideological formation of subaltern studies? There have been protracted debates in the subaltern school for the past few decades on whether the subaltern has been invested with enough agency so that they may see themselves as the subject of their own history. The dependence of subaltern studies scholars on the derivative and elite narratives of colonialism, nationalism, or Marxism and their subsequent collusion with the grand narrative of modernity has been a point of discussion in humanities classrooms for decades. The corrective historiography that takes into account the religious and the mythic, or all that is considered premodern or non-modern, has also garnered epistemological sanction over the years. It would seem that the project of provincializing Europe has served as a perfect antidote to all the essentialisms of modernity, and the representation of the subaltern has achieved a political victory of some kind:

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INTRODUCTION

The turn towards the critique of Europe or the West marks the explicit convergence between subaltern studies and ‘postcolonial critique’. The subaltern is now presented as embodying differences that frustrate the universal project of modernity. . . . Subaltern studies, in its postcolonial avatar, insists not on the autonomy of the subaltern domain from that of the elite/dominant, but the subalterns’ radical difference vis-à-vis the dominant discourse. (Nixon, 2019, p. 28) Postcolonial critique thus foregrounds a kind of radical alterity for the subaltern subject that reorients, in a way, the epistemological rationality at the heart of the disciplinary structure of historiography. It collates ‘the rule of historicism and lifeworld/practices of the subaltern which are imbued with the agency of the supernatural and gods’ (Nixon, 2019, p. 29), thereby opening up the discipline towards a self-reflexive model and investing it with a notion of arbitrariness. Thus, the peasant, the labourer, the woman, or the dalit, for example, made their way into the dominant discourses of writing in the twentieth century. However, the absence or the expunction of the kerani from most colonial and postcolonial discourses led me to think, in this book, of the possible problem of his placement in a historical-cultural narrative. The figure of the kerani was a significant, if not dominant, presence in the sociocultural and professional milieu of nineteenth-century Calcutta. Is it possible that this particular professional group was conceived by all forms of community as the ‘outside’, which led to various degrees of exclusion of the kerani from any form of historical writing? I have engaged with the idea of community and spoken about the assimilationist tendencies of a premodern society in what I have termed a wholesome community. Historians of the subaltern have also engaged with the idea of community and shown how modern regimes of power have foregrounded capital over community as the authentic narrative of progress (Chatterjee, 1994; Nixon, 2019). It was, therefore, an attempt of the subaltern historian to revisit the notion of community and reinscribe it in the practices of history writing: ‘Community exists not as a remnant, but as a living entity among the subaltern classes that has been marginalized by the universal narrative of modernity’ (Nixon, 2019, p. 29). I agree with this as an important critique of modernity. However, my contention is to disagree with the easy homogeneity of the classification of the marginal, almost leading the debate towards a closure, where the possibility of other possible representations is quietly forgotten. I am not trying to lead this question of representation towards a postmodern obfuscation, by suggesting innumerable possible subject positions in a particular class formation. However, as I discuss in this book, particularly in the first two chapters, it is not easy to find a fit for the kerani in any set class identity. He is neither the bhadralok, the babu, nor the working-class proletariat.

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INTRODUCTION

But the absence of a situated and epistemologically discernible class identity does not preclude representation. It seems that the project of subaltern studies, even in its latest avatar, has submitted to the easy binaries of religiosity versus political consciousness, or the archaic versus the modern. The kerani is not the classic subaltern figure, but he has all the possibilities of subalternity. The formulation of the subaltern, in all its radical alterity, it seems to me, has submitted to a carefully designed epistemological trap, which fails to represent the kerani. Therefore, the kerani in nineteenth-century Calcutta will not be a subaltern.

Before the beginning In this brief introduction, I tried to enumerate who the nineteenth-century Calcutta kerani is not. Although certain overlaps are inevitable, and similarities germane, none of the foregoing three disparate categories will contain the historical and cultural complexity of the figure of central concern of this book. In the choice of these three categories lies my attempt to try to trace a lineage or historicity for the kerani, to find, if not an origin, a significant presence in these discursive formations. All these categories were suggested to me either by my peers or by established academics of the discipline. I am grateful to them for asking me to explore these formations. However, from what I have culled out of these analyses, our kerani remains an aberration, an uneasy presence in all possible sociocultural narratives that could possibly accommodate him. What follows in the next few chapters is an attempt to explore this ambiguity of his location. With trepidation, I will call it a cultural history of sorts, of the nineteenth-century kerani in Calcutta. I have trespassed beyond my disciplinary training, and I shall accept critiques of my attempt with humility.

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1 THE SOCIAL AND CULTURAL LOCATION OF THE KERANI IN THE EMPIRE

The Calcutta kerani: a unique location The title of this chapter opens up multiple strands in locating the clerk or the kerani in the imperial dynamic of British India. By all means, this claim to locate the clerk ‘socially’ and ‘culturally’ in the empire is a fraught question that needs to be addressed carefully and across multiple strands. From the etymological perspective, the primary concern lies in trying to answer an immediate question: who is the clerk or kerani, or what is a clerk or kerani? Before beginning to answer this etymological question, one needs to understand that such a foundational definition carries in its wake too many other issues that have to be historically understood before we arrive at the representation of the imperial clerk. To begin with, it is common knowledge now that the nine-to-five job pattern in the structured space of an office, something that defines the discursive contours of a clerk’s working life, was woven into the cultural logic of the subcontinent by colonial modernity and the various office jobs that were inevitably created due to the imperial administration. Sumit Sarkar (1998) has written an informed essay on the various effects of ‘chakri’ (or a nine-to-five job) on the life of the indigenous, educated middle class (or its complex manifestations in nineteenth-century Calcutta), and most of them were doing the job of the kerani (pp. 282–357). I shall return to a detailed discussion on this in the next chapter. However, as I tried to argue in the introductory chapter, the Bengali kerani in nineteenth-century Calcutta was possibly a new breed of the clerk or the accountant, clearly set apart from the erstwhile tradition of munshis or accountants in the premodern or early modern practices of statecraft in India. The interfaces between the munshis or muharrirs of Mughal India and the keranis in colonial Calcutta were either incidental or occasionally technical, but in terms of agency or culture, they were clearly set apart. The typical Calcutta kerani, who is the subject of this study, was born out of the need for office work only after the British established an administration in India, first through the East India Company and consequently through the empire. Thus, although the profession of a 19

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clerk or a munshi was not new to the subcontinent, the peculiar location of the kerani in nineteenth-century Calcutta demands a fresh understanding of professionally paid accountants, keepers of records, or people hired on a salary for routine administrative functions. These questions about the emergence of a profession that engage the expertise of a set population of the citizenry for specific functions mostly in the confined space of an office are related, by a natural corollary, with a process of urbanization and development. Even before the British had come to India, or subsequently set up an imperial administration that functioned through newer mores of colonial modernity with its complex machinations, there were already established cities in the country that were ruled and controlled by an elaborate administrative machinery. Given that my immediate focus in this book is Bengal (and Calcutta as the capital of British India), I briefly look into two other neighbouring cities, those of Murshidabad and Dhaka, as crucial templates of city living with an efficient administrative apparatus, much before the influences of Western colonial modernity and also before Calcutta became a city proper and the centre of imperial administration.

Urban centres in Bengal: Murshidabad and Dhaka Foundations of the city in Bengal of the Middle Ages may be ascribed broadly to the needs of business, politics, administrative need, and religious or industrial reasons. During the reign of the Nawabs, most of these cities developed around administrative centres or the residences of major revenue collectors (rajahs, zamindars, bargadars, etc.). It was from the eighteenth century that these centres of business and administration began to take the shape of bigger and more-populated cities, such as Burdwan, Natore, and Krishnanagar. With the regular influx of European traders from England, France, Holland, and Portugal, many cities, such as Chandannagore, Chinsurah, Maldah, and Kumarkhali, became important centres of trade, business, and industry. Most of the cities, understandably, grew around the trade routes along the Hooghly or the Bhagirathi rivers. However, as the capital of Bengal, Murshidabad became the major and the most important city of the region, with a population of around six to seven lakh in circa 1750 (Mohsin, 1980, p. 77). Sharif Uddin Ahmed (1993) writes of how from circa 1704 Murshidabad became the nerve centre of much enterprise and activity. It was the central administrative base for the region, the chief base of the armed forces, a major player in silk trade, a hub of myriad entertainment and pleasure and the point of convergence for both indigenous and international trade and commerce (Ahmed, 1993, p. 178). As the capital city of the regions of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa, Ahmed describes Murshidabad as a planned and prosperous city inhabited mostly by a motley group of professionals (including the army officers and street entertainers), businesspeople, and the elite. There is the passing mention of 20

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a service class, or cakurijibi (Ahmed, 1993, p. 179), but there is no specific mention of the clerk or the kerani in Ahmed’s analysis, nor any reference to the active presence of a lower rung of the bureaucracy as part of a growing citizenry. Murshidabad comes across, chiefly, as a city of the nawabs, the elite, the high officials of the army, Asian and European traders, bankers, investors, linkmen, artisans, and labourers—in short, an economy based primarily on manufactured goods, trade, and commerce, with not much of a presence of the ‘middle’ class. There are issues I leave unaddressed here about Ahmed’s analysis, namely questions on education, medical facilities, and cultural praxes, because they are not immediately germane. Dhaka, an older city-space and the capital city of Mughal Bengal, was also a major administrative and business hub long before colonial modernity or the arrival of the East India Company. At the height of its prosperity, during the Mughal period, the population of Dhaka had supposedly reached almost nine lakh (Ahmed, 1993, p. 183). Incidentally, Dhaka was initially the headquarters of both administration and the armed forces, but there was no major industrial growth or the presence of trade and commerce. Revenue collected from other parts of the state was channelled to Dhaka for the sustenance of its citizens. Gradually, however, primarily due to its location by the river, on a fertile lowland, Dhaka began to develop as an urban centre, with rapid growth of trade and industry. Ahmed (1993) writes that the major players in the economic growth and prosperity of Dhaka as a cityspace were the Mughal administration and its collaborators, the business community, the artisans, the traders, the investors, and the bankers (p. 183). These were the people who chiefly constituted the civil society of the city of Dhaka. Although there was a presence of the daily wager and the salaried sector, they were, in all probability, not the principal dwellers of the city. The Dhaka of Mughal India comes across as more of an elite urban space inhabited and controlled, both economically and culturally, almost entirely by the representatives of the emperor, the nobility, the business community, the zamindars, and the subedars. Ahmed (1993) concludes that there was no presence of an educated middle class in the urban milieu of Dhaka during the Mughal period (p. 184). As I have already mentioned, the cities of Dhaka and Murshidabad come across as primarily elite urban spaces and hubs for higher administration and brisk business, with the marginal or barely noticeable presence of the ‘middle’ class, such as it was. There are debates and differences among historians on this issue. Sushil Chaudhury (2005) writes in his essay on the society, economy, and culture of Murshidabad that as the dewani (capital) of the Bengal sultanate was shifted by Nawab Murshidquli Khan from Dhaka to Makhsudabad (later Murshidabad) in 1704, bankers, money lenders, and businesspeople, along with the nobility and the aristocracy, also made a similar move towards the capital. Also, traders and businesspeople from India and other parts of Asia and Eurasia 21

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(particularly Armenia) came and settled in Murshidabad, making it a cosmopolitan urban space. Chaudhury sees in the new capital of Bengal, on the one hand, the presence of ‘a new business class and, on the other hand, the flowering of a middle class’ (p. 124). He also notes in a different context (p. 125) that the majority among this new class of bankers/ businesspeople on the one hand and the ‘middle’ class on the other were Hindus (because Murshidquli employed only Bengali Hindus in the revenue department). Chaudhury’s argument veers away, eventually, towards the context of religion and its relationship to people’s social and cultural location in the society of Murshidabad. At one point, however, he alludes to the poet Bharatchandra Raygunakar’s listing of various professionals (mostly Hindus) who inhabited the lower rungs of the bureaucracy, among them writers, khajanchees (cashiers or paymasters), vakils (political agents employed in diplomatic negotiations), naqibs, and timekeepers (Chaudhury, p. 128). Gautam Bhadra (1976) concludes his essay ‘Social Groups and Relations in the Town of Murshidabad, 1765–1793’ with the important question ‘Was There a Middle Class?’. Bhadra categorically sets down that Narendra Krishna Sinha’s claim that there was no urban middle class in Bengal during the period of the Nawabs ‘perhaps does not hold good’ (Bhadra, 1976, p. 338). He writes, The middle class, as a product of industrialization, did not exist; and there was no petit-bourgeoisie in the town of Murshidabad. But the middle sort of people were there. Persons like the Munshis and Muharirs, occupational groups like the physicians, and numerous merchants and shroffs certainly occupied the middle order between affluent sections and poor artisans and daily labourers. (Bhadra, 1976, p. 338) However, Bhadra does not proceed much further with his argument about the middle class and instead concludes soon after without any sustained debate over Sinha’s claims and his refutation. In the fold of revenue administration, however, Iqtidar Alam Khan, in his essay on the middle classes in the Mughal Empire, finds evidence of ‘the exceptional prosperity of the accountants, clerks and other officials’ (Khan, 1975, p. 119). Although he argues that it is difficult to accurately ascertain the levels of income of ‘middle’-class people, in the absence of accurate data, ‘a considerable demand existed in the government as well as in society at large for the services provided by some of the middle class professions like clerks, accountants, physicians and teachers’ (Khan, 1975, p. 118). Therefore, the debate among historians on the presence or absence of a middle rung and its manifestations or ramifications into the daily life of the town of Murshidabad remains somewhat unresolved. I shall come back to this important question of the middle class later in the chapter.

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Calcutta: a different urban space The rise of the East India Company played an important role in bringing Calcutta to the forefront as an urban centre on the one hand and the decline of other major urban centres such as Murshidabad and Dhaka on the other. With major changes in the land-revenue systems, collection of taxes, and business and administrative reforms, the Company had a distinct impact on the process of urbanization in Bengal (see Sinha). The monopolization of business by the Company not only led to the destruction of indigenous business ventures but also forced other foreign tradespeople and business houses out of Bengal. Unfair taxes and levies added to the aggressive import policies led to a quick collapse of cities that were based on the economy of manufacture and trading. Rajani Palme Dutt (1947) specifically mentions the two cities of Dhaka and Murshidabad as having been destroyed within a few years due to Britain’s exploitative imperial apparatus, a destruction that could not have been engendered even by the ravages of war or by the invasion of a foreign power (p. 102). The presence and the influence of the English East India Company led to the flourishing of Calcutta as an urban centre. The form or nature of its development as a city, both politically and economically, followed a new trajectory, whose seeds nestled veritably in the tropes of colonial modernity. Calcutta, as a city, developed principally as an administrative power centre with little or no inclination towards manufacturing industries or indigenous production. It developed as a ‘satellite primate’ city pandering principally to the flourishing of a colonial administration (see Mohit, 1991, p.  620). As Soumitra Sreemani (1994) argues, in the early years of the development of the city-space, ‘[t]he fortifications of the Company could instil a sense of security not only among the minds of the traders but also, in the minds of the inhabitants of the settlement’ (p. 2). The Company gave the settlers rights to own and develop property and maintain talukdaris (as in the case of Raja Nabakrishna Deb, who got the talukdary grant of Sutanuti in 1777) and passed complicated land laws to grant rights of ‘pre-emption’ and ‘easement’ to the landowners (see Sreemani, pp. 1–36). Myriad and various forms of businesses flourished in Calcutta as it quickly became a seat of trade and commerce, with products manufactured anywhere in the Bengal Presidency being sent to Calcutta for bulk sale or export. Other than this aspect of trade and commerce where the city principally played the role of a mediator or compulsory passage, the door for goods and capital to pass through either way, there were also other major conceptual differences between Calcutta as the capital city of British India and such other previously important urban centres as Dhaka and Murshidabad. Born almost out of the need for imperial governance, the trajectory of the development of Calcutta as a city was intrinsically bound to aspects of colonial modernity. There was a natural dissemination of Western epistemological

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structures through the import of knowledge and civilizational mores, the setting up of both liberal and professional institutions of learning, the birth of the press and thereafter the newspaper; all of these worked together in the shaping of a unique Anglo-Indian culture in Calcutta. The pattern of colonial urbanization crisscrossing with a somewhat uneasy yet inevitable adoption of modernity led Calcutta to develop its unique trajectory as separate from the more traditional cultural mores of the rest of the country. As the Company formally took over the administration of the country in 1772, all major administrative offices were shifted to Calcutta from Murshidabad. But this shift was different in character from the previous shift of the capital city from Dhaka to Murshidabad. There was an organic relationship between the ruler and the ruled in both of these cities. There was a connect between the administration and the person on the street in terms of language, habits, culture, or traditional beliefs and practices. There were the rich and the poor, of course; there were often strict religious boundaries; and there were well-laid-out class distinctions. However, the dynamics of the development of these two administrative cities had a certain organic welfare implicit in their structures, a sense of entitlement or possession that ran through the entire citizenry. In spite of major differences in caste, class, profession, and religious beliefs, there was a certain framework of values that linked one person to the other to create what I call a wholesome community with an intrinsic and organic connection. It was possibly the less sophisticated and less revenue-generationoriented landowning system that led to the coming together of a myriad pool of people from different rungs of the society to form a network of community in these older and organic city-spaces. As Iqtidar Alam Khan (1975) notices, there was a degree of interprofessional mobility in the middle stratum of society. In spite of the caste system, categorical religious divisions, and other traditionally maintained boundaries, Khan discovers an easy fluidity in people moving from one profession to another: A quite early example of this kind of mobility can be cited from the family history of Banarasidas, the author of Ardha-Kathaak. His grandfather Muldas, was the modi of a Mughal nobleman of Humayun while his father, Kharagsen, served till 1569 as a fotedar under Srimal Rai Dhanna, Diwan of Sulaiman Kararani. . . . It is possible to cite many more cases pointing to growing mobility between the artisan and merchant groups on the one hand and learned professions like teaching, accountancy, record-keeping, priesthood, literary writing etc., on the other. To give only a few random examples, three noted poets of Akbar’s reign, namely, Ghubari, Mahmi and Qasim Hindi, were the sons respectively of a baqqal (grain-merchant), a tir-gar (arrow maker), and a fil-ban (elephant-keeper) or to Qazi

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Jalaluddin Multani who was originally a trader and switched over, at a latter stage in his career, to the teaching profession. (Khan, 1975, p. 130) Sreemani (1994) is of the opinion that the rights of easement and preemption had been chiefly responsible for the division of Calcutta around racial and communal lines since its inception (p. 28). The idea of a wholesome community was alien to the polity of Calcutta and to the intention that its governors had for the city. Calcutta was therefore distinct. An aggregate of three villages, Gobindopur, Sutanuti, and Kolikata, this space by the Hooghly river was inhabited primarily by weavers and fishers (see Ahmed, 1993, p. 189). However, soon after the foundations of the city of Calcutta were laid, there was a quick infiltration of professional people—landowners, traders, businesspeople, clerks, artisans, and other professionals—and by the year 1750, the population of Calcutta was around 1.2 lakhs. With the shift of the administrative headquarters to Calcutta the population increased manifold, most of them opportunists, seekers of fortune, or people looking for jobs in a newly developed centre of commerce and administration. By 1822, the population of Calcutta was around 2 lakhs, and around 1 lakh people were coming in to work every day from the neighbouring areas (Ahmed, 1993, p. 190). Although, as S.N. Mukherjee (1993) writes, ‘It is difficult to find hard statistical material for Calcutta in the nineteenth century .  .  . the numerical data that we have are not absolutely reliable. The first full scale census of the city was taken in 1866’ (p. 4). Most of the inhabitants of this new urban space were not, in any way, organically linked to the space. Also, there was no significant traditional or cultural capital that would historically situate this newly conceived urban space in a certain sociohistorical paradigm. Calcutta was a colonial city from the moment of its conception, with a clearly envisioned utilitarian aim and function. It was to become an administrative centre of the colonial enterprise and the focal point of business ventures and commercial blueprints. Therefore, it was to become the city of the opportunist and the grabber, the land shark and the money lender, the intermediary and the lawyer, the bookkeeper and the clerk. In short, the pragmatic and mercenary nature of the city was immediately apparent, almost in the form of a historical truth. As a sociocultural space born directly out of a colonial logic, there was a distinct pattern of segregation between the colonizer and the colonized. Almost from its inception, Calcutta had a ‘white town’ inhabited by the sahib and a ‘black town’ meant for the natives. Now, as I have mentioned previously, there were many forms of segregation or divisions in the indigenous society of a traditional city. There were divisions in terms of religion, caste, professions, or social positions. There were different residential spaces

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earmarked for people of different professions. In Dhaka, for example, there was a Bakshibazar, a Mughaltuli, a Kayettuli (residential space for Hindu keranis), a Tantibazar (for the weavers), and so on. However, such segregations or divisions did not come in the way of an organic wholeness, the intrinsic feeling of wholesome community among the citizens. Language, habits, culture, and tradition were essential in cities such as Dhaka or Murshidabad but were apparently not imperative to Calcutta. That is to say, there was no organic connection between the city-space and its inhabitants. At least in the wake of its birth and initial development, one would barely discover any sense of a wholesome community in the life of the city. As Kathleen Blechynden (1905/1978) suggests, it was to be the city of the colonizer, a symbol of the triumph of empire, an annihilation of any past glory that history could claim for any master or servant who had been there before: Calcutta [was] founded, and such was the manner of coming of Job Charnock to his last port—the spot where his bones were to lie beneath a stately mausoleum through the centuries, while the settlement he founded amid every circumstance of discouragement and discomfort grew and prospered till it became the capital city of the British Empire in India, such an Empire as the wildest dreams of the Great Mogul never compassed. (p. 2) The Calcutta kerani, who is the subject of this book, was an intrinsic part of this new colonial city. Some of keranis would stay here, whereas others would commute to and from the city on a regular basis. The minute details of his daily existence will be taken up for discussion in the next chapter. Here I try to understand the class position of the kerani or the clerk (or the babu), who was, on the one hand, an essential cog of an imperial machinery spreading itself out inside a ‘modern’ city and, on the other, someone who would perpetually inhabit a subject position of dispensability in terms of his relatively menial importance within the administrative structure. Through this trope of class identity, I initially approach the question that I asked at the beginning of this chapter: who is the clerk or kerani? Through this analysis, I explore the complexity of class positions in the India of the late eighteenth century to the mid nineteenth century, vis-à-vis the presence/absence debate about the ‘middle’ class in India. Is it possible, at all, to stake a claim for the kerani in this ‘middle’ class, if it existed at all? If not, where exactly could we find a social fit for the kerani?

The kerani and the middle class The category of the middle class and the notion of middle classness in India are parts of a complex debate that has taken different trajectories and gone 26

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through too many transformations and representations that may not be particularly germane to the central concern of this book. I’m merely trying to explore the possibilities of finding an ideological fit for the kerani, if possible, in this network of ‘middle-class’ representations. In B.B. Misra’s (1983)important intervention on the subject, he invests little value in trying to find a precise definition for the Indian middle class (p. 1). Sanjay Joshi (2001) writes in his book on the middle class in colonial India (namely Lucknow) that Misra . . . argued that though there were possibilities for the development of an independent middle class in pre-colonial India the immobility of the caste organization and despotism of the bureaucracy precluded such a development. . . . Misra like the British officials before him, saw the middle classes in colonial India simply as a product of English education, rule of law and the capitalist economy introduced by the British in India. (p. 4) ‘Despotism’ is an important word that is used here. Joshi is leading us towards and critiquing this overbearing binary of ‘despotism’ versus ‘rule of law’, the premodern against the modern, and a trajectory of writing in which the entire historiographical enterprise of the subcontinent (or most of the Majority World, for that matter) has been (un)intentionally trapped. Dipesh Chakrabarty (1992) discusses at length that there is a tendency to read Indian history in terms of an absence or an incompleteness that ‘translates into “inadequacy”’. He notices the Indian historian falling into the trap that was laid during the ‘hoary beginnings of colonial rule in India’: The British conquered and represented the diversity of ‘Indian’ pasts through a homogenizing narrative of transition from a ‘medieval’ period to ‘modernity’. The terms have changed with time. The ‘medieval’ was once called ‘despotic’ and the ‘modern’, ‘the rule of law’. (Chakrabarty, 1992, p. 5) Ironically (or perhaps expectedly), Misra, in his analysis, sticks to the older formulations of the words. Thus, even if one were to insist on the idea of a wholesome community where the service providers or small merchants or office workers or munshis and muharis (who Bhadra refers to) would form a certain middle rung of people/professionals situated in a curious web of socioreligious and historical-cultural mores of community life, the historian, trained, according to Dipesh Chakrabarty, in the ‘institutional site of the university’ (p.  19), would inevitably discover in them figures born out of or pandering to forms of despotism. The native subject, the ‘figure of lack’ or ‘failure’ (Chakrabarty, 1992, p. 6) in their premodern (or medieval) 27

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state will remain perpetually unable to formulate or ascertain the agency of class or exist in any form of rationally conceptualized governmentality. As Chakrabarty asserts, ‘The dominance of “Europe” as the subject of all histories is part of a much more profound theoretical condition under which historical knowledge is produced in the third world’ (p. 2). It may therefore be assumed, perhaps, that histories of a precolonial India written in English (or written in the vernacular in the setting of colonial modernity) would not have assigned a normative class position to those Bhadra (1976) refers to as the ‘middle sort of people’ (p. 338). In the social structure of a premodern wholesome community, the group of people inhabiting this middle space will always remain, in the conception of Indian historiography, an ill-congealed mass, always and inevitably a presence that precludes definition, a figure of lack. In his analysis, however, Joshi (2001) unambiguously locates the history of the middle class in a coherent project of a social group ‘seeking to empower itself at the expense of its social superiors and inferiors’ (p. 9). He goes on to suggest that the middle class of colonial India was undoubtedly a product of British rule and thereby well defined: It was only by using ideas and institutions which came with colonial rule and because of social changes and disruptions initiated by colonialism that a group of Western educated men and later women from the upper strata of society came to constitute themselves as a middle class. (Joshi, 2001, pp. 9–10) Joshi invests in the development of the middle class not only a historical process that follows a reflexive and implicit trajectory of colonial modernity but also an active agency in terms of politics, economics, and social changes. It is perhaps not incorrect to assume that Joshi is investing in the middle class a clearly defined class identity with its peculiar agential thrust and a set, albeit somewhat unsure, location in the sociocultural paradigm of colonial/ postcolonial modern India. There is a certain objectivity in his definition of the middle class. He sees them belonging to the upper strata of society, but not at the apex. He notices that they are mostly upper-caste Hindus or Ashraf Muslims and that they come from service communities who served in the courts of indigenous rulers and landlords. He defines them as people who not only had ‘sufficient economic resources but [who also] possessed sufficient educational training to shape and participate in public debates during the colonial era’ (Joshi, 2001, p. 7). It may be said that Joshi is situating his definition of the middle class at an antipode to B.B. Misra’s refusal to define the middle class at all, due to its many ambiguities. Between Joshi’s definition and Misra’s refusal lies multiple and complex, economic and sociological, historical and political definitions of the middle class. One needs to 28

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add a caveat, however: in both Joshi’s definition and Misra’s refusal, the idea of a wholesome community in the formations of colonial modernity is dismantled. Both of them assume implicitly, in their respective arguments, that with the advent of the British and their epistemic structures of discourse, the indigenous idea of community imploded, giving birth to a new narrative of social and cultural organization that presumed the presence of a structural pattern borrowed from Europe. However, defining the Indian middle class is not my prerogative in this chapter. I have referred only to a broad narrative enterprise, the two borderlines of which may be represented by Joshi and Misra. I examine whether the presence of the native imperial clerk or the kerani, defined according to the historical, political, economic, and cultural rubric of colonial practice may fit into a certain ‘middle classness’ that could be understood from the formations of colonial modernity. My contention here is to underscore that, first, with the adoption of structures of modernity, in the newly established city of Calcutta, the indigenous population did not, all of a sudden, assume a completely new structural identity that indicated a clear shift from earlier patterns of social organization. It may not be possible, as a result, to determine the class identity of the kerani and locate him in a set social milieu. Although, intrinsically, there had to be a slow but sure shift in the indigenous society from the structural fluidity of a wholesome community, the homogeneity demanded by the mores of modernity, of a defined class identity, could not possibly be immediately and automatically adopted by the native population who lived or worked in the new city-space. Second, the singular common thread that ran across most of the keranis who were working for the company administration was that they had reasonable training in the English language. This had complex implications. Most of the indigenous population, across class and caste identities, did not have either exposure to or training in the English language. So the very fact of being a kerani implied the possession of a cultural capital not available to a considerably large section of the native populace. The kerani had read or could read and make sense of texts that the colonial master proclaimed as the harbinger of modernity. This is not to imply that either the keranis or their immediate white masters had all of them read and debated on the works of John Locke, David Hume, and George Berkeley, but the possibility of such an event may not be summarily dismissed. Third, this exposure to or training in English and the consequent job of the kerani did not, in any way, ensure an economic agency that would go on to establish, consequently, a class identity based on income. The keranis came from varied economic backgrounds from the native community and could not proclaim a social homogeneity peculiar to themselves. Fourth, it was not possible to claim that only the category of the kerani was exposed to and could read and write English. There were other more 29

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proficient users of the language in the native gentry who had either learned the language because of idle curiosity or to expose themselves to Western knowledge systems, or they were placed in upper rungs of the bureaucracy. That is to say, there was no internally established logic to infer that an exposure to the language of the colonial master entailed belonging to a definitive and well-defined class identity that could be analysed or critiqued. The more inclusive umbrella of a wholesome community was still at work, and there was a discernible liquid movement in the service sector of the kerani to stake claims of homogeneity in identity and representation. Importantly, an implicit relationship between an exposure to the language of the master and a narrative of gentrification, however uneven, may not be summarily rejected. Although it may not be possible to put a finger on the specific class difference between the user of the master’s language and the one who was ignorant of it, the eventuality of this difference could not be ignored. This brings me to the discussion of a complicated identitarian strand in the social milieu—the figure of the bhadralok.

Was the kerani a bhadralok? The category of the bhadralok is fraught with social and cultural ramifications in the Bengali society in such a way as to render it impossible to come up with an easy, workable definition for the word. It is marked by a fluidity that cuts across both sociocultural and economic sanctions and eludes a classspecific locational identity. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and roughly till the first half of the twentieth century, there was a specific caste identity attached to the word. In contemporary Bengal, however, it may not necessarily have any caste-based ring to it. The word has remained, across time and space, as a fluid referent to a tentative ‘middle classness’ of the adult Bengali male with an uncertain claim to cultural capital and economic solvency. The address is also linked to social behaviour or the milieu that one cultivates or to a complicated sartorial dynamic that may not be easily defined. Oftentimes, the word is used as an opposite for chhotolok, another word that is difficult to specifically define: chhotolok may be a class identity, referring to people with low income, little or no cultural capital, living on the fringes of society, performing menial work (chores that involve physical labour), or a class of servants or other service providers inside the domestic sphere or outside of it. The word is also used as a marker of social behaviour, a word used to describe a person, irrespective of class identity, unfit to inhabit the community of gentry, a person who does not fit or adhere to the social and cultural mores of ‘civilized’ society. The implications of both these words are numerous and context-specific, and the dominant meaning that would emerge at the moment of enunciation depends on its peculiar context specificity. If, however, one uses the word generically, the kerani would, more often than not, inhabit the cultural space of the bhadralok. However, one 30

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needs to understand the word ‘bhadralok’ in a wider historical-cultural context to determine the exact or tentative location of the kerani in this specific rubric of bhadraloki or what entailed being a bhadralok. Generally speaking, the nineteenth-century bhadralok was the Englisheducated, upper-caste male professional who formed a considerably important element of the population and supplied the East India Company and the British Empire with officials, professionals, managers, and clerks. In Final Report on the Surveys and Settlement Operation in the District of Bakharganj, 1900–1908, J.C. Jack (1915) locates the bhadralok as all who by birth, education or occupation consider themselves above the manual lot but is almost exclusively confined to Hindus of the Brahman, Kayasth and Vaidya caste, who form a very numerous and a very powerful element in the population and supply of practically the whole district with officials, professional men and clerks. (pp. 87–88) Jack’s location of the bhadralok, though generic in its import, is problematic because he collates too many disparate discourses together in the scope of a sentence. The ‘occupation’ of the kerani, for example, did not, in economic terms, ensure his place in the bhadralok society, whereas his birth or education might have. Also, genteel society did have representations from other religious sects and even during the nineteenth century from Hindu castes that were lower down the order in traditional socioreligious discourse. The question of power, when it comes to the kerani, is fraught and ambiguous. Typically hailing from a cultural space that could lay its claim to some form of social power, the kerani was perhaps the less powerful representative of the space. In spite of these sanctions, however, Jack’s definition of the bhadralok may be considered true in the general sense, or largely, and the kerani might as well fit within the framework. Social historian Broomfield discovers in the bhadralok the claim to a superior social status compared to the general mass of the people. For him, the bhadralok was distinguished by many aspects of their behaviour, their deportment, their speech, their dress, their style of housing, their eating habits, their occupation and their association—and quite as fundamentally by their cultural values and their sense of social propriety. (Broomfield, 1968, p. 4) In this description as well, there are many aspects that do not apply to the kerani. Whereas, in terms of behaviour, deportment, speech, and eating habits, the kerani fit the discourse of the bhadralok, he could easily be found lacking in terms of dress and housing. My response to Broomfield’s 31

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assumptions is as generic as his, in that there may be found keranis who will fit all discursive requirements of an upper-class lifestyle. But they will be exceptions, their wealth and cultural capital having sources in their respective families and modes of upbringing. Sumanta Banerjee also follows similar lines while trying to outline the ‘outward manifestations’ of the bhadralok. He also uses the Bengali word sambhranta (or respectable) for this class of people whose ideology, he infers, is ‘based on a set of values born of a compromise between the old and the new, the traditional norms and the influences from abroad’ (Banerjee, 1989, p. 54). He discovers how, through various influences, reforms, debates, discussions, and subsequent compromises, all the warring factions of the upperclass and educated Bengali society in Calcutta—the Brahmos, the orthodox Hindus, and the Anglicized gentry—came together within the rubric of the bhadralok. Economically, Banerjee (1989, p. 54) writes, the basic standard of income of this class ensured the fulfilment of at least four fundamental (albeit unwritten) principles of being the bhadralok: 1 2 3 4

An owned or rented brick and mortar (pucca) residence. Sartorial respectability in public. Use of a chaste Bangla that was shaped from the middle of the 19th century. A respectable knowledge of English language and manners.

It is not difficult to construct the image of the bhadralok, in the general sense, from the four descriptions taken together. The bhadralok is an uppercaste Hindu, not given to manual labour (hence, upper class), distinguished and cultured, one who leads a life of considerable affluence and respectability. However, in a recent essay, Dipesh Chakrabarty (2013/2018) argues that the category of the bhadralok emerged in Calcutta during the middle of the nineteenth century. And if one were to look into the history of individual castes or the society as a whole, it would be clear that the bhadralok was not necessarily upper caste and that some of them were also shudras. Thus, in spite of caste differences, or clearly defined social boundaries, there was a certain fluidity inherent in the structural formation of the bhadralok. This Chakrabarty ascribes to the fact that bhadraloki (being or becoming a bhadralok) was always an aspirational category (pp. 54–55). Even Chakrabarty does not refer to the kerani in his essay, and taken as a social group, the kerani remains an uneasy fit to all the earlier definitions. Yet there might be no other social space where the kerani might be comfortably ensconced. The discourse on the bhadralok has been suitably complicated further by Tithi Bhattacharya (2005), who refers to Bhabanicharan Bandopadhyay’s classification of the bhadralok in Kalikata Kamalalaya. She refers to Bhabanicharan’s three-tiered classification of bhadralok society: the rich bania (also called the banian), who formed the upper tier; the comfortable middle 32

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class; and the poor but bhadra (meaning gentle, civilized, etc.) bottom rung. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the banians (in terms of the specifics of the profession itself) had more or less disappeared, leaving only the two other tiers as representatives of the bhadralok. Bhattacharya claims that the middle-class bhadralok was instrumental in modelling a certain educational ideology and cultural praxis which the bottom rung of the petty bourgeoisie, that is the ‘poor but bhadra’ section, was forced to practise and uphold. Bhattacharya (2005), here, brings in the question of class and proposes a clear difference of class among the sections of the same social category of the bhadralok: The social composition of the bhadralok .  .  . occupied two class positions united by the common ideology of education. A man such as Pearychand Mitra (1814–83), who was on the board of directors for several business ventures including the Great Eastern Hotel Company, the Port Canning Land Investment Company, the Howrah Docking Company, the Bengal Tea Company, and so on, cannot be equated with either Vidyasagar, a man of modest means, or to a kerani. (p. 52) Bhattacharya easily chooses the kerani as a representative of the bottom rung of the bhadralok. She refuses to see the bhadralok as a homogeneous social category but reads it essentially as ‘an ethic, or a sentiment, held for various reasons by individuals from different class positions’ (Bhattacharya, 2005, p. 52). It will not be easy, however, to read all categories of the bhadralok to be subscribing to an identical ethical or sentimental paradigm either. The world, and consequently the world view of these three broad categories of people in the bhadralok paradigm, could also be markedly different. The broadly sketched class difference between the banians on the one hand and the comfortable middle class and the bottom rung on the other had in its interstices many layers of cultural and economic differences that are difficult to theorize about. To comprehend the class location of the kerani more specifically in the social construction of the bhadralok, it may be helpful to understand the difference between these categories of the bhadralok in their class locations. The banians, who disappeared as professionals, were very much present as important individuals or families within the social rubric of the newly established imperial city. They had accumulated a lot of wealth, and they had bought huge properties and land both within the limits of the city and outside. The Calcutta of that time was rife with apocryphal anecdotes and real incidents of wealth and extravagance of this category of the bhadralok. On the one hand, some of them had enough cultural capital to participate in 33

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the important social debates of the time and contribute meaningfully. On the other hand, individually, they would lead rich, extravagant lives of leisure and luxury, unthinkable by all standards of ‘middle classness’. But who or what exactly is a banian? In the third volume of The Economic History of Bengal, Narendra Krishna Sinha (1970) provides an exact definition of the role and function of the banian: A banian is a person by whom all purchases and all sales of goods, merchandise and produce are made and through whom all shipments are made on account and on behalf of the merchants or mercantile firm in whose establishment he is a banian. Such a banian is therefore responsible for the quality and quantity of goods, merchandise, produce and shipments made through him or his sircars or servants whom he employs. . . . The banian receives a dustooree or a percentage of the sale and produce of goods and merchandise. (pp. 106–107) The banians and their shroffs not only had sound knowledge of British business methods but also had an intimate knowledge of the native people and the land. They also accumulated their own capital to start inland trading or invest in export-import businesses. Many of them had considerable investments in moneylending, shipbuilding, insurance, the export of opium and indigo, and the import of foreign goods. Sinha (1970) points out what ‘The Reporter of External Commerce of Bengal’ wrote in 1802: The formerly timid Hindu now lends money at respondentia in distant voyages, engages in speculations in various parts of the world and as an underwriter in the different insurance offices creates indigo works in various parts of Bengal and is just as well acquainted with the principles of British laws respecting commerce as the generality of the European merchants. (p. 110) Many of these banian families and their descendants later on became an important and influential presence in the cultural life of the city. The uppermost rung of the category of the bhadralok was mostly not ‘middle’ class. They were generally the descendants of former banian families or hailed from wealthy tradespeople or banker families. More often than not, their habits of extravagant consumption, ability to maintain an expensive lifestyle, generosity of spirit in either the form of social welfare or maintaining a large retinue of followers or sycophants, or cultural capital gained through easy social contact with the Europeans (due to professional or family contacts) gained them the necessary respectability to be called bhadralok. It was not imperative that the upper rung of the bhadralok be in possession 34

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of all these parameters, but it was a curious and random mix of these. It is important to understand that the question of caste (quite an important question in nineteenth-century Calcutta) was not typically germane to the constitution of the uppermost rung of the bhadralok. Ruplal Mallik (of the subarna banik caste) was as much the bhadralok as was Ramtanu Datta (kayastha caste, of the Datta family of Hatkhola) or Darpanarayan Thakur (brahmin caste, of the influential Tagore family). The making of this echelon of the bhadralok category depended mostly on the criteria that I have enumerated so far. Narasingha Sil (2017) writes about the extravagance of this category of the gentry: Babu Bhubanmohan Neogy of Bagbazar used to smoke cigarettes rolled in actual banknotes. He gifted a thousand pieces of rich and expensive saris made in Benares to the whores of Chitpur Road on the occasion of the Sarasvati Puja [public worship of Saraswati, goddess of learning]. (p. 12) This is merely an example, and there are numerous such incidents of extravagance of this uppermost category of the bhadralok. As I have already mentioned, however, it is not only extravagance or the ability to splurge that was instrumental to their inclusion within the rubric of the bhadralok. As Sumanta Banerjee (1989) has said, the bhadralok was also sambhranta. Many of them had rich cultural capital and played important roles as reformers or influences on native education or the emancipation of women, participated in the social debates of the times, and often engaged in sustained negotiations with the colonial master. Some of them set up schools, funded education, were members of boards that discussed social and educational policies, and acted as conduits in a dialogue between the colonizer and the native population. There is no space here for a sustained discussion on this aspect of the role of the upper rung of the bhadralok, but I note that their bhadralok-ness depended heavily on the imperative of social reform and cultural engagement in the life of the city of Calcutta. It is a discussion of the second rung of the construction of the bhadralok rubric that is more complicated. Economically speaking, these were the true ‘middle’-class representatives of this formation. Also, in a way, this group of bhadraloks became the representatives of colonial modernity for the native subject. English-educated, with a fair degree of culture capital, with jobs in schools, colleges, law courts, or the bureaucracy, they were, in the true sense, the quintessential example of the respectable Bengali bhadralok in nineteenth-century Calcutta. They did not need an approximation to fit into the frame of the bhadralok. They were neither too rich nor too poor, most of them hailing from Bengali Hindu upper-caste families, with a well-defined agency in native society, and they were perfectly suited to represent what one 35

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might call the native intelligentsia. Most of them had a steady and decent income and thus defined the middle class in the newly formed city of Calcutta. Differentiating between the kerani and this middle rung of educated intelligentsia, Tithi Bhattacharya (2005) writes, Although the sole avenue of survival for them [keranis] was English education, access to higher education was strictly differentiated according to class. The bottom rung of the petty bourgeoisie thus became the kerani, while the top layer was recruited to the slightly higher rungs of the colonial state. In 1833, the office of deputy collector was created for Indians, in 1837 that of principal sudder, and in 1843, the deputy magistrate. A large section of the intelligentsia, Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, Shibchandra Deb, Vidyasagar, Bhudev Mukhopadhyay, Rangalal Bandopadhyay formed a part of this layer. It is this section of the original petty bourgeoisie that we shall term . . . the new middle class. (p. 60) Generally speaking, in terms of class identity, social and cultural capital, or social mobility, there was no comparison between this class of people and the kerani. Many of them were the leading faces of social change, initiating important debates, writing incisive articles in newspapers and pamphlets (both English and vernacular), spearheading initiatives on education, or challenging traditional customs. There is no surprise in the fact that when we talk about nineteenth-century Calcutta in contemporary academia, we talk mostly of this particular category of people and rarely about the kerani. These were important people, and they made a difference. The kerani was the lowliest of the bhadralok category, at the same time belonging to it and not quite. The kerani was generally English educated but did not have access to higher education. For most people, being a kerani was not an ambition but rather a means of subsistence and a desperate desire to cling on to some form of gentility. An article on education was published in the September 10, 1831, issue of The Enquirer on the progress of education in the city of Calcutta and the liberal attitude of the Hindus towards English education. It explains how exposure to English education would free their minds of the shackles of prejudice and superstition, and they would emerge from moral debasement into an enlightened understanding of the world. However, the article raises another serious issue: When their thoughts and sentiments are refined, the occupations the natives were hitherto employed in, will not be suitable to them. When they think and feel so highly, they will not condescend to act as Sircurs and Karanies. . . . If one that has labored for years for the cultivation of his mind, be not better off than a common Sircur or 36

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Karany, serious evils will be the consequence. . . . The progress of civilisation will be materially retarded. (Ghose, 1978, p. 38) This book tries to intervene through an understanding of such a reading of the life and occupation of the kerani. Rote learning and subhuman automatism were to be his fortes. The higher sentiments of refinement or culture, or any other marker of education that has any transcendental agency, was never meant for the kerani. The kerani is not allowed to think and may not be considered to have an opinion on larger questions—social, economic, cultural, or religious. Yet, interestingly, the kerani hovers around the fringes of the construction of the bhadralok. One cannot fail to notice the curiously interstitial location of the clerk or the ‘kerani’ in the crevices of a bhadralok identity. This is perhaps because there was a considerable ambiguity in both the economic location and the social location of the kerani in nineteenth-century Calcutta society. In spite of the numerically significant and administratively important presence of these keranis in the governmental structure of the British Empire in Bengal, their presence has rarely been theorized about, although a lot has been said about the social and cultural formations of nineteenth-century Calcutta. Whereas English education and caste were touchstones for social mobility, the kerani could aspire to belong to neither the rich and lavish upper layer nor the educated and influential middle layer of the bhadralok society. The keranis were mostly English educated, and most of them belonged to the upper castes. However, they were so poorly paid that almost none of them were wealthy. Dalia Chakrabarti (2005) writes that ‘In terms of pay and other conditions of work . . . the Bengali colonial clerks were socially proximate to the emerging proletariat’ (pp. 37–38). Here is the ambiguity. For most of the historians and commentators of nineteenth-century Bengal, there was an inclination to homogenize the various social and cultural formations. There were clearly defined binaries based on race (Englishman-Native), caste (Brahmins, Kayasthas, Vaidyas on the one side and the Shudras and other lower castes on the other), class (moneyed class and working class), and education (English educated and native speakers), and most of the histories of the period accepted these binary divisions to formulate their arguments about the implications of imperialism. Understandably, the native clerk or kerani was a problem. On the one hand, most of the keranis came from the upper caste and were educated in English. On the other hand, their poor wages mostly prevented them from leading the desired life of the bhadralok. Also, many of them had rigorous working hours, which made it impossible for them to lead a decent social life. Kaliprasanna Singha (1862/2008, p. 48) mentions how on a typical workday, a certain section of keranis had to be out on duty as early as seven o’ clock in the morning. So, it was difficult to locate the clerk or the kerani in a certain set milieu or essentialize him in a 37

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fixed, compartmentalized normativity. This is perhaps the reason why few social historians have attempted to write a comprehensive treatise on the keranis of colonial Bengal. One could make a curious case out of the lot of the keranis by reading their existence and/or location against the grain of Bhabha’s notion of colonial mimicry. Colonial mimicry, Bhabha (2004) says, ‘is the desire for a reformed, recognizable Other, as a subject of a difference that is almost the same, but not quite’ (p. 122). It would be interesting to read this notion of mimicry from the point of view of both the bhadralok population and the proletarian working class. The bhadralok may view the kerani as the ‘recognizable’ Other because of his English education and cultural similarity, whereas the working class may see in the kerani the ‘reformed’ Other, belonging almost to the same economic class or standards of living yet educated and cultured. This, in a curious way, both retraces Bhabha’s notion of colonial mimicry and breaks it down further. Thus, instead of remaining merely a sign of ‘double articulation’, mimicry assumes a multiple agential thrust, even more nuanced than the colonizerécolonized binary in which Bhabha locates its possible ambivalence. The interstitial location between mockery and mimicry, in the cusp of which Bhabha locates colonial subjecthood, is multiplied in the manifold nature of the locational ambivalence of the bhadralok but poor kerani. The entire narrative of the possible disruption of authority engendered through the ‘menace of mimicry’ is now played out in the colonized population, just before it can reach the white man. The social–cultural interaction between the bhadralok, the working class, and the kerani as a bhadralok therefore traces many partial presences, each qualifying and qualified in its turn by the other. The kerani, the ‘official’ mimic in many ways, is subject to various, contradictory, unconflatable, displacing gazes. This set of social–cultural relationships that have possibly talked back to each other in an inevitable but uncomfortable manner also become important signifiers of colonial discourse (and I use the word ‘colonial’ with its widest possible implications), taking into account ‘the discriminatory identities constructed across traditional cultural norms and classifications’ (Bhabha, 2004, p. 128). I have mentioned previously that in a newly founded city such as Calcutta, the idea of a wholesome community that was an intrinsic part of daily existence in older cities such as Murshidabad or Dhaka was absent. A city based on imperial business and administrative needs in its infancy, which was developed on the mores of a derivative modernity, could not have possibly fallen back on a random amalgam that constituted a wholesome community. However, as the city started to develop its own social and cultural life, the footmarks of daily existence must have led to the development of its own communitarian logic. I have mentioned but not elaborated on the formations of race, caste, class, and education in this chapter. All of these taken together and individually 38

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had their own logic of development and interpretation in the new community life of the city of Calcutta. And the kerani was a complex and intimate presence qualified by all of these. There is also the intricate debate between colonial modernity and indigenous premodernity that played a significant role in the construction and development of the figure of the kerani. All of these I shall take up for discussion in the next chapter, where I discuss the intimate details of the life and daily existence of the Calcutta kerani. There is also another important sociocultural construction that I have deliberately avoided in this chapter. Perhaps more complex than the structural intricacy of the idea of the bhadralok was the conception of the babu. The kerani was also, primarily, the quintessential example of a babu. Many social historians, writers, and journalists have elaborated on the figure of the babu in colonial Calcutta. It is imperative to grasp the exact implications of who a babu was if one is to comprehend the location of the kerani in the Calcutta of the nineteenth century. I intend to take up this discussion as well in the next chapter. In this chapter, I extracted the largely neglected figure of the kerani from the cultural history of Bengal through a discussion of the growth, development, downfall, and birth of the ‘city’ both in the tropes of premodern lived life and in the consequent advent and influence of colonial modernity. In the next chapter, I shall focus on the figure of the kerani in the ‘modern’ city—his daily living and an exploration of his body politic that glosses over multiple interstitial possibilities. I shall move on from the question ‘who or what is a kerani?’ to the implications of the ‘person’ or the ‘self’ of the kerani, who is an important and a pitiable presence both at the centre and on the periphery of the city-space.

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2 THE CLERK IN BRITISH INDIA A short survey of the life of the Calcutta kerani

Calcutta: the urban space and the public sphere The implications of imagining the clerk or the kerani in the social and cultural construction of the bhadralok are manifold. The question ‘who or what is a kerani?’ that I had asked and tried to answer in the previous chapter has historically been a question of culture. With the Company and the British Empire quickly following one another as rulers or administrators, they brought along with them a master narrative of culture which could not be ignored. Calcutta was a newly founded city and the capital of colonial India. Apparently, it had no past or history as a metropolitan space. The superstructure of colonial modernity could easily, therefore, be constructed on the basis that it could not refer back to a past richness, a storehouse of tradition, and culture that could be used to challenge or thwart or question the novelty of European modernity through a looking glass of indigeneity. To construct the immediate past as a lack or an absence and to situate a narrative of modernity and civilization in the lack has been a much-used imperial trope. As a new city, founded by the British, born out of a conglomeration of villages on the bank of the Ganges, inhabited, in its erstwhile state, mainly by fishers and weavers, Calcutta was an upstart city with little cultural capital. The sudden importance invested in it, as the capital of British India, was the reason for its hasty transformation into a metropolis. Calcutta was, within the span of a few years, inhabited by a motley population of people who hailed from different cultural, linguistic, and social backgrounds, who made different demands of the city and who formed what may ostensibly be called the cosmopolitan public of the city-space. Pradip Sinha has analysed this interesting development of the city-space of Calcutta since its inception and the complex nature of its public sphere. Sinha distinguishes between the English town and the native town and calls the English town a ‘fenced city’ (Sinha, 1967, p. 386). In the initial phase, the British wanted to create a ‘fenced city’ out of Calcutta, with a sharply demarcated distinction between the ‘white’ part of the city and the ‘black’ or native part. The medieval Indian city, however, did not adhere to one particular pattern of urbanism but was a curious mix of commercial, military, religious, and administrative towns. The two cities that I discussed in the 40

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previous chapter, Dhaka and Murshidabad, were an overlap of a market town with an administrative town. Although Calcutta was born in the hands of the British, in its initial stage, it resembled more of the physical characteristics of the traditional native town rather than that of the English town. To understand the growth and development of the public sphere in Calcutta, it is necessary to grasp this contrarian impulse that was an intrinsic part of the fabric of its development. On the one hand, there was the sharp demarcation between the native town and the English town that only met for business and administrative purposes. On the other hand, the native part of the city had all the characteristics of a traditional market town with a curious mix of people that included the original inhabitants, the ‘fishermen called Nikaris, Jelias and Pods’ (Sinha, 1967, p. 385), along with the Portuguese, the Armenians, the Danes, the Dutch, the native traders, the banians and dewans, the native administrative officials, the lawyers, the doctors, and the clerks. The only departure from the traditional type of city, writes Sinha, ‘lay very probably in the growing concentration of high caste people, who initially profited from commerce but who were, nevertheless, strangers to the commercial tradition’ (p. 385). Similar to the traditional type of city, however, Calcutta also had its quarters, in the initial stages, demarcated on the basis of professions, groups, or caste: Kumartuli for the potters, Colootola for the oil pressers, Cossaitola for the butchers, Ahirtola for the ahirs or the Bihari milk traders, Haripara for the sweepers, Dorjipara for the tailors, and many others. As Sinha says, ‘This caste-wise or profession-wise division of the town reflected the strong traditional pull that operated on the process of urbanization in the metropolis and left its stamp on the later stages of its growth’ (1967, p. 386). Veritably, therefore, there were two distinct forces that were pulling at the cartographic development of the city of Calcutta—the segregationist modernity of the colonizer’s idea of the European city and the traditionalism of the medieval model of the Indian city. Calcutta was a bit of both, pandering to the aspirational model of colonial modernity on the one hand and clutching at a more conservative model of a wholesome community on the other. With time, with increasing business and service opportunities, and with the expansion of the city, civic, and urban development, the proliferation of education Calcutta became a heterogeneous city-space where both the English town nature and the traditional market town nature imploded into one another. The city became a more contingent space with the curious cohabitation of the premodern with the modern in an unending debate between tradition and emancipation. The public sphere came to be dominated, gradually, by largely upper-caste groups of the Bengali community who emerged in this new space with a cultural capital hitherto unforeseen in the narrative of urbanism in India: With the political changes in mid-18th century, Calcutta became a metropolis and immediately underwent a significant physical expan41

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sion with the incorporation of the suburbs of Panchannagram or 55 villages. By that time Calcutta had become a city composed of heterogeneous elements . . . [and] the predominance of Bengali Hindus is an unmistakable feature of the history of this period. (Sinha, 1967, p. 387) These were the people who had moved into every part of the city, had considerable cultural capital, and belonged mostly to the middle rung of the bhadralok community that I discussed in the previous chapter. The question of education was uppermost in their minds. And they were the intellectual and educational mentors of the lower rung of the bhadralok community comprising mostly the keranis.

English education, the kerani, and the class question The use of English, both as a language of communication and as the medium of education, was a major focus of debate during the period. There was a gradual but swift shift of the official language from Persian to English, and due to the proliferation of English-speaking people across the service space of the city, both speaking and writing in the language had become an imperative both for employment and business purposes. The emergent middle class also had a keen desire to learn the language so that they could acquaint themselves with Western education and epistemological mores: The establishment of British rule in Bengal was accompanied by a bourgeois social revolution and the growth of a new middle class. This new middle class, predominantly Hindu by religion, showed great eagerness for learning the English language and assimilating the new ideas, thoughts and political traditions of the West. (Mukherjee, 1968, p. 15) R.C. Majumdar (1960) is of the opinion that ‘English education was introduced in this country, not by the British government, but in spite of them’ (p. 23). Even before the British government introduced the study of English in the country for the purpose of training a set of clerks, Majumdar insists, the missionaries, English philanthropists and reformers, and certain elite Bengalis had initiated the process of English education for the purpose of enlightenment and the dissemination of Western knowledge. The emergent and pressing need for establishing business relationships was also an important reason for learning the language of the colonizer. George Smith (1879) writes that the first Indians who learned the language were the banians and ‘advance’ merchants through whom the Company could reach and do business with the native weavers of muslins and calicoes (pp. 93–94). As this demand for interaction increased with the proliferation of business, there 42

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was the need for ‘interpreters, clerks, copyists and agents of a respectable class in Calcutta’ (Mukherjee, 1968, p. 16). I will return to the question of class and the claim of respectability later in this chapter. Before I return to the topical question of the kerani in Calcutta, I shall briefly allude to the complex problem of how English education affected the social fabric of the city during the initial years of colonial rule. I already laid out the demographic complexity of an emerging colonial metropolis that had neither the ‘fenced’ character of the English town nor the easy heterogeneity of the medieval native town but rather remained an ever-evolving metropolitan space—contingent and tentative. There was the hegemonic presence, in the native population of the city, of the upper-middle-class, upper-caste, educated Hindu male who possessed the necessary cultural capital to dominate the public sphere of the metropolis. The scope and trajectory of the project of educating the colonized was curiously commensurate with the implicit social stratification and the presence or the absence of agency. The complex dynamic of the spread of education in British India—the setting up of schools and institutions of higher learning, the spread of both vernacular and English education, the parallel running of tols and madrassas along with English education, the setting up of institutions such as The Calcutta School-Book Society (1817) and The Calcutta School Society (1818), the role of missionaries and individual enthusiasts in the spread of education among the native population, etcetera—is an elaborate and important subject beyond the scope of the present discussion. However, as Gauri Viswanathan (2004) has pointed out, there were too many forces with contrarian or differential agencies that were engaged in the space of English education for the native subject: the introduction of English represented an embattled response to historical and political pressures: to tensions between the East India Company and the English Parliament, between Parliament and missionaries, between the East India Company and the Indian elite classes. (p. 10) Notably, this debate on language and education, although widespread, did not involve the lower rung of the users of the language, namely the kerani. Viswanathan sees the native subject being reduced to a conceptual category, divested of any individualism, being forcefully fitted into a set epistemic structure for purposes of governance (2004, p. 11). Viswanathan reads the project of the introduction of English education in India as based on a feeble foundation and necessarily ‘an instrument of discipline and management’ (2004, p. 11). This is the tendency that I referred to as ‘managerial modernity’ later in this book. The other aspect of English education, the question of morality associated, according to the missionaries, with the 43

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reading of the Bible, was ‘promptly ignored’ (Viswanathan, 2004, p. 93) by the colonial administration. Of course, this question of English education for the native subject was intrinsically linked to the earlier attempts in the eighteenth century to appropriate Indian languages. Bernard Cohn (1996) argues that during the period between 1770 and 1785, dictionaries, treatises, class books, grammars, and translations of and from the languages of India led to the ‘establishment of discursive formation, defined an epistemological space, created a discourse (Orientalism), and had the effect of converting Indian forms of knowledge into European objects’ (p. 21). Cohn sees the project of translation as one of appropriation and subsuming of the erstwhile-epistemic structures of the colonial space and reframing them in a new epistemic pattern concomitant with the project of colonial modernity: Seen as a corpus, these texts signal the invasion of an epistemological space occupied by a great number of diverse Indian scholars, intellectuals, teachers, scribes, priests, lawyers, officials, merchants, and bankers, whose knowledge as well as they themselves were to be converted into instruments of colonial rule. They were now to become part of the army of babus, clerks, interpreters, sub-inspectors, munshis, pandits, qazis, vakils, schoolmasters, amins, sharistadars, tahsildars, deshmukhs, darogahs, and mamlatdars who, under the scrutiny and supervision of the white sahibs, ran the everyday affairs of the Raj. (p. 21) However, the homogeneity in the mode of the dissemination of English education that is possibly apparent in the arguments of Cohn and of Viswanathan needs to be further broken down. It will suffice to briefly talk about the intrinsic difference between the kinds of education that was being meted out to the natives based on certain class principles that were assumed by the colonial master. As early as 1792, Sir Charles Grant, member of parliament and, later, chairperson of the British East India Company, suggested the use of English as the principal medium of instruction for the Indian people and as the language of administration. A member of the Clapham Sect, Grant was for promoting a sound moral education to the native subjects who, in his opinion, were corrupted by the false religion of Hinduism and were in need of the light of Western education: Grant declared himself strongly in favour of the English language as the vehicle for imparting to the Hindus the knowledge of Western literature, arts, philosophy and religion. The knowledge of the English language would open to the Indian people a world of new ideas. (Mukherjee, 1968, p. 88) 44

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Earlier, in a memorial addressed to the Court of Directors and submitted to the governor-general-in-council, on June, 20, 1788, the chaplains of Calcutta, led by David Brown, championed the cause of the teaching of the English language to the natives. They argued that English education for the natives would be a great convenience for a benevolent administration, as this would enable the natives to articulate their problems more efficiently to the administration. Second, this would lead to a bond of camaraderie between the ruler and the ruled, and political benefits would accrue as a result. Finally, this would lead to their moral and religious improvement through a more efficient and easy dissemination of the Gospels (for a detailed discussion on this, see Hyde, 1901). Mukherjee (1968) writes, The inhabitants of Calcutta and the neighbourhood, the memorialists maintained, had already evinced a keen desire of learning English, and, were the means more easy, the same degree of keenness would be displayed by the people living in more distant places. (p. 86) Interestingly, however, a slightly different note was struck by Holt Mackenzie, secretary to the governor-general-in-council in the Territorial Department in 1823. In a note on public education in India, he emphasized the establishment of and support for colleges that were instrumental in instructing the educated and influential classes [who] should be the more immediate objects of the care of the Government than the support and the establishment of elementary schools for the masses. . . . Further, the natural course of things in all countries seems to be that knowledge introduced from abroad should descend from the higher, or educated classes and gradually spread through their example. (Mukherjee, 1968, p. 109) Evidently, therefore, there was a distinctly discernible class bias, at least in official rhetoric, in the dissemination of Western education and enlightenment to the natives. The ‘respectable class’ of interpreters, clerks, or copyists did not exactly fall within the rubric of ‘the educated and influential classes’. The second category negotiated the hallowed precepts of Western epistemology organically, trained, as they were, in religious, social, literary, and political ideas of the colonial master in elite institutions such as the Hindu College. The clerk or the copyist, purportedly hailing from a different social and cultural milieu, was trained in the basic skills of language and mathematics, mostly through rote learning, to be able to execute certain mechanical functions in the office at a low salary. Mukherjee (1968) argues 45

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that the new education had a distinctly divisive and alienating effect on contemporary Bengali society: Being confined to a narrow circle of middle class and urban people, the new education drove, in course of time, a wedge between the classes and the masses, and alienated the two completely from each other. . . . Education of the masses fell more and more into the background as years rolled by. (p. 121) Here Mukherjee is giving us a less complicated class dynamic by distinguishing between the ‘classes’ and the ‘masses’, but such a generalized binary does reveal the truth of the situation as such. To understand the location of the kerani within this general rubric, one needs to unravel the nuances that are stuck in the interstices. Borrowing a term from Eric Olin Wright, Tithi Bhattacharya (2005) places the kerani under the theoretical category of contradictory class location (p. 60). The urban gentry with cultural capital and a certain degree of affluence or who may be called the petty bourgeoisie became the kala-sahib (the black English) and could be placed in the ‘white, but not quite’ category, as elucidated by Homi Bhabha. Bhabha (2004) perceives the colonial subject as a mimic, ‘as a subject of a difference that is almost the same, but not quite’ (p. 122). It is through this class of imitators or mimics that a threat to colonial domination is also simultaneously anticipated: ‘the discourse of mimicry is constructed around an ambivalence: in order to be effective, mimicry must continually produce its slippage, its excess, its difference’ (Bhabha, 2004, p. 122). The disciplinary double that is produced through this project of colonial enlightenment, training its eyes on a specific class of the colonial subject, is according to Bhabha both a ‘resemblance and menace’ (p.  123), leading to the production of a native subject who believes that ‘to be Anglicized is emphatically not to be English’ (p. 125). This is a category of the gentry that has acquired a considerable degree of agency through the years, is equipped with a fair degree of Western epistemological training or knowledge, and responds to the colonial question through tropes of identity and nation building. They are the products of such institutions as the Hindu College and inhabit the creamy layer of the petty bourgeoisie, or what one might call the ‘new middle class’. Tithi Bhattacharya (2005) writes, The bottom rung of the petty bourgeoisie . . . became the kerani, while the top layer was recruited to the slightly higher rungs of the colonial state. In 1833, the office of deputy collector was created for Indians, in 1837 that of principal sudder, and in 1843, the deputy magistrate. A large section of the intelligentsia, Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, Shibchandra Deb, Vidyasagar, Bhudev 46

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Mukhopadhyay, Rangalal Bandopadhyay formed a part of this layer. It is this section of the original petty bourgeoisie that we shall term . . . the new middle class. (p. 60) Although the Hindu College played a crucial role in the making or emergence of this new middle class, and comes up frequently in the discussion on the impact and implications of colonial education in India, there was also a considerable presence, under this category, of people who did not go to the Hindu College but either were educated at private seminaries or reached the position through individual enterprise. The Hindu College, though, remained an iconic presence as a symbol of mobility, of a representative metaphor for native agency, and of a certain kind of petty bourgeois elitism that is crucial to our discussion on class practice. It is not that no alumnus of the Hindu College became a kerani but rather that those were exceptions, and for some of them, it may have been a question of whim or deliberate choice. An editorial article in the India Gazette newspaper of February 17, 1832, for example, deliberates on whether graduates from the Hindu College should ‘be content in the first place to act as Vakeels in the Mofussil Courts, as a preparatory step to the offices of Moonsiffs, Sudder Ameens, and Principal Sudder Ameens’ (Ghose, 1978, pp. 118–119) or whether they should be directly appointed as judges in the service of the government. Such deliberations clearly indicate that this category of the bhadralok was trained in a certain institution with the purpose of making them an important bureaucrat or official of the government. There was thus, clearly, a narrative of assimilation intrinsic to the project of English education in India. However, this assimilationist enterprise (if it may be read as such) was confined, ironically, to that category of the educated intelligentsia, who were also a threat to colonial governance and were often pivotal figures of radical reform. In Eric Wright’s category of contradictory class location, there was considerable heterogeneity implicit in the conception of a middle class, or a bhadralok class, of English-educated natives. English education was not, simply, a synonym for enlightenment. For the kerani, it was merely rote learning and instrumental in finding him a job in the various commercial or government offices. It could not, for him, be appended with prestige or agency and did not, in any manner, lead to a comfortable living standard or the accrual of any other benefits. ‘While part of the same class, deputy magistrates like Bankim, with their annual incomes ranging between £480–600 were of course quite different from the junior clerks in government or private offices who barely earned Rs.30, a month’ (p. 60), writes Bhattacharya (2005). Unpacking the various layers of interstitial location was not enough, therefore, to situate the kerani within a particular layer, to conclude definitively about the class identity of the kerani. 47

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What complicates the situation in several ways is the increasing presence of the labour class in the burgeoning city-space of Calcutta. Most of this labouring class came from Orissa, Bihar, and Uttar Pradesh. They barely spoke Bengali and had no English but were a significant presence in the metropolitan space of the city and its neighbouring areas, such as Howrah, the 24-Parganas, Titagarh, Bhatpara, and Hooghly. In contrast, in terms of the migration of the Bengali population from their villages to the city, the demography was distinctly different: ‘The largest single unit of migrants from the suburban districts was composed of high caste people who may be said to have belonged to the class of “bhadralok” or gentry’ (Sinha, 1967, p. 411). It is of some consequence that there was not much of a difference, in terms of wages or earning, between the higher category of the labour class and the lowest rung of the kerani. On the other hand, the almost-uneducated labour class was no match in cultural capital with the English-educated upper-caste kerani. Thus, on the one hand, the kerani was ‘the bhadralok, but not quite’ and, on the other hand, ‘the labouring class, but not quite’. It is perhaps due to such an intrinsic ambivalence marked in the body politic of the kerani that most historians of nineteenth-century Bengal have carefully stayed away from addressing the matter of the kerani comprehensively, even though they were an important pivot of colonial administration, and a lot is still being written about Bengal in the nineteenth century. It is possible that the kerani cannot be suitably placed in the Marxist ‘labour’ narrative. He is not exactly the blue-collar worker. But his economic and corporeal body belonged, in terms of the pay and the working conditions, to an implicit socioeconomic pattern that had more to do with the wage-earning than with the salary-earning class.

The kerani body and the stereotypes It is imperative, it seems to me, to try to address the important question of affect and the ‘body’ of the kerani, in terms of his curiously indefinable position both in class practice and otherwise, in the fabric of contemporary nineteenth-century society. The kerani was, and still is, an easy stereotype, a figure of lack, amenable to easy disdain, typically identifiable by his habits, dress code, state of health, condition of perpetual penury, and other such traits, none of which speaks flatteringly about him. Before I go into a detailed discussion on all these traits that characterize the Bengali kerani in nineteenth-century Calcutta, I briefly discuss the exact conditions of employment, the salary structure, and the prospects of his job that led to such easy stereotyping. In her monograph on colonial clerks, sociologist Dalia Chakrabarti (2005) has, in the chapter titled ‘Work’, given the readers a comprehensive picture of the working conditions and pay structure of the kerani. Other than the obvious and general conclusion that the salary of the kerani was always low, ‘almost as low as that of a wage labourer’ 48

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(Chakrabarti, 2005, p. 50), she points to the important difference between the salaries of keranis who worked in councils or senior merchants’ office and of those who worked in junior merchants’ office and the differences between factors and writers (the factors were generally better paid than the writers). She also points out that the salary of the European or the Eurasian clerk was considerably higher (at least three times more during the middle of the nineteenth century) than their native Bengali counterparts who worked as assistants or copyists in the government secretariat (Chakrabarti, 2005, pp. 52–53). Nor did the Report of the Salaries Commission 1885–86 bring much of a change in the pay structure of the kerani, and it was not instrumental in providing for a better life for the kerani. Chakrabarti notes that in the first decade of the twentieth century, ‘the lowest income a clerk was earning was Rs.30 and the highest Rs.100 per month’ (p. 56), which clearly enumerates the state of financial difficulty that all clerks would be forced to survive in (also see Appendices 2.1 to 3.1 in Chakrabarti’s book for a comprehensive picture of the salary, expenditure, and living standard of the native clerk during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries). A salaries commission was set up in March 1885 by the government of Bengal because the lieutenant-governor constantly received applications ‘from all classes of ministerial officers praying for an increase of emoluments . . . based on the ground that their salaries were fixed many years ago, when the cost of living was much less than it is now’, and the lieutenant-governor was of the opinion that it was ‘impossible to deny that this contention is in a great measure sound’ (Report of the Salaries Commission, 1885–1886, p. 1). The Commission was headed by John Beames (commissioner), with W.H. Grimley (collector) and Baboo Doorgagutty Banerjee (deputy collector and a native) as his assistants. Clearly, the Commission was quite aware of the ‘contradictory class location’ of the kerani that we have already discussed above, and mention this quite unambiguously at the beginning of the report: In the case of those classes of officers . . . who come immediately above ministerial officers in the official scale, Government has admitted an increase of emoluments to be necessary. These officers are (in the case of natives of this country) drawn from much the same social classes as their immediate superiors, the differences between them being due to accidents of education, wealth, and personal ability, rather than to accidents of birth. The social habits of both classes are, so far as the smaller means of the poorer members admit, similar; and causes which tend to increase the cost of living for the one class will operate with at least equal force for the other. (Report of the Salaries Commission, 1885–1886, pp. 1–2) A close reading of parts of the report may be crucial in the analysis of the complicated location of the kerani within the sociocultural rubric and will 49

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possibly help in understanding the iconographic representation of the kerani as the figure of lack, ridicule, or contempt in most of his representative avatars. The almost hegemonic location of the educated, upper-caste Hindu male in native society is positioned in an ambivalence in the figure of the kerani with his low pay and inability to participate either in the narrative of modernist emancipation or in premodern excess thrust unceremoniously into the grind of making ends meet and yet keeping up the façade of gentility. The consuming compulsion of chakri or the job itself defined not only his work life but also his social, cultural, and family lives. The report of the commission clearly enumerates the heads under which the ministerial staff would spend their salaries: first, he would purchase food. It also mentions that the case of Calcutta was different from other districts and towns, as it was the capital city, and hence more expensive. Second, he would spend on the elaborate and expensive event of marriage in the immediate family or the extended family. The report takes into account that some of the keranis came from kulin families or married their daughters off into such families and that would entail more expenditure in dowries and other gifts. It also notes that the kulin bridegroom was becoming less coveted than the groom with more education and academic honours and the one with more chances of finding a respectable job or vocation. ‘In either case,’ the report says, ‘the cost of getting a daughter married is very heavy, and at times even ruinous, to men of limited means, such as are most of the ministerial officers’ (Report of the Salaries Commission, 1885–1886, p. 199). Third, he would spend his money on a significant number of religious ceremonies in a Hindu household around the year. This might sometimes include the shradh ceremony or the last rites of a parent, and the report says, ‘For a gentleman of good position Rs. 5000 would not be thought an unusually large sum to spend on the initial shradh of a father’ (Report of the Salaries Commission, 1885–1886, p. 199). There were also other rituals, such as the annaprasana (the child of the family eating the first morsel of rice) or the upanayana (the sacrificial thread ceremony for the male child of a Brahmin family) that involved considerable expense. The regular yearly expenses during the pujas (particularly the Durga puja) and other religious ceremonies that involved the exchange of gifts were also a cause of some expense. The report of the commission expresses its concern quite unambiguously about the inability of the ministerial officer to incur such expenses: The very uncertainty and irregularity with which occasions for making such presents come round renders them peculiarly burdensome to clerks who are struggling to make both ends meet on an income already barely sufficient to provide them with the necessaries of life. . . . Men with moderate means—as most of the ministerial officers are—may follow the example of the wise man and refrain from giving friendly or pleasure parties; but on the occasion of reli50

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gious or social ceremonies, such as marriages, shradhs, & c., they cannot avoid feasting their relatives in some style, no matter what the cost may be. (Report of the Salaries Commission, 1885–1886, p. 201) Fourth, from the social, historical, and literary documents of the time, as also from this report of the Salaries Commission, it may be gathered that the average middle-class household of a native of Calcutta would generally have some form of household help. This would include, varying in numbers and the cost of employment, a cook, a man-servant and a maid-servant at the very least. The report specifically provides the table for such expenses of a head clerk of a suburban district, enumerating clearly how the household employs a cook, a darwan, a man-servant, a boy-servant and two maid-servants, and it considers this to be ‘the usual establishment for men of his rank in life’ (p. 201). Fancy as this may appear, the total cost of such elaborate employment would incur a cost of around 30 rupees a month. More often than not, a native head clerk in government or private service would draw a meagre salary of around 100 rupees a month or so, and this after around 20 years of service or more. Many keranis would become head clerks only towards the end of their careers and only a few years before their retirement. Thus, most kerani households could ill-afford a retinue of servants and darwans, with most of the household chores shared between the wife and the daughters of the family. Fifth, the report considers the cost of conveyance for the kerani to travel to and from the office. While some keranis would find cheap accommodation in Calcutta where they lived bachelor lives in unhealthy conditions while the family stayed back in the village or the native town, others would find better accommodation in the suburbs, along the lines of the railroad or the river route, where they could rent spacious houses and live with the family. They would travel to the Howrah or the Sealdah railway station by train or travel to one of the ghats in Calcutta by steamer or boat and either walk to the office or take a horse tram (introduced in 1873), a tramcar (run on steam engine at first and discontinued in 1882; electricity came to Calcutta in 1899, and consequently, the electric tram was introduced in 1902), or a carriage (also called a keranchi) to reach the workplace. There are apocryphal anecdotes about keranis haggling about the fare with the carriage drivers and being treated with scant respect due to their perpetual pecuniary difficulties (see Dalia Chakrabarti, pp. 88–89). Suggesting that the cost of conveyance was only a miniscule part of their expenditure, the report says, Even where hackney carriages are used, it is customary for five, six, or more clerks to share one carriage between them, and by so doing, and by beating the coachman down to the lowest fare, the cost to each individual becomes very trifling. (Report of the Salaries Commission, 1885–1886, p. 205) 51

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Also, travel by rail not being too expensive, and discounting the possibility of long journeys by rail of the keranis, the report does not think that the cost of conveyance was ‘a serious addition to the cost of living’ (p. 205). Sixth, the report of the Commission makes an interesting observation regarding the rent of houses chosen by the keranis for habitation. Most junior or middle-rung clerks who chose to stay alone in Calcutta would stay in and around the native town in messes or boarding houses that had scant regard for hygiene or other matters of health. Diseases were rampant, and the kerani was thus a figure who was generically looked upon as suffering from dyspepsia, cough, or some such other chronic illness. While the report admits that the rent of houses in Calcutta were much higher than in other parts of the country, or the suburbs where many of the keranis lived, it seems ambivalent, and therefore non-committal about the need for an increase of housing allowance for the kerani. The reason the report provides is singularly interesting: In the matter of house accommodation . . . the desire for greater comfort and an increased attention to sanitary matters has led to ministerial officers taking larger and more expensive houses than they would have required years ago. This is one of those points in which it is rather taste or fashion than absolute necessity that has led to an increase in the cost of living of late years. (Report of the Salaries Commission, 1885–1886, p. 205) It is not difficult to imagine from the salary structure of the kerani, over the years, that they would certainly not be able to afford living in luxury or even in a state of relative financial ease at any point of time during their working lives. Under no circumstances would a kerani, living off his salary, be able to afford the luxury of a large house and its associated frills, which were however not uncommon in the native Calcutta babu of the time. However, it is perhaps unfair to fault them on the count that they wanted better sanitary conditions in the household that would lead to a healthier life for the keranis and their family. It would be evident from the medical records of the time, that ‘taste or fashion’ may not have been the consideration of the kerani if he wanted to live in a space that had better sanitation infrastructure and therefore a healthier and cleaner environment. The kerani was perhaps conceived, intrinsically, in the mind of the employer, and by and large in the society, as an appendage, a hanger-on to the fringes of the society of the gentry, with no right whatsoever to any form of civilized living. The modern machine of the ‘office’ was run by the labour of this native automaton, educated mechanically for the purposes of rough use, to be abandoned immediately from any mechanism of modernity once his time in the office had been spent. Seventh, the enfeebled constitution of the native Calcutta clerk was also discussed in the report. Curiously, the same report that berated the kerani in the previous paragraph for demanding better sanitation or modern 52

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living conditions brings forward the trope of progress and modernity of the European sciences which, it claims, has been instrumental in the emancipation of the colonial subject: ‘With the progress of knowledge and science, the old system of native medicine with its charms, incantations, and other superstitions is fast dying out, and resort is freely had to the European method of treatment’ (Report of the Salaries Commission, 1885–1886, p. 205). This shift in preference for a new model of treatment, the report says, has led to a considerable increase in the expenditure for treatment. The cost of treatment, according to this claim, is at least four times the previous methods. A close reading of this part of the report on changing medical practice will highlight some interesting facets of colonial modernity and its effects on the indigenous population, whose implications the report itself was perhaps unaware of. The report admits that the cost of treatment has increased manifold due to the employment of European methods. This has also led to the democratization of the fee structure for such treatments. Earlier, with the native practitioners such as the kabiraj or the hekim, the fee structure of the doctor was dependent on the economic capability of the patient concerned. A premodern communitarian understanding of the idea of a wholesome community was instrumental in determining the cost of treatment for the economic category of the patient. The treatment may not have been modern and the cure for disease not quick or efficient, but the solace of treatment for a minimal fee was available to those who could ill-afford its cost. Also, it may not be conclusively said that the indigenous methods of treatment were solely dependent on ‘incantations’ and ‘superstitions’ and that they did not have curative quality. However, now that the Western model of medical practice was in vogue, ‘[E]ven kabirajes now-adays charge more than they used to, in imitation of their European rivals’ (Report of the Salaries Commission, 1885–86, p. 206). The report candidly admits that three visits from an ordinary assistant surgeon would swallow half the monthly salary of the kerani. It is of the opinion that the general deterioration of health of the kerani could be ascribed to malarial fever, a weak constitution due to insufficient food, mental and physical exertion, and other such factors. Interestingly, the writers of the report resort to an evolutionary logic to explain this weakness of constitution of the Bengali kerani. While admitting that ‘[I]t would carry us far beyond the limits of our inquiry’ (Report of the Salaries Commission, 1885–1886, p. 206), the report speculates on whether the contemporary Bengali man was less robust than their previous generations or whether the advent of European modernity had led to a greater and more systematic attentiveness to issues of health and disease. Before such enlightenment as has arrived with the English and the fruits of colonialism, [I]n many parts of the country . . . if a man fell ill he was left to die or recover as best as he might; no medical aid was sought for. At 53

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most some incantations were made by the females of his family, and in the wilder parts of the country this state of things still prevails; while in more civilised parts the doctor is called in at once. (Report of the Salaries Commission, 1885–1886, p. 206) The curious reader will read this part of the report along with the depiction of the death of the junior clerk in Kerani Puran (1886). The European doctor, after multiple frantic calls, arrives late to treat the poor kerani and berates the family for not having called him earlier. The author writes: ‘O doctor! Your reprimand is unnecessary. Can a poor man easily call for you? Or reach you easily even if he does?’ (Kerani Puran, 1886, p. 26). Eventually, after suffering for 11 days, all resources spent, the kerani dies of fever. Eighth, on the question of education, the report says that the upper and middle classes have made ‘immense and rapid progress’ (Report of the Salaries Commission, 1886, p. 206) in the preceding few years. I referred to the question of education in much detail towards the beginning of this chapter. Although the authors of the report admit that the ministerial officers ‘must perforce educate their sons, and educate them as highly as they can’ (Report of the Salaries Commission, 1886, p. 206) and that such an expenditure may not be grudged, they express their concern that this kind of spending by the kerani ‘swallows up an inconveniently large portion of the scanty income of men like the ministerial officers’ (Report of the Salaries Commission, 1886, p. 206). The fact that the progress of education has also led to a considerable demand for female education and that a section of the keranis ‘is often almost compelled to give his daughters some sort of education’ (Report of the Salaries Commission, 1885–1886, p. 207) is also an additional expense for these men on ‘scanty income’. In conclusion, the Report of the Salaries Commission, 1885–86 finds justifiable reasons for an increase in the salary of the ministerial officers or the kerani because the price of most things have become dearer than the last time their salaries were considered, about a couple of decades earlier. This grudging admission is, however, appended by a piece of advice and a veiled threat, which need to be quoted at length: It might perhaps be argued that though ministerial officers are justified in asking for an increase of salary on the ground that the necessaries of life are now dearer than before, they are not justified in basing such a request on the ground that they live more comfortably and expensively than formerly. The homely proverb of cutting one’s coat according to one’s cloth might with justice be applied to them and they might be told that the number of young men qualified by education for the public service is now so great that Government would have no difficulty in obtaining any number of

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clerks at even lower salaries than are now paid. We might point to the fact that whereas a man holding a B.A. degree of the Calcutta University could command a salary of Rs.100 a month, or even more, twenty-five years ago, one sees in the present day holders of the B.A., and even of the M.A. degree eagerly competing for posts of Rs.20 and Rs.30. (Report of the Salaries Commission, 1885–1886, p. 208) Whereas ‘comfortably’ and ‘expensively’ are terms of a subjective and relative nature, the language of the report leaves the reader with little doubt about the manner of disrespect and condescension with which the native kerani was viewed both by his employer and by society at large. The figure of lack that was the kerani was open to ridicule and disdain, and once a cog in the hole, the kerani had little other means to look for better job prospects. This part of the argument will be dealt with in an elaborate manner in the chapter on ‘clerk manuals’. The report on the one hand admits that most of these keranis are ‘encumbered with debt, distressed and discontented’ (Report of the Salaries Commission, 1885–1886, p. 208) and on the other hand enumerates the other sources of income that the kerani earned through dishonest means and underhanded practices, private tuitions, retail shops under fake names, and more. This is an insidious way of nay-saying, unbecoming of either an employer or a benefactor. Given that there was little right of dissent, the report had every reason to be kinder and more considerate in depicting the kerani. On the contrary, a report that was by all means meant to be benevolent, written as it was by the enlightened colonial master, becomes a document of sarcasm and ridicule, an unkind critique of the predicament of the kerani: ‘They do their work in a half-hearted way, and suffer from the overwork which they impose upon themselves to make both ends meet’ (Report of the Salaries Commission, 1885–1886, p. 208). It is evident from the foregoing discussion that the figure of the kerani emerges as an aberrant, interstitial presence of an English-speaking yet incidental and dispensable nobody who hangs on the fringes of the native middle-class society as an appendage of sorts. This will lead then to the important questions of class and location once more. I intend to locate this debate in another interesting social formation that was in currency during the period—that of the babu. I try to trace, briefly, the etymology of this social formation and see how or whether the kerani may be a fit into this peculiarly varied rubric and, if that helps, in any specific manner, to assign a set class identity to the kerani. Before one can begin to ascertain whether the kerani fits in the babu mould, it is perhaps necessary to try to define the category of the babu. This attempt towards a definition of the babu, as will be seen, not only constitutes a cultural paradox but also situates the class question in another structural confusion, different from, but quite close to,

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the confusion regarding the definition and implications of the category of the bhadralok.

The babu and the kerani Who, then, is the babu? There have been social, historical, cultural, and literary attempts to define the babu, but no one definition seems to be an adequate description of the category. It may be strategically easier to use as an opening gambit, an envelope of definitions that would constitute two apparent extremities: a general definition of the babu by the ‘enlightened’ native intellectual and a specific dictionary definition of the babu by the colonial master. It is from this range of definitions that I intend to find the most succinct description of the babu and determine whether and how the kerani fits into the definition. Thus, in the iconic and eponymous essay ‘Babu’, Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay defines the babu. He says that the word ‘babu’ will have multiple meanings: for the English, babu would mean the clerk; for the poor, babu would stand for the wealthy; for the servant, babu would mean the master; and there will be a separate set of people whose only purpose in life would be to lead the life of a babu (Chattopadhyay, 1959, pp. 10–12). The last would be a set of people who would waste their lives away in idle hedonism and crude pleasures of the body. It is from the practices of these people that the Bengali word ‘babuani’ derives, and it is supposed to represent a style of living that is idle, irresponsible, and extravagant. On the other end of this heterogeneous, general, and loose definition of the babu is the one in the Hobson-Jobson that defines the babu as simply a ‘native clerk, who writes English’ (Yule, Burnell, & Crooke, 1903, p. 44). That is to say, an easy answer to the question, with both ends of the spectrum in agreement, would be to define the babu to generally mean a clerk or kerani. From the point of view of cultural history, however, this would be a narrow and inadequate definition of the babu, unable to take into consideration the nuanced understanding of the term that Bankimchandra has hinted at in his definition. Later on in the essay, Bankimchandra complicates matters by investing certain disparate professional identities and/or religious credos to the babu: Like Vishnu, they [the babus] too have ten avatars—as the kerani, the master [meaning the schoolmaster], the Brahmo, the mutsuddi [meaning agent/banian], the doctor, the lawyer, the hakim [otherwise called the deputy magistrate], the zamindar, the journalist and the idler. (Chattopadhyay, 1959, p. 11) Thus, obviously, in the cultural milieu of the native population, the babu naturally had a wider connotation. Generally speaking, any gentleman 56

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could be referred to as a babu. There was a certain class identity and cultural capital associated with this gentleman who was referred to as the babu. He was educated, could generally make ends meet, and belonged to the respectable section of the society. Most of them would speak English, but this was not imperative for one to be referred to as a babu. The babu would be decently dressed, well spoken, an intellectual in his own right and could be assumed to have been exposed to Western enlightenment. It may be easy to ascertain a specific class identity to the babu, make him a gentleman, and situate him in a certain middle classness for the ease of categorization. However, whereas the bhadralok could still be roughly imbricated within a liquid three-tier structure, the associations of heterogeneity would render the category of the babu resistant to such a cleanly demarcated structural logic. In much of the literature on babus, however, there is either a thin line of division or none made between the babu and the bhadralok. In his monograph on the babus, Narasingha Sil (2017) speaks of the various nature of the template of the babu: The extant literature on the babu reveals a merry mélange of various forms of this denizen of Calcutta who could be conveniently described by the umbrella term bhadralok, that is, a gentleman of various occupational and age groups from different castes, and pursuing varying life styles: merchant, parvenu, comprador, clerk, physician, professor, teacher, lawyer, city-slicker, or the rich bon vivant. (p. 4) Later on, Sil refers to the oft-quoted volume on Calcutta by Bhabanicharan Bandopadhyay, where the author makes a distinction in the bhadralok category between the dhanadhya (or rich) and the madhyabitta (or the middling sort) and includes ‘another category of babus who were poor but bhadralok—the lower grade clerks in agency houses or bajarsarkars (domestic hands who shopped daily victuals for their employer’s family) in private houses’ (p. 5). In a different context, while discussing the babus of the latter half of the nineteenth century, Nikhil Sarkar (writing under the pseudonym Sreepantho) also erases the distinction between the babu and the bhadralok. He writes, in gentle humour, that after a series of debates where no one agrees with each other, factions are formed and dismantled, where religion, social justice, and the self are brought under severe scrutiny, there comes the moment of realization that ‘everyone is a babu. Everyone is a bhadralok. Hindu bhadralok. All sutured by the ties of society. More or less by similar class interests as well’ (Sreepantho, 2012, p. 309). Rudyard Kipling speaks quite derogatorily about the Bengali babu, which is evident from such stories as ‘The Head of the District’ or such characters as Girish Chunder De in ‘The 57

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Giridih Coal Fields’. However, he admits that the Bengali babu makes a fine accountant of himself: The Babus make beautiful accountants, and if we could only see it, a merciful Providence has made the Babu for figures and detail. Without him on the Bengal side, the dividends of any company would be eaten up by the expenses of English or country-bred clerks. The babu is a great man, and, to respect him, you must see five scores or so of him in a room of hundred yards long bending over ledgers, ledgers, and yet more ledgers—silent as the Sphinx and busy as a bee. He is the lubricant of the great machinery of the Company whose ways and works cannot be dealt with a single scrawl. (Kipling, 1949, p. 224) Kipling raises a few important issues in this excerpt. On the question of the English clerks, I shall deliberate in the next chapter. In spite of his apparent reservations about the ‘Bengali babu’, he admits to the efficiency of the Bengali kerani and considers him to be a crucial pivot of the imperial machinery and the Company. However, he makes a striking observation about the kerani’s workspace, a yard of space to each of them, poring over ledgers. There is a possible distinction between the babu and the bhadralok once again, and I examine how the figure of the kerani features in both or either of these. Sreepantho, in his book Kolkata, has attempted a certain categorization of the babus. He begins with a hyperbolic caveat that the ten avatars of the babu that Bankimchandra had written of had within the span of a few decades multiplied into a hundred avatars (Sreepantho, 2012, p. 295). When we first meet the babu, Sreepantho writes, he goes for bathing in the Ganges with a lot of fanfare, spends lakhs of rupees for the wedding ceremony of his pet cat, throws about wads of cash at poetry readings, and so on (Sreepantho, 2012, p. 295). The babu has a well-oiled and supple skin texture and a misshapen physique that reeks of a sensual life well lived. This upper-caste, upper-class, cash-rich babu has a smattering of English, but that does not prevent his use of such skills in his living room. These babus are extravagant, as they also crave fame. Thus, they spend inordinate amounts of money on weddings and funerals, use cash to light their cigars, or organize festivals and pujas that become part of apocrypha. In Bengali colloquial parlance, this category would be called the phulbabu or the babu with the flower (reminding one of the archetypal figure of the impeccably dressed, rich babu, with betel juice drooling from his lips and a flower in his hand) whose only serious engagement is to discover newer ways of spending his money, to drink, to womanize, to indulge in newer forms of entertainment, and to gloat in wealth. Sreepantho (2012) also notes the rise of the newer form or kind of the babu in the latter half of the nineteenth century with the rise of the middle classes, the rise and popularity of the printing press, and 58

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the rapid growth of journalism (pp. 306–307). These babus, mostly English educated and equipped with Western, enlightened education would form various associations, debate at length on social issues, write long articles (in either English or Bangla or both) on social and political issues, express strong views on the pros and cons of nationalism and thus form a new ‘conscious’ middle-class category of the babu. Interestingly, Sreepantho (2012) directly refers to the figure of the kerani as another category of the babu, although he does not proceed to a comprehensive discussion on the subject. The abiding rhetoric of this brief discussion is satire: ‘From Rajnarayan Basu or Shivnath Shastri to the British ‘Punch’ magazine, everyone has ridiculed the English skills of the kerani-babu. So, we shall not deliberate much on the subject’ (Sreepantho, 2012, p. 303). Quoting Alberigh Mackay, the author further notes that the inside of a kerani-babu resembles a battlefield after a fight. Innumerable English words, phrases, proverbs, and maxims are scattered all over the place like dead bodies. The singular wish of the kerani is to unburden himself of this huge load of words. He is least concerned about the order in which they come out of his system (Sreepantho, 2012, p. 303). The kerani is thus an absent presence in this complex network of cultural, social, or class-based identity in imperial Calcutta. In some senses, he is both the babu and the bhadralok. But most of the mentions of the kerani in either or both of these constructs are laced with ridicule, satire, or, at its best, pathos. Apparently, though, there may not have been any peculiar reason for such ridicule in either of the class identities that the kerani might assume, in terms of imperial policies and the reception of the native by the colonist. As Tithi Bhattacharya (2005) writes, The British . . . did not distinguish between the kerani and the high bhadralok when it came to defending Imperial privileges. Following the Ilbert Bill, racism had become much more rampant and open in the social life of Calcutta. Incidents of humiliating treatment towards Indians irrespective of caste or class were becoming more frequent. To the rulers, the babu’s primary identity was his nationality, class identities came later and in more intimate dealings. Thus, the same treatment was meted out to keranis and the new middle class alike. (p. 102) However, Bhattacharya (2005) also notes that because the imperial master was dealing majorly with the kerani rather than the middle-class babu on a regular basis, ‘the term “babu” when used in a derogatory sense by the British usually insinuated a kerani’ (p. 103). In cultural parlance, therefore, it may be that the kerani has been more closely associated with the category of the babu rather than the bhadralok. Etymologically, though, the term ‘babu’ would have multiple and varied manifestations, the head clerk of an office would generally be called the borobabu, thus rendering a generic validity to the 59

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association between the kerani and the babu. Also, the social connotations of the term babu had acquired more fluidity with passing time than had the term ‘bhadralok’. The rich and wastrel babu of eighteenth-century Calcutta had gradually given way to the enlightened and nationalist babu of the nineteenth century, who in turn passed on the sobriquet to the kerani. The fluidity of the various connotations still remains in the Bengali imagination, and the kerani or a low-ranking officer still remains the babu, as opposed to the highranking officer or the bureaucrat, who is still referred to as the saheb (with its associations of the white master class). The bhadralok category, on the other hand, has been less fluid in its connotations, maintaining a claim to a certain degree of education and cultural capital, a marker of class identity, and in a more nuanced and complicated manner sometimes a marker of caste identity.

Social practices, cultural mores: the kerani as a figure of lack Nevertheless, the kerani remains the figure of lack, a paradoxical absent presence on the fringes of genteel society. Constrained in his nine-to-five job, with little or no prospect of improvement, low pay, and almost nonexistent social esteem, he was nearer in kin to the labouring class in social and economic status. There were multiple psycho-corporeal implications of such economic deprivation of a certain category of the native population that was educated and upper caste in a deeply casteist society and that would usually be part of native gentry in a precolonial social situation. The effects of colonial modernity were more immediately felt in the capital city of Calcutta, an upstart and burgeoning city-space that rapidly deconstructed the social and cultural mores of a traditional society. With the usual associations of a wholesome community relegated mostly to a premodern world view and regarded with empiricist scepticism, the new inhabitant of an equally new city-space had to negotiate a curiously fraught psycho-cartographic register where agencies of earlier social practice had to be quickly unlearned. Thus, large populations of the keranis, living in messes in and around the city-space, were forced to unlearn a variety of almost intrinsic social and cultural practices that had set traditional implications for both the body and the mind. More often than not, the messes were cosmopolitan in nature with men from different castes, and often different religions, coexisting in a neutral or democratized physical space. Whereas a modern emancipatory narrative would endorse such urban cosmopolitanism, many keranis hailing from upper-caste Hindu households struggled to negotiate such unforeseen transgressions. Good or bad, it was a difficult and a serious violation of the religio-moral register of belief and practice. The body that suffered at the workplace due to a punishing work schedule, the rigour of clock time, and an alien space that was the office was equally ill at ease in the space of rest, thus rendering the kerani morally vulnerable in his indigenous community. 60

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The kerani was traditionally known to have many children (the Bengali phrase chhaposha kerani, meaning ‘the clerk who breeds children’, is still used derogatorily for the kerani who does not earn enough to buy a good life for his family), and thus, ‘home’ became a contentious space with little balance between demand and supply. The wife of the kerani is seen in traditional literature as either a pitiable figure who quietly suffers the humiliation of penury (as in Kerani Puran) or the dissatisfied wife demanding a better life and better material conditions for living, goading the husband on to earn more, even if through illicit means. Sumit Sarkar discusses this aspect of the kerani’s life in some detail and elicits from the kerani’s life the reason for the nineteenth-century Hindu saint Sri Ramakrishna’s sympathy towards this breed of men. The higher or more successful strata of the Calcutta middle class ‘remained more or less immune from the spell of Dakshineswar’ (Sarkar, 1998, p. 304), and professionals such as lawyers, journalists, teachers, and writers seldom feature in the Kathamrita. The people who visited Sri Ramakrishna the most were ‘struggling clerks or young men who might soon have to start looking for clerical posts’ (Sarkar, 1998, p.  304). The kerani’s life trapped in the bind between kamini (the woman) and kanchan (gold or money) was a recurring theme in the Ramakrishna discourse: The one specifically urban life-situation which becomes really vivid in Ramakrishna’s discourse is the life of the clerk (kerani): ‘What a mess! A salary of twenty rupees—three children—no money to feed them properly; the roof leaks, no money to repair it; impossible to buy new books for the son, to give him the sacred thread; have to beg eight annas from one, for annas from another!’ Other passages graphically describe the unemployed kerani desperately running around for another job, as well as the travails of time-bound office work. (Sarkar, 1997/2005, p. 305) Moreover, there were other snares of city living that the kerani could ill-afford. Living away from the family and the wife and his exposure to an almost forcibly imposed state of freedom led many keranis to look for sexual adventures. Exposure to cheap and titillating battala literature and a convoluted sense of sexuality that emerged from the sight of fair-skinned liberal Western women occasionally on the streets of Calcutta created an imaginative space of forbidden pleasure in the mind of the otherwise-timid and unadventurous kerani. This and ‘persistent humiliations in the hands of wives because of low standard of living and lack of social esteem provided a certain urge to visit prostitutes as a mark of deviant rebellion’ (Chakrabarti, 2005, p. 103). Chakrabarti (2005) also mentions how the kerani would dress up fashionably on Saturday evenings and spend handsomely on prostitutes, to be left destitute for the rest of the month: ‘Wellgroomed hair .  .  . face made up with Hezeline snow, fashionable dark 61

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glasses . . . panjabi . . . and fine dhuti as their attire, a wrist watch, rings on fingers, fashionable shoes . . . and silver-top [walking] sticks’ (p. 104). Such refashioning of the self was, however, not necessarily commensurate with his buying power. The kerani was known to be a haggler and would occasionally be rejected by the prostitute, who ridiculed his inability to ‘keep’ her, due to his low salary, sometimes even lower than what the prostitute would be able to make. In a contemporary satire by Durgadas Dey, the prostitutes sing a song summarily rejecting the kerani as a client: ‘Macchimara keranir maag hobo na lo hobo na./ Sajieguchiye toyajete rakhte parbena lo parbena. . . . Thirty rupees salary-te mag poshan cholena go cholena./ Kanmola khay keranite heshe bnachina lo bnachina.’ [This could be roughly translated as the prostitute declaring that she does not want to be ‘kept’ by a kerani who would not be able to keep her in luxury. It is not befitting for a kerani who earns 30 rupees a month to ‘keep’ a prostitute] (Biswas & Acharya, 2013, p. 309). In conclusion, therefore, it may be iterated once more that out of the various forms of colonial modernity that emerged in an ever-evolving city-space of Calcutta, the native kerani was a stereotypical presence symbolizing the figure of lack symptomatic in many ways of native character. The kerani figure provided the imperialist master narrative with a template for the mimic who could be controlled, incarcerated, stereotyped, and ridiculed through his failure to assimilate the project of European modernity. As a figure of ridicule for both the master and the lowliest of the native population, the kerani, both as a professional and in society, becomes a continuous counternarrative whose very presence questions the validity of every discursive formation. The kerani was an important administrative part of the imperial machinery. He was also, in terms of numbers, an important presence in the native social milieu. The kerani spoke English and had a salary; he was mostly an influential upper-caste member of the native community. Yet the agency of the kerani has always been suspect: his class identity ambiguous, his social location on the fringes, and his culture capital dispensable. It is an imperative, therefore, to try to read this absent presence of the kerani along the evolution of European modernity in Calcutta and read his corporeal presence as a marker of ‘failure’ for both the colonial and the native societies to come to terms with each other. The proliferation of satires and farces about the kerani may be read as a metaphor of unease, expressions of the impossibility of assimilating an aberrant form of modernity. Both the imperial master and the native populace could use him as an example of lack that metonymically implied the ‘other’, thereby unconsciously investing in him an agency that the kerani could (ab)use counter-discursively. The question then is whether the stereotype of the kerani in colonial Calcutta was unique or whether the writers and factors who came to India from Britain or the clerks who worked in London offices could be regarded in the same vein? I intend to discuss this in the next chapters. 62

3 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE LONDON CLERK Necessary perspectives

It has perhaps not eluded the discerning reader that I have been attempting in the most recent two chapters to locate the kerani in a set epistemic structure or in the locus of certain specific social formations, such as the bhadralok or the babu. I have laid out multiple reasons why the kerani defies a perfect fit in either, or for that matter, into any other form of social construction that would be able to unambiguously define his social location. This failure to ascertain an exact social space for the kerani is, I argue, crucial in understanding the peculiarity of his almost aporetic presence in his milieu. The absent presence of the kerani is marked by a historical contingency that demands a complex and systemically specific reading of the imperial social space, which is by its very nature complicated by many ambiguities that do not render themselves to easy definitions. First, the kerani inhabited a relatively new milieu of the salaried, English-educated class of men who had a fixed office routine and a set pattern of employment; second, in most cases, his caste character gave him a social agency that was not replicated in the office space (or outside, due to their condition of living); third, he was part of an evolutionary logic that was in a state of confused flux, torn between topical debates on tradition versus modernity; fourth, he inhabited a work space that was replicated from a more evolved idea of the office and the worker in the West but complicated due to imperial interests; fifth, there was a clearly marked-out master–slave narrative in a colonial space, incommensurate with notions of rights and obligations. These are some of the more important concerns that have created this sense of unease about the sociocultural location of the kerani. This is perhaps the reason why most historians of modernity in India have carefully avoided addressing in detail the subject of the kerani in Bengal (or India) during imperial rule. In this chapter, I intend to talk about the condition of the clerk in London during a more or less identical period of time, and I try to understand how or whether the nature of the debate on the representation of clerks shifts. I want to read the representation of the British clerk as symptomatic of an evolving modernity in Europe, and I explore the possibility of reading its replication in the colonial space against the grain. The questions that 63

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I want to take up for my argument will thus link, synchronically, a work space in the master narrative of European modernity and its replication (or the possibilities of commensurability) in the logic of colonial modernity. The image of the clerk working in his office is iconic in its representative value: drudgery, penury, boredom. But are we simplifying the debate on representation through this almost universal image? Is there a possibility of an indeterminate paradigm shift if we shift locations? Also, would there be a considerable shift in the nature of such comparison if one were to place the debate out of the epistemic and into the ontic? If it is possible to find answers to all these questions, it may be easier to define a space for the kerani in the colonial sociocultural milieu or at least problematize the almost simplistic representative iconography that, in one fell swoop, sweeps many complicated questions under the rug.

An important debate Although it may gradually be evident that the question of representation of the kerani or the native clerk turns out to be a more nuanced debate than that of the clerk in London, it must not, however, be assumed that the latter question is a simple one. As I have mentioned before, academic writing on the kerani in nineteenth-century Bengal is few and far between, and there are reasons for it. However, there is no dearth of scholarly tracts on the clerk in London during the same time period. Two immediate reasons may be easily assigned to such an event: first, it is possible to trace a consistent pattern of sociohistorical development of the profession of the clerk in Britain, and second, contemporary pedagogy has considered it to be important to study the presence of the clerk as part of a certain developmental dynamic that qualifies the understanding of modernity in significant ways. To begin reading the available literature on the clerks in London is to be drawn into a rather complicated debate about the nature of the profession of clerkship. In an important essay, Paul Attewell (1989) deconstructs a perceived inclination towards homogeneity in the portrayal of the image of the Victorian ‘clerk’, in his predecessors such as Braverman. Attewell notices in the portrayal of the historical sociology of clerical work a ‘false nostalgia’ (p. 357). According to him, it comes from a misreading that he sees as stemming from three sources: The first involves an idealization of the Victorian clerk, a selective portrayal that emphasizes the most highly-skilled aspects of the work and the elite of practitioners, while simultaneously underplaying the amount of routine, deadening work and the numbers of clerical drudges in that period. Second, the selectivity applied to the Victorian period is mirrored in the portrayal of today’s white-collar employee, but now the selectivity is reversed: the clerical drudge 64

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moves to center stage, and the more skilled aspects of today’s whitecollar work are underplayed. Juxtaposing these two selective stereotypes leads to the false impression that clerical work has suffered a precipitous decline in skill. . . . Third, I contend that the de-skilling position is built in part upon a conceptual misidentification by which shifts in income, mobility, gender, and prestige are read as implying shifts in skill. (Attewell, 1989, p. 358) Attewell is responding to what seems to the empirical sociologist as an almost ‘romantic’ portrayal of the clerk by Braverman. The latter is writing about a less evolved office space, where the chief clerk of the office is like a father figure looking after the well-being not only of his employer but also of his junior man and the space of the office as a whole: Clerical work in its earlier stages has been likened to a craft. Master craftsmen, such as bookkeepers or chief clerks, maintained control over the process in its totality, and apprentices or journeymen craftsmen—ordinary clerks, copying clerks, office boys—learned their crafts in office apprenticeships, and in the ordinary course of events advanced through the levels by promotion. (Braverman, 1974, pp. 298–299) It is not difficult to notice that Attewell’s critique of Braverman stems from a certain affinity with empiricist modernity and the mechanization of the office space. However, it is not that Braverman’s claim may be easily discounted as merely a nostalgic turn towards the past. There is a certain veracity to his claim, and this may be traced historically in the gradual evolution of the office space. The claim of efficiency, however, that each one of Attewell and Braverman wants for his ‘clerk’ still remains a relative question. It is in the envelope of this debate, the two flanks represented by Attewell and Braverman, that I intend to locate and discuss the London clerk. What is apparent from the formulation of this debate towards the later part of the twentieth century is that it has been invested with a historicity, a trajectory of pedagogic engagement on the question of the location or the representation of the clerk.

Who is the London clerk? In spite of Attewell’s dismissal of Braverman’s claim as steeped in nostalgia, it seems that such a view of the clerk as a confidential and responsible agent of the employer is also taken up by David Lockwood in his treatise on clerical labour in Britain. Lockwood (1958/1989) clearly negates Attewell’s claims of the specialization of the clerk, at least during the days of the counting 65

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house. The necessary qualification for the job of a clerk, he argues, was more general than specific, as was apparent from an 1878 volume of Houlston’s Industrial Library: A little instruction in Latin, and probably a very little in Greek, a little in Geography, a little in Science, a little in arithmetic and book-keeping, a little in French, with such a sprinkling of English reading as may enable a lad to distinguish Milton from Shakespeare are considered enough preparation for aught that may turn up in the way of employment. (p. 13) Lockwood reads these lines from Houlston’s as meaning: a superficial secondary education such as was within the reach of aspiring artisan or lower-middle-class families. No doubt this standard was set higher than that actually achieved by many boys entering the occupation, for the minimum essential qualification were those of quick and accurate arithmetical calculation, plus a legible hand. (pp. 20–21) Lockwood notices that the skill set demanded of the clerk was not, by the demands of the market, those of painting, music, history, or literary composition but ‘those who conduct [business] look in their clerks for business talent’ (p. 21). However, when an employer found a good clerk, the relationship was often a long and enriching one, based on mutual trust and respect and more often than not beneficial to the clerk. The clerk who grew old in the firm would gradually, Lockwood says, make himself indispensable to his employer, and thus this otherwise-professional relationship was on an individual, one-to-one basis: ‘Perhaps the most important factor is that such personal and particular relationships produced a bewildering lack of uniformity in clerical salaries, for not only did every establishment have its own scale, but practically every clerk his own price’ (p. 22). Lockwood, moreover, makes three important observations. First, many of these clerks who had such personal and abiding relationships with their employers were also performing managerial duties for the firm, unlike the clerk in the contemporary office space. Second, from the latter half of the nineteenth century, it was possible to distinguish between two classes of clerks. Banking, civil service, insurance, and mercantile clerks were reasonably well off and were able to lead respectable, middle-class lives, whereas ‘the greater proportion of clerks whose salaries barely ran ahead of the wages of the artisante were never really a part of the middle class in an economic sense, but were always striving socially to identify themselves with it’ 66

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(Lockwood, 1958/1989, p. 22). Third, it was purely a matter of nepotism or personal recommendation that determined the location of a particular clerk within a certain rubric. Two significant strands would emerge from Lockwood’s thesis. On the one hand, clearly, there was a group of privileged, specially chosen clerks who enjoyed a personal relationship of faith and promise with their employers. They would lead comfortable middle-class lives, ‘reside in a fairly genteel neighbourhood, wear good clothes, mix in respectable society, go sometimes to the opera, shrink from letting their wives do household work’ (Lockwood, 1958/1989, p. 27); however, they were few in number and could possibly, other than luck or nepotism, lay claim to certain innate managerial skills that would enable them to claim, according to Braverman, the sobriquet of a master artisan. On the other hand, we are still talking of the counting-house ethic, when the modern, mechanized office space had still not emerged. I will take up this strand of discussion on the mechanization of the office space later in this chapter, but at the moment, it is imperative to attempt a closer reading of the lives of the other set of less-privileged clerks who were more in number and who are perhaps more relevant to the context of this book. I will look into the representative claim of the lowly, common clerk in London and draw parallels with the kerani back in Calcutta.

London and Calcutta: comparable interfaces? As a matter of fact, there are many tracts and memoirs from the nineteenth century as well as later academic studies that would consolidate the stereotypical view of the clerk as the figure on the margin—deprived, neglected, and divested of agency. The clerk as the figure of ‘lack’ (a symptom that I referred to regarding the kerani in the previous chapter) seems to hold true for the London clerk as well, at least during the counting-house days. Things took a different turn in the twentieth century with rapid mechanization and feminization of the work space. Quite late into the nineteenth century, in 1876, we find Charles Edward Parsons writing a long and thoughtful tract on the condition of clerks in England. In this tract, written with the frankness and simplicity of a personal essay, Parsons (1876) seems to be in no doubt about the neglect that the clerk is by and large subjected to and how the entire idea of clerkship needs to be rethought in order that the clerk is able to lead a reasonably decent life in society. Quite early in his essay, Parsons defines the demeanour of the clerk in a manner that Attewell would perhaps disapprove of as ‘romantic’ and inaccurate in an empirical sense. He says, Clerks are, as a rule, of decent address and gentlemanly habits, patient and long-suffering, not given to noisily ‘insisting upon their rights’, and are possessed of some delicacy (temporarily overcome, 67

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it may be, by the exigencies of circumstances) when requesting an advance of salary, not unnaturally believing that their employers ought to recognize their merits and reward their careful guardianship of trade secrets and the valuable information they frequently obtain, without requiring somewhat humiliating personal reminders; or, as is so frequently the case, they stand in dread that they will be told with more or less courtesy to ‘go elsewhere if they are discontented, as there are many who would be glad of their situations’. (Parsons, 1876, pp. 12–13) Like Braverman, Parsons also discovers in the figure of the clerk a ‘guardian’ and a keeper of secrets, someone who has the qualities of holding a firm together. There was, undoubtedly, a discourse of dependability associated with the counting-house clerk which was not backed up by a salary that promised a decent standard of living. Also, the fear of unceremonious dismissal was a ghost that was in continuous pursuit. Parsons also notices that in the profession of clerkship, ‘brains are less highly valued than muscles are in other employments’ (p. 13), suggesting that the wage labourer was possibly in a better position in terms of the supply–demand ratio than the clerk was. Such a comparison harks back to the native kerani, who suffered a similar predicament in the Calcutta job market of the nineteenth century—that of surfeit. There are significant differences, however, and I shall take them up in detail later in this chapter. The proof of one apparent difference, of course, is the present tract by Parsons. Not only does he take up the cause of the common clerk, but he is also convinced of the qualities of the English clerk. In a curious digression, Parsons mentions how ill-trained clerks from Germany and Scotland would sometimes take up jobs at low pay and thus create a supply line that thoroughly compromised the job prospects of the English clerk: They are thorough clerks so long as they are kept to the work they are familiar with, but they have not a grain of the versatility, or the adaptable capacity—in short, the genuine all-round ability, the English clerk possesses. (p. 16) Parsons also brings up the important question of trade unionism in the profession, a strand that I will discuss briefly and contextually here and take up for elaborate discussion in a later chapter. He writes, I fear a combination of clerks for legitimate purposes upon a basis similar to that of the Trade Unions can never succeed; and this because the vast army of clerks is recruited not from one, but from nearly every grade of society. (Parsons, 1876, p. 18) 68

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First, clerkship does not entail a compulsory formal training or an entrance examination; second, the job of a clerk does come with a salary; third, any person with a decent knowledge of arithmetic and language is apparently qualified for the job; and fourth, any adult person of sound body and mind is suited for the job. Thus the job market for clerkship is wide and heterogeneous and, as Parsons (1876) writes, is ‘one of the readiest modes of earning a living which can be adopted by those lacking education’ (p. 19). It is, therefore, a lack of a common culture, a widely disparate milieu, that creates a class of employees who would rarely come together for a common cause. Once again, the formulation of an identity for clerks is caught up in the ‘class’ question, with far-reaching political implications. What is complicated in familiar office space in Britain inevitably becomes more confused and contingent in the colonized space, and thus, it is not surprising that the figure of the kerani hangs precariously from the fringes of such formations as the bhadralok or the babu. Also, since the profession of the clerk did not necessarily demand much education, the conception of the body politic is always already compromised, a fringe figure, easily dispensable and without rights and privileges. The native kerani, without doubt, was a few steps below the London clerk. Clearly, Parsons (1876) seemed to have a dim view of the prospects of the London clerk: ‘their future is a matter of pure speculation, and likely to be governed by chance at all times’ (p. 31). He was also not convinced by the general belief of the times that a good clerk would always find suitable employment. In fact, he clearly mentions that qualified clerks with commercial training and uprightness of character, able to execute their duties with care and responsibility, were looking for placements at as low salaries as £1 per week. He sums up the condition of the London clerk thus: I have seen sober, well-educated, well-recommended clerks, possessed of first-rate business qualifications, and conversant with one or two foreign languages, walking the streets of London almost barefoot, reduced to the lowest depths of genteel poverty, and have known such men calling at upwards of sixty offices a day in the hope of obtaining employment, but without success. (Parsons, 1876, p. 32) The figure of the clerk going around the city with a letter of reference looking desperately (and most often in vain) for a position seems to be a common trope in many contemporary texts on the subject. An anonymous tract written by ‘a clerk out of work’ titled ‘Off the Track’ in London: Being Actual Experiences in a Hunt After Employment published in 1878 humorously explores the plight of a clerk out of work looking for a position. By his own admission, he has good references; is in possession of such ‘English’ qualities as sobriety, honesty, and industry; and has ‘formerly held situations of trust, 69

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in which I had discharged my duties to the entire satisfaction of my employers’ (‘Off the Track’, p. 3). His plan, as he reaches London, is quite clear: ‘If I gained access to gentlemen requiring an assistant I had no doubt of success’ (‘Off the Track’, p. 3). However, he soon realizes that the process of reaching his employer is not an easy one and in most cases almost impossible. Agents and intermediaries ran the job market. Employers would mostly appoint more than one agent, and thus the job aspirant would sometimes apply to the same job more than once through different agents: ‘Thus did I send by post, or carry with my own hand, upwards of four hundred replies to advertisements, to which, as far as I can recollect, I received about two percent of answers, all of which proved almost fruitless’ (‘Off the Track’, p. 6). It is not easy to conceive of a person writing more than four hundred letters for the job of a clerk in the commercial capital of the world at that time. Soon, this ‘clerk out of work’ compares himself to a gambler who is infatuated with the idea of playing on in spite of a conviction that there was no hope of winning a hand. There develops in him a certain manic hopefulness that he knows is unfounded: the appearance of fresh advertisements always re-kindled the speculative flame, and I went on again as hopefully as before, repeating all my former failures. The habit of perusing the advertisement-page of a newspaper became so strong in me that it has grown into my nature. (‘Off the Track’, p. 7) The clerk in the story goes on to narrate how these agents start asking for money to ‘register’ the names of the applicants to be called for an interview with the ‘real’ employer. Also, being called for an interview was a matter of pure chance. Applications were received or opened in no proper order, and as soon as a suitable candidate was found, the rest of the applications, unopened, were thrown into the fire. Consequently, having failed to procure a job for himself, the clerk in this narrative reaches a philosophical conclusion about life, which is both telling of the clerks’ plight in general and of the pathos of the individual in particular: My life-long poverty may have been a wise dispensation of Providence. Perhaps it was the only condition in life that I could bear. For almost every man can bear adversity; but few can bear prosperity. (‘Off the Track’, p. 15) Of course, the truth claim of such tracts is purely speculative, but historical documentation of the times provokes the reader to accept most of these incidents as possibly true. 70

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The claims that Parsons makes in his account if read with this tale of the jobless clerk will lead us to certain crucial conclusions about the job market for clerical workers in mid- to late-nineteenth-century London. It is evident that finding a job, even with the necessary qualifications and experience, was a difficult proposition. There were too many aspirants, at least at the entry level, and with no system of employment through entrance examinations, nepotism was rampant. Also, because the job of the clerk had many facets to it, from the keeping of accounts to managing an entire office, there was a randomness in the nature of the employment itself. It was possible to find entry-level aspirants between ages 14 and 45, and many of them were ready to do myriad kinds of work, once employed. With no proper salary scale to account for the kinds of work a clerk was supposed to do, exploitation was also common practice. The easy availability of the clerk in the job market also led to easy dismissals. Hiring was more often than not based on recommendations and references, and close relatives or acquaintances filled up most positions of importance. A consolidation of such a claim is immediately apparent from another tract by Edwin Hodder, published around the same time period. Hodder’s account titled The Junior Clerk: A Tale of City Life, published in 1862, tells us the story of George Weston from Islington, who, about 16 years of age and just out of school, gets the job of a junior clerk at a handsome (by contemporary standards of comparison) salary of half-a-guinea (ten shillings and six pence) a week purely on the basis of a letter of recommendation to the employer by a certain uncle Henry. In a preface to the book, W. Edwyn Shipton (secretary of the YMCA) declares, ‘The Author has described the following Tale to me as a fiction. It may be so to him. But for every one of its statements I could supply a fact’ (Hodder, 1862, p. iii). I assume that most of these accounts are either factual or fictionalized forms of real-life events. Interestingly, all of this was happening in London at a time when the imperial machinery in Calcutta was in full swing. The kerani or the native clerk was also a part, even if insignificant, of this cultural economy of office work. It is no surprise, therefore, that parallel stories can be traced in Calcutta with the aspiring kerani as the protagonist. In spite of the life of hardship and penury and all that the job of the kerani entailed, keranigiri was quite sought after as a job prospect in the colonized space. In Tagore’s novel Jogajog (Relationships), for example, we see how keranigiri or clerkdom is seen as a sign of success in the family of protagonist Madhusudan Ghoshal. When Madhusudan refuses to be a clerk like his father, Ananda Ghoshal, and starts an independent business, his mother is clearly unhappy: ‘His mother wept; she had hoped that her son would enter the ranks of the gentry through the path of success in examination. The triumphal flag of clerkdom would then fly high on the Ghoshal family flagstaff’ (Tagore, 1927/2013, p. 38). Similarly, a parallel to the narrative of the London clerk looking in vain for a position may be seen in the colonized space as well. 71

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A typical example would be a tract by Jiban Dhan Banerjee called Drudgery or Slavery, published from Calcutta in 1896. Written typically in the convoluted and uneasy rhetoric of the non-native user of English, Banerjee (1896) recounts the fate of the Calcutta kerani in his tract: ‘The life of a Kerani is full of misery and sorrow, so much so, that even dogs and jackals weep over them. The poor creature is subjected to every kind of tyranny, oppression, hardship, difficulty and trouble’ (p. 1). Presently, Banerjee narrates the story of a certain Gaba Chandra Chatterjee, an undergraduate of Calcutta University who is looking for the position of a clerk in the city. After a long and tedious poring over the pages of the Exchange Gazette and the Education Gazette, Gaba at last finds an advertisement that declares a clerical vacancy for a job at Messrs. D’Cruez & Co. for Rs.20 a month. A Mr Bhaja Hari Karmakar is declared as the head of the said office and the distributor of the job. Now begins the hilarious and pathetic narrative of Gaba’s pursuit of the job. With an application in his pocket, Gaba visits the house of Karmakar in Nischintapur, on the other side of the Ganges, only to be greeted by Karmakar’s servant, ‘an incarnation of wrath and anger’ (Banerjee, 1896, p. 3), who declares ‘he is very busy now. He can’t come out to see you’ (Banerjee, 1896, p. 3). Gaba makes four more vain attempts to meet Karmakar. Subsequently, he finds out that a letter of recommendation from a certain Ram Bhadra Sadhukhan, an intimate friend of Karmakar, may help him secure a meeting with Karmakar. Sadhukhan, however, is not known to Gaba. But he gets news that Moulvi Aga Mahamed Dilwar Hafez Baktiar Hossain Khan Bahadur is a good friend of Sadhukhan. This Maulvi, it is discovered, is an acquaintance of Gaba’s father-in-law, Babu Kangali Charan Banerjee; he was the head khansama (cook) of Kangalibabu’s barasaheb. Thus, Kangali writes to the Maulvi, who writes to Sadhukhan, and Sadhukhan writes a letter of recommendation for Gaba to Karmakar. Eventually, Gaba succeeds in meeting Karmakar and places his request: Well sir, I am a poor man, have to support a large family dependent on me, can’t start a business, because that is a nasty line of gaining livelihood, and consequently have no other means than to serve as a clerk, and therefore implore you, sir, to have mercy on me. (Banerjee, 1896, p. 5) Karmakar asks Gaba to visit his office every now and then, and after about a dozen such visits, Gaba gives up hope. Consequently, after offering a month’s wage as bribe to the head of the office, Gaba gets the job of a clerk in Messrs. Gomes P’druez & Co. The narrator describes Gaba’s life thereafter: he has to attend office at 9 in the morning and leave it at 7, 8, sometimes even 9 in the evening. . . . If he is a little late in his attendance owing to the illness either of his wife or little child . . . the Head 72

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Babu calls for an explanation and not being satisfied with it, fines him the day’s wages. If he is very ill, he can’t get sick leave even at half pay unless he is in a position to procure a Doctor’s certificate at an immense cost to him. (Banerjee, 1896, p. 7) The author ruefully contrasts the past life of Gaba Chandra with his present one. While earlier there was independence, activity, energy, and a spirit of sympathy for social, religious, or political movements, now he has lost all his free will to the will of his master ‘in whose hands his bread is’ (Banerjee, 1896, p. 9). By all means, there is not much of a difference between the story of Gaba Chandra and that of the clerk out of work in London. The social history of the period enables the reader to see the frequent overlaps between two essentially different modern spaces—one of the colonizer and the other of the colonized. The essential structure of the model that was being followed was similar, so such interfaces were quite obvious. However, there were crucial differences in the pattern as well. Sumit Sarkar (1998) writes of the ‘chronotope of alienated time and space’ (p. 309) that created a major difference in the evolution of the idea of chakri, or a nine-to five job, in these two work spaces: What made chakri intolerable . . . was . . . its connotation of impersonal cash nexus and authority, embodied above all in the new rigorous discipline of work regulated by clock time. Disciplinary time was a particularly abrupt and imposed innovation in colonial India. Europe had gone through a much slower and phased transition spanning some five hundred years. . . . Colonial rule telescoped the entire process for India within one or two generations. (p. 309) Sarkar’s argument is consolidated by the texts of the period. While most texts from the colonized space that speak about the job of the clerk have ‘time’ almost always as an important trope (the time of departure from home, the time of departure from office, the time taken up by commute, etc.), most of the texts from England (or specifically London) would talk of the confinement of space, the nature or character of the employer or colleagues, the weather as a deterrent, or the general claustrophobia of a city-space. The London clerk is frequently seen taking his lunch break at the nearby alehouse, indulging in a drink or a coffee after work with colleagues, walking back home or catching a train from a nearby station, occasionally going for an elaborate dinner with a colleague, or even watching a play or reading and having a drink in the evening. Thus, in spite of the drudgery or the penury that the English clerk talks about, his situation is contingent on a 73

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more evolved and naturally adapted conception of a work ethic. In contrast, for the native clerk or the kerani, mired in disease, debt, unhealthy living standards, separation from family, miserable pay, and most of all a complete lack of control over his sense of time made his ‘chakri’ a completely alienating experience, culturally unnerving and problematic.

The ‘gentleman’ question One of the more important questions about representation and the clerk has always been whether the clerk is a ‘gentleman’. This question similar in nature to the one I have addressed in both the previous chapters: is the kerani a bhadralok or a babu? These are also overlapping questions that not only call for intimate analysis and understanding but also the raising of crucial points of departure in the corresponding cultural spaces that we are talking about. First, most critics and historians deliberating on the question of the representation of the clerks have argued that in terms of earnings/salary that the junior clerk is not too far removed from the labourer or the artisan. But in terms of education, social practices, or identity formation within a framework of class, there were significant differences between the two. More often than not, a clerk befriends another clerk, and rarely a labourer, and this holds true, mostly, for the labourer as well. It is worthwhile to quote a lengthy observation by Lockwood (1958/1989) in this regard: A clerk lives an entirely different life from an artisan—marries a different kind of wife—has different ideas, different possibilities, and different limitations. A clerk differs from an artisan in the claims each make on society, no less than in the claims society makes on them. It is not by any means only a question of clothes, of the wearing or not wearing of a white shirt every day, but of differences which invade every department of life, and at every turn affect the family budget. More undoubtedly is expected from the clerk than the artisan, but the clerk’s money goes further and is on the whole much better spent. In short—at least as one disillusioned clerk saw it—‘foolish parents want to see their sons in broadcloth instead of fustian; they think a clerk is a gentleman and an artisan not’. (pp. 28–29) Lockwood is making a significant point here. The inchoate and ambivalent relationship between ‘gentlemanliness’ and its assumption by the clerk were expectations that the society had foisted upon him. The conception of the ‘gentleman’ combined an implicit nexus between education and culture, manner and disposition, where economics did not necessarily play the role of a determinant. Thus, more often than not, the clerk resembled his employer in the realm of cultural politics, held identical or similar views on society, read the 74

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same newspapers, and had similar tastes in the arts, rather than resembling the artisan or labourer who was possibly in the same economic bracket as him. As Lockwood writes, ‘Gentlemanliness was still within the reach of those clerks whose salaries would not support a proper middle-class style of life’ (p. 29). That is to say, the class identity of the clerk is invested with an ambivalence that is curiously similar to the problem that the kerani would face in Calcutta. The one significant difference, however, was that, at least during the counting-house days, the relationship between the clerk and his employer in London was, in many cases, a personal one, ‘strongly characterized by the exhibition of mutual trust’ (Lockwood, 1958/1989, p. 29). The kerani as a colonized subject could not, of course, expect an identical feeling of camaraderie or collegiality with his employer, who was also a representative of the imperial master. In this debate about the ‘class’ question lurks another important distinction between ‘gentlemanliness’ and ‘respectability’. Although, apparently, these two terms might be confused with each other, there are important and subtle differences. Gentlemanliness is more about demeanour than respectability is. It is about manner, language, dress, and the ability, for example, to make polite conversation in the company of other gentlemen. Respectability, on the other hand, is a more intimate quality, one that is linked with honour and trust, the ability to ‘perform’ being a gentleman in spite of odds. There are obvious overlaps between the two, and it is due to this vagueness of conception that ‘gentlemanliness and respectability could become curiously confused in the lower-middle-class culture in which clerks played a major role’ (Lockwood, 1958/1989, p. 29). Confined by his pay structure, the clerk was probably looking more for respectability rather than gentlemanliness. He could ill-afford the latter, though trying his best to keep up with the demands of the times. Also, since, according to Lockwood (1958/1989), the clerk married ‘a different kind of wife’(p.  28), the demands of his family were also typically qualified by a certain degree of gentility. Here is a humorous example of a clerk supposedly asking for a raise from his employer: I sent a letter to the chief And said ‘It passes all belief How many noble things I do For such a mediocre screw. Enclosed are portraits of my twins (how sleek and pink their baby skins) “Two bring the teardrops to your eyes To hear them lisp, ‘Where’s puppa’s rise? I told them what it cost for coals How little socks contracted holes What Hannah spent in frocks and frill And what we paid in Butchers Bills. (Heller, 2011, pp. 75–76) 75

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The sartorial demand for ‘frill’ is a simple but telling example of the attempt at gentility in the household of the clerk. Heller writes of how higher-paid clerks in the slightly upper echelons of the bureaucracy would go for luxurious holidays, become members of sporting clubs, or send their children to prestigious institutions. However, often enough, this attempt at respectability on the part of the clerk that paraded as gentlemanliness was not always well received by society at large. An 1862 issue of The Cornhill Magazine seems to be quite critical of this affectation of gentlemanliness by the clerk. The author of the piece insists that the common labourer was more of a ‘gentleman’ than the mercantile clerk: ‘The great characteristic of the manners of a gentleman, as we conceive them in England, is plain, downright, frank, simplicity . . . the outward and visible sign of the two great cognate virtues—truth and courage’ (‘Gentlemen’, 1862, p. 336). This manner, in speech and behaviour, of respect for the feelings of others in spite of an innate frankness were the true distinguishing feature of educated Englishmen. ‘This manner’, the author insists, ‘prevails much more amongst the labouring than among the shopkeeping classes’ (‘Gentlemen’, 1862, p. 337). The clerks are seen as a class prone to falsehood, circumlocution, and affectation: The language of the commercial clerk, and the manner in which he brings it out, are both framed on quite a different model. He talks about himself, and constantly tries to talk fine. He calls a school an academy, speaks of proceeding when he means ‘going’ and talks, in short, much in the style in which members of his own class write police reports and accounts of appalling catastrophes for the newspapers. (‘Gentlemen’, 1862, p. 337) Lockwood (1958/1989) assigns the reason for such affectation and pretentiousness in the clerks to a lack of security both in his job in particular and in his relationship to society in general. The fate of the clerk’s job depended mostly on the whim of his superiors or the employer; his meagre salary would place him at par with the labouring class; socially, he was perpetually on an upward flux and aspired to a class identity higher than himself. Lockwood concludes that the clerk is thus a ‘gentleman’ ‘as different from the aristocratic gentry culture above him as from ‘nature’s gentleman’ below him. His distinguishing mark was respectability’ (p. 32). Although, if hairs are split, the class identity of the clerk remains unresolved, in a more general sense it will be sensible to assume that the clerk did belong to the gentleman class. F.D. Klingender (1935) argues that although during most of the nineteenth century, the clerks were ‘socially’ considered to belong to the middle class (p.  17), economically the general mass of the clerks belonged to the lower-middle-class category (p.  14). We are 76

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still talking of the nineteenth-century workspace, and the transformation into a modern office, more mechanized and streamlined, was still to evolve. Most of the clerical jobs were based on either recommendations or personal acquaintance, and although this guaranteed a friendly and familiar working environment, exploitation of the clerk’s labour was quite high. It was difficult to ask for a raise or demand a promotion if the foundation of the job was based on recommendation or acquaintance rather than an examination or a formal interview where one rightfully claims employment over other competitors. Also, clerkship had not yet become a specialized job, and as already argued earlier in this chapter, anyone could become a clerk. John Stuart Mill (1848), who was an employee of the East India Company for about 35 years, writes, A clerk from whom nothing more is required than the mechanical labour of copying, gains more than an equivalent for his mere exertion if he receives the wages of a bricklayer’s labourer. His work is not one tenth-part as hard, it is quite easy to learn, and his condition is less precarious, a clerk’s place being generally a place for life. The higher rate of his remuneration therefore must be partly ascribed to monopoly, the small degree of education required being not yet so generally diffused as to call forth the natural number of competitors, and partly to the remaining influences of an ancient custom, which required that clerks should maintain the dress and appearance of a more highly paid class. (p. 469) Mill does not even consider the clerk to be as qualified as the bricklayer, but only as good (or not) as the bricklayer’s labourer. In his analysis, Klingender considers the clerk in the nineteenth century to be ‘more a family servant’ (p. 2), oppressed and overworked. With no proper rights in place as an employee, the clerk had to depend on occasional essays, ‘letters to the editor’, or articles in newspapers that demanded betterment of the clerical workforce. Klingender refers to one such article by Thomas Bullion in April 1847, where he writes that although it is too much to ask for a high salary, ‘every clerk should always have the hope of a high remuneration in the future to inspire him’ (p. 6). Klingender also refers to the interesting phenomenon of the ‘clerk’s Christmas box’. Before Christmastime, every clerk was sent door to door to their clients’ houses asking for a donation for the clerk’s Christmas box. The money that was collected was deposited with the employer. The employer then distributed this money among the staff, ‘having fixed the amount of the clerks’ salary after taking into account the yield of this charity collection’ (Klingender, 1935, p. 8). It may therefore be said, perhaps, that the idea of clerical labour emerged largely out of business needs that did not yet have a proper structure or framework. The arbitrary nature 77

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of the process of employment, the systems of patronage and guardianship, and the almost random salary structure dependent on whim or goodwill did not lead to the emergence of a professional and career-oriented workforce. A clerk was chosen from a random pool available in the civil society and was often someone chosen from a circle of acquaintances, friends, or family. The aspect of human contact was more important than professional expertise; personal relationship more important than efficiency; and trust and dependence more important than educational qualifications. The structure of the office was thus based on an old-school idea of a wholesome community that was neither impersonal nor professional. Braverman (1974) spoke of the ‘lower-level’ or ‘more technical and narrow’ skills of the more professional clerks who emerged in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century as opposed to the ‘craftsman’ clerk who had managerial and administrative skills (p. 340). He was possibly referring to clerks who were culled from a wholesome community and had not become mechanized automatons who worked morning to evening on typewriters or photocopy machines but had a mind and an opinion of their own. And it is perhaps for the same reason that Attewell (1989) accused him of ‘a romanticized and selective portrayal, one based on the most senior of clerks, to characterize the occupation as a whole’ (p. 364). This, however, is a complex debate spread across a larger canvas of debates on modernity and its manifestations. The idea of welfare is also a related question, and with it is appended the question of agency. All of this is further complicated by the narrative of colonialism, which brings along with it all these debates and the question of intention in a colonialist paradigm of subjection and rule. First, the community of the clerk has been oppressed and deprived across space and time. In contrast, a critic such as Attewell would easily dismiss the premodern or less evolved workspace as one that came with fewer rights and privileges for the clerk, and because it was based on nepotism and favouritism, it may also be possible to argue that an organized and evolved modern workspace had its own system for the objectification of the human subject and a more mechanized view on the question of labour capital. Second, Attewell accuses Braverman of selective nostalgia when portraying the old-school clerk in a favourable light. It is, however, quite possible to argue that in this premodern office space, an efficient and successful clerk, faithful to the company and his employer, was invested with more agency than a clerk in the modern corporate structure of governance. To split it too fine, one may also argue that the streamlining of clerical labour, specialization, and mechanization has seriously compromised the individual subject position of the clerk and the notion of the clerk as a ‘human’ subject and has relegated the question of individual representation to the background. The individual clerk is now as good as a computer or a photocopier and more easily replaceable than before. I have merely pointed out the possibilities of debate without taking sides. These are issues that require longer 78

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and more-informed discussion, but they are not germane to the immediate concerns of my thesis in this book. The more important concern for me is the question of representation or agency of the colonial clerk, and this opens up another set of questions in view of the earlier discussion. It is quite evident from the available scholarship that there has been much debate about clerks and clerical practice in England, at least since the middle of the nineteenth century. There have been sincere attempts to understand the nature of the workplace, working conditions, and representation of the subject position of the clerk in the context of economy, culture, and society. However, rarely has such knowledge trickled out of the periphery of the origin of the empire to its colonies. It is difficult to come across tracts or narratives that choose the colonial clerk as a subject of concern. This is not to say that the empire was not concerned about welfare projects in the colonies. In India, for example, the colonizer was very much part of native debates on societal mores, education, and cultural transformations. Colonial modernity, in itself, was a crucial problematic, particularly in Bengal (and Calcutta) throughout the nineteenth century, provoking important debates that considerably transformed the historical trajectory of the space. However, the typical question of the colonial clerk or the kerani posed multiple problems. First, the notion of clerkship had its own arbitrary narrative of development in England. The transformation from a non-modern or premodern to a modern space of work, deeply embedded in the Victorian work ethic, and the acceptance of scientific innovations from the latter half of the nineteenth century had their own effects on the formulation of clerkship in Britain. Although the transformation may have been slow and gradual, there were epistemic changes in the workplace, invested in a modernity that had still not been grasped well by the practitioners. Second, in the colonial space, the running of an empire needed an immediate flow of a workforce that had to be hired from the native population. The need was immediate, but the supply was inadequate. Again, clerkship, as I have already discussed, did not need a high level of skill or training. Thus, native subjects with a smattering of English and mathematics were hired as an immediate solution. The native subject was lured by the prospect of a government or Company job and easily accepted the low pay and related inconveniences. Third, the colonial space was firmly situated in a premodern paradigm, and the impact of colonial modernity on it either was going to be slow or had to be forced. This led to an ill-formed, half-baked modernity, and the clerk emerged as a ‘figure of lack’ in two different ways: as a native with a smattering of English, alien to the office space, and ill-informed in the ways of an emerging modernity, he was an uneasy presence in the office, and as a person with a job in the sahib’s office, a salary, but little or no freedom, almost absent of solvency, and lifted out of his cultural context, he was alienated from his native society in multiple ways. The entire narrative of native clerkship in 79

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Calcutta was thus mired in an uncertainty that was contextual and could not perhaps be addressed within the available epistemic framework. This could possibly be the reason for a general silence on native clerks or the lack of academic literature on the subject.

Changing perspectives: the birth of the modern office In the last 20 years of the nineteenth century, some crucial changes marked the evolution of the office space. The success of compulsory elementary education led to a marked improvement in literacy, and this resulted in the market being flooded with candidates fit for the job of a clerk. At the same time, the nature of the office and likewise that of the profession were changing rapidly. As I have said before, during the days of the counting house, the relationship between the clerk and his employer was of a personal nature. There were no impersonal standards by which one could conceive of a ‘community’ of clerks who had come together for a common cause or work; that was the trademark of the factory worker or wage labourer. In a sense, therefore, the clerk in the counting house was necessarily alone, his fate indelibly imbricated with that of the firm, his relationship with the employer being of a personal nature. He was thus never, in the real sense, part of the ‘market’, a professional stakeholder who had some agency vis-à-vis the changing pattern of market forces or in the nature of employment patterns. In both his dependability and dispensability alike, he has remained a solitary figure who succeeds or suffers alone. In due course, if he has stuck to the job and done it well, has pleased his employer by his skill and perseverance, he becomes, towards the end of his career, the head clerk of the office or maybe even a partner or shareholder. The skills that he has acquired through this journey are peculiar to him and not comparable with other clerks in his own firm or otherwise. Lockwood (1958/1989) writes of how the maturing experience of the clerk would be peculiar to his own firm, often highly valuable to his particular employer, but relatively worthless outside. .  .  . Promotion was given and responsibility added, not by virtue of his progressive certification, but in accordance with his employer’s estimation of his merit and worth—in other words, by the value of a particular clerk to a particular employer in a particular business routine. (pp. 82–83) The counting-house clerk is thus, as Lockwood succinctly puts it, both specialized and unskilled labour. The gradual corporatization of the office from the late nineteenth century onwards thus had interesting implications for our clerk. While on the one hand, the progressive mechanization of the office through additions of such machines as the calculator, the adding machines, the addressing machines, 80

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and the typewriter simplified the work of the clerks, it also meant the inevitable curtailment of jobs for them. There was also a radical shift in the nature of the clerk’s job and work environment due to this change. The office was suddenly transformed from an intimate and almost homely space to a more professional and impersonal space where a group of semi-skilled workers perform routinized and repetitive work, physically removed from the employer or other managerial staff, and in this way, the office environment started resembling a factory. Lockwood (1958/1989) writes, In the old-fashioned office, even the office boy felt that he was somebody, simply by belonging to the undertaking; but the invoice clerk who now works a book-keeping machine all day is nothing but an impersonal unit. In workshop and yard there has always been a considerable number of nameless hands; but these are undoubtedly a new feature of office work. (p. 90) The stratified and layered structure that the office slowly acquired led to divisions of labour and the increasing need for specialization. The clerk was transformed from a ‘artisan’ to ‘a narrow machine-minder in a clerical factory’ (Attewell, 1989, p. 357). The relationship pattern also changed from one between master and servant to one between employer and employee, and whimsical raises or Christmas boxes were replaced by company pensions, provident funds, salary scales, canteen facilities, and most of all the idea of a career for the clerk. The position of the clerk in the office and his remuneration thus ‘became linked to an objective scale rather than rewards for services rendered between master and servant’ (Heller, 2011, p. 42). The idea of clerical service also started to undergo a gradual shift. At the counting house, the clerk served his master, and the idea of success at work was closely linked to the welfare of the company and his employer. The clerk was part of a small family inside a business house, and the prosperity of the house was for him a personal success. However, as Heller (2011) notes, With the closer integration of the national economy in the latter half of the nineteenth century, with the increasing dependency of industry on services such as the railways or the financial and commercial houses and exchanges of London, ideas of service became more associated with the work clerks provided for the well being of the general public, nation and Empire rather than any one individual or company. (p. 68) There was also a change in office protocols that led to the opening up of a career of sorts for the clerk. There was increasing specialization in the clerical 81

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community and also an increased chance of promotion with increased skill development. There was a natural growth of internal labour markets, and new positions were ‘named’ in order to assign importance to the more skilled worker, who was promoted to a supervisory rank. Even if this did not guarantee a substantial increase in salary, the position of importance was sometimes an impetus for the clerk.

The female clerk Another debate that I shall briefly address here is that of the female clerk. One could say that this was the most radical of all the changes that marked the new office space for the clerk. With increasing streamlining and specialization, the clerical market in London was already teeming with young, energetic, and trained clerks who could claim a specialization for themselves. Typing and shorthand and the use of addressographs and even telephones were newer means of claiming specialization, and the counting-house clerk was trapped in a generation gap within the span of a few years. Coupled with this was the entry of women (the new woman of sorts), educated and trained and willing to work for much less than what a male clerk would demand. This had several implications. Primarily, the woman who came to work would generally have another source of income in the family and so was better off financially than her male colleague. Thus, the genteel society to which she could afford a chance to aspire to as a working woman was greater. Also, she could afford to work for a lesser wage than her male counterpart and yet make ends meet or be generally more comfortable. Another important aspect of the entry of women was that they did not pose as competition to the counting-house clerk. Their skill set was different. The female clerks who began to be hired around the 1870s came with a completely different skill set and were trained for the new, modern office setup. Most of them were hired as typists, telephone operators, or secretaries, none of which the counting-house or old-school clerk had the skills to do: The first functions to become female-dominated were typewriting, followed by bookkeeping, and lastly general clerks. Women’s entry was clearly tied to the introduction of new machinery: the shift to typing, dictation machines, the use of forms, and bookkeeping machines was simultaneously a shift to female labor in many offices. (Attewell, 1989, p. 374) However, the entry of women into the office had far greater implications than is immediately apparent, and in the final chapter of this book, I intend to discuss them, along with the voice of women as stakeholders in the modern office space.

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The obsolescence of the counting-house clerk? In the representation of the counting-house clerk, one would easily notice his slowly being relegated to a kind of obsolescence. First, it was increasingly becoming difficult to fix his class identity. He was also fast losing out to the new breed of clerks, equipped with a new set of skills relevant to the modern office. The office had suddenly transformed into a professional place, more serious and demanding, requiring special training and not finding the skill of the mere ‘writer’ as adequate for suitable employment. In a letter published in the March 1910 issue of Clerk, R.G. Acock calls contemporary clerkship a fine art and insists on calling the modern-day clerk a brain worker: Present-day office methods tend more and more to retaining the clerk who uses his brains, whether it be in typing a letter or keeping books. The clerk finds that knowledge in regard to everything relating to the business world and office appliances is the best asset he can possess. Under present conditions, and still more so in the near future, will the lie be to the legend: ‘Any fool can be a clerk’. (as cited in Heller, p. 120) This raises a few crucial questions. Is the author assuming that the older generation of counting-house clerks did not use their brains, that the nature of their job did not exploit their intellectual faculty, or that the clerk of yore was a ‘fool’? Lockwood has a somewhat-contrarian argument. For him, the machine worker, stuck to the machine for most of the working day, has little opportunity to gain general knowledge, develops a rigidity of outlook, and has a lesser chance of using intelligence (Lockwood, 1958/1989, p. 90). It is possibly more reasonable to conclude that the counting-house clerk, with a say in almost every department of the office, prone to taking on more responsibilities in the firm, and sometimes directly involved in the decisionmaking process, always in direct contact with his employer, was using his brains on a regular basis than the clerk doing mechanical labour in a large corporation. In a more mechanized setup, the employer would sometimes select a person more physically adept at using machines and thus, Lockwood (1958/1989) argues, discount the ‘gifts of intelligence and character’ (p. 91): owing to such methods, the employee employed as a machine operator receives a strong impression that he is meant exclusively for this unimportant function and must remain his whole life in an inferior post. (Lockwood, p. 91) To be fair, there will always be debates about any change within an existing framework. There were the obvious advantages of mechanization and the

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birth of the modern office. But it is also always possible to sustain, without the charge of nostalgia, a debate between premodernity and modernity and argue in favour of the former. Even at the risk of a charge of obfuscation or the sudden and catachrestic use of theory, I refer to one of Bruno Latour’s contentions at this point. While arguing that modernity comes in many versions, Latour (1993) observes, When the word ‘modern’, ‘modernization’ or ‘modernity’ appears, we are defining, by contrast, an archaic and stable past. Furthermore, the word is always being thrown in the middle of a fight, in a quarrel where there are winners and losers, Ancients and Moderns  .  .  . it designates a combat in which there are victors and vanquished. . . . In the countless quarrels between Ancients and Moderns, the former come out winners as often as the latter now, and nothing allows us to say whether revolutions finish off the old regimes or bring them to fruition. (p. 10) In the narrative of history, there will always remain the trace of the premodern in the machinations of modernity.

The kerani in Calcutta: a different perspective The nineteenth-century clerk in London, with his insecurities about class identity, his deconstructed masculinity, his poverty, and his dogged faithfulness to the employer, was an important presence within the economic and sociocultural rubric of Victorian England. His counterpart, the kerani in Calcutta, was further removed from this emergent narrative of modernity. In the light of all the discussion in this chapter, it is imperative to put the nineteenth-century kerani into perspective. In another parallel narrative of colonial modernity, the kerani, mostly unaware of these crucial changes in the structure of the office, was playing his part in history as well. In many ways, most of the crucial narrative of modernity that led to the evolution of the office in London remained irrelevant to the kerani. The drudgery of his job and its newness as a mechanism of discipline and incarceration were the more immediate reality for him. As most texts of the period will confirm, a day in the working life of a kerani was completely taken up by his job. Kaliprasanna Singha mentions how on a typical workday, a certain section of keranis had to be out on duty as early as seven o’ clock in the morning. He writes how, even before the clock would strike seven-o-clock in the morning, the pagri-clad booking clerk, ‘keranis, bookkeepers, and head-writers’ would already hurry to their offices. Even the other more lowly and menial professionals would be out on the roads much later than the keranis (Singha,

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1862/2008, pp.  48–49). This is also confirmed by the narrative of Gokul Bandopadhyay, the protagonist of Kerani-Darpan (1874). As he waits to be served food by his wife, he rants: will you serve me some rice . . . or should I leave (looking at his watch). . . . it is almost seven. . . . I can’t wait anymore. Don’t know what awaits me today, what he (the sahib) would do. Obviously he will abuse me, and will he also slap a fine or throw me out? (Kerani-Darpan, 1874, p. 6) All this needs to be read against the grain of the emancipatory narrative of modernity that was unfolding in London during more or less the same period of time. The trajectory of colonial modernity was much more skewed and immensely more complicated, and it should not be confused with the simpler narrative of modernity in nineteenth-century Europe. The emancipation that many historians of colonial India were reading into the rhetoric of colonialism had a more direct link with European modernity. In terms of cultural discourse, many important changes were manifest in the society in and around Calcutta. The emergence of a new and Western-educated intelligentsia, a rebellious rhetoric around religion and its discontents, the slow but certain emancipatory narrative around women and education, and most of all an evolved engagement with the question of the nation and nationalism were all important markers of social change that qualified the narrative of colonial modernity. A new idea of Bengal was emerging, and many historians have termed it a ‘renaissance’ of sorts. The kerani, though, was a child of neglect. Never the focus of sustained discussion, mostly on the wrong side of a joke or a satire, the implications of an emergent modernity had different implications for him. The renaissance, if at all, was a phenomenon that involved mostly the upper classes of society. It was a matter of privilege to be a part of elite circles that talked about or immediately manifested a discursive change. This mostly involved the two upper sections of the bhadralok category (discussed in the first chapter) and rarely trickled down to the kerani’s world. As colonial modernity manifested itself in a section of the Calcutta upper classes, the business of empire was also running a parallel life. And it was serious business that involved the running of a vast administration that could be only cursorily interested in how colonial modernity and its rhetoric of emancipation liberated the native intelligentsia. It was more cut and dried and more mundane and followed an imperial logic that was not necessarily liberal in spirit. This was the world of bureaucracy, of the running of offices, of taking over and ruling a space, of establishing or manufacturing consent either through rule or by force. This was also the mundane space of keeping records—both bureaucratic and business—and it only understood

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the rhetoric of power and control, of running the business of empire. This space had little interest in social change in the colonized world unless forced, engaged in exploring ideas of colonial modernity, and preferred the simpler binary of the ruler and the ruled. It was a more categorized space, mostly thinking in binaries, generating and collecting revenues, taxes, and levies or involved in the process of running an oiled machine. This was the world of the kerani. If it was mechanized, it was far from the evolved office space of the London clerk. The machines were different, and so were the ideas. Here it was not the fear of losing the human element through the use of a typewriter or an adding machine. The human being was the machine and was treated with similar objectivity. The debate about the difference between the wage labourer and the educated clerk was relevant here as well. But the debate was confined within the civil society of the native population and was never a concern for the sahib administrator either in Calcutta or in London. The kerani was designed more as a form of a machine and not as a human subject. A typewriter does not need holidays. Neither does the kerani. In no account of the kerani will one find a discussion on vacations, sports clubs, or leisure; quality time spent with the family; or the kerani reading a book or getting involved in the art or culture scene of his times. The world of the kerani was one of an unmitigated workaday, bereft of the human principle. Interestingly, the emergent and emancipated civil society of the time was curiously silent about the kerani as a professional. Neither European modernity nor colonial modernity engaged, in any sustained manner, with this important and significant workforce of the empire. And the reason is not too difficult to assume. For the colonizer, the kerani was merely a cog in the system, barely a human, and completely insignificant in the larger scheme of things. Neither was he educated enough nor solvent enough to flaunt an agency that had to be addressed. He was not the imperialist’s responsibility either. He was not the London clerk who was a part of an intrinsic system of a sociocultural logic that demanded a general welfare for its stakeholders. The kerani was part of a temporary logic of administration, singularly necessary and dispensable. He was part of a colonized society which, in the larger scheme of the European world view, would in all possibility not be a permanent responsibility. For the emancipated or educated intelligentsia in native society, on the other hand, the kerani did not have a stable class identity. His caste identity was also reasonably compromised by his equivocal life in the city. Economically, his condition was one of disdain. More importantly, he was not a social force whose identitarian agency could be used in any sustained way in a narrative of emancipatory zeal or social movements. The kerani was in no position to revolt. He was not as desperate as the sepoy. Nor could he culturally play the role of the polemicist or the reformer. The performative agency of an ambiguous location could be used only by a miniscule part of the kerani populace and only by those who had a certain 86

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cultural or economic agency by birth. Otherwise, the larger population of the kerani was generally timid and hapless, rarely up for a challenge, living his quiet life in the deserved insignificance of his anonymity. In short, for the native subject of colonial modernity the kerani was equally useless. Thus, although there were significant similarities between the lives of the London clerk and the Calcutta kerani, there were also equally significant differences that are impossible to gloss over and more complicated than meets the eye.

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4 THE SAHIB WRITER IN CALCUTTA A different discourse

A discussion of the life of the clerk or the kerani will not be complete if we do not discuss the presence of the writer or the sahib clerk in the Calcutta of the nineteenth century. A unique representative of the empire, he had almost nothing in common with either the clerk in London or the native kerani in Calcutta. As with the Calcutta kerani, however, there is not any considerable scholarship or literature that may be found on the white or British writers who came to India and Calcutta as part of the Company’s or the empire’s administrative machinery. They were a definite presence, a conspicuous one, but only referred to cursorily in contemporary literature, always imagined together with the rest of the white population. The umbrella term that included most of the white population except those who worked for the army was ‘civilian’, and the British writer in Calcutta was a civilian, no different from other higher administrative officers, businesspeople, or those that had migrated for myriad other purposes. On the other hand, the presence of these writers has been documented in various official records and despatches, in notices and letters, consistently since the late seventeenth century. Thus although not much has been written about them, or not in great detail, they were both an intrinsic part of the administrative machinery and a significant social presence that generated considerable interest among the natives during the imperial enterprise.

Who is a writer? Who, then, is the writer? To locate the writer within the narrow rubric of our discussion, it is necessary to define the nature of his job and understand the locus of the comparison between the writer on the one hand and the kerani in Calcutta or the clerk in London on the other. In a rare essay on the writers, short as it is, Sreepantho (1999/2012) gives us an almost unambiguous definition of the professional status of this social group: who was a sircar in the seventeenth century, a mutsuddi in the eighteenth, a kerani in the nineteenth. . . . the writer is neither the 88

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head-clerk, nor the master of keranis, the secretary or the undersecretary. The writer is a clerk and a lower division clerk. (p. 90) Such a definition, although it sets the template for the profession of a writer and lends it an exact locus, does not contain the historically understood and certainly more complex and various implications of the presence of the writer in Calcutta from the time of its inception. As a generic term, anyone who was employed as a clerk or a copyist could be referred to as a writer. The writer is the one who writes, takes notes, or prepares documents for the office. However, with time and in the course of the development of colonial administration in India, the implication of the word ‘writer’ or the professional called as such went through multiple nuanced changes and thus could not be applied loosely to any clerk or kerani. To begin with, the writers could broadly be classified into three large groups, on the basis of a distinctly racial mapping. The kerani or the indigenous clerk was sometimes referred to as the ‘native writer’, a clear marker of his class and racial location. He was generally the kerani or the babu and rarely referred to as a writer. Also, the writers belonging to the master class of white Europeans would never consider the kerani to be their equal, even if in terms of expertise or professional competence. The kerani was treated with scant respect and was generally the butt of ridicule for his mechanical or inappropriate use of the English language. As an English writer remarks about the Bengali kerani in 1778, Though they profess to understand English and are tolerably correct in copying what is put before them, they do not understand the meaning of anything they write: a great convenience this to such as conduct affairs that require secrecy, since the person employed, cannot, if they were so disposed, betray their trust. (as cited in Long & Stocqueler, 1983, p. 46) This writer further goes on to elaborate on how the kerani, fond of big words, would generally make no sense when trying to express himself independently in English. He gives his readers the example of Bisamber Mittra, who is writing to his master, informing him of a window being blown down by a northwester the evening before: Honourable Sir,—Yesterday vesper arrive great hurricane; value of little aperture not fasten; first make great trepidation and palpitation, then precipitate into precinct. God grant Master more long life and more great post. P.S.—No tranquility in house since value adjourn—I send for carpenter to make reunite. (Long & Stocqueler, 1983, p. 46) 89

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Although this could be read as a generic anecdote about the ridicule that the native kerani was subjected to in the office space, particularly with respect to his use of the English language, this may not, by any means, be read as the general impression that the kerani made, in terms of his efficiency at the workplace. There are numerous instances, anecdotal or otherwise, where the kerani holds his pride of place in the office due to his diligence and efficiency, and although he is not amply rewarded, he is spoken of with high regard and respect. Interestingly, there is also anecdotal evidence from the perspective of the native kerani about the English writer, which may be read as instances of contrapuntality. One such instance can be found in Shoshee Chunder Dutt’s memoir, where he recounts his experiences with the Chota Saheb, or a junior writer of English origin, in the office. First, Dutt delineates the generic character of this officer: As a rule Chota Sahebs everywhere are short-tempered young men, knowing nothing, who expect the amlah to do everything for them, and at the same time to show them the same deference and respect as, or a shade more than, what is conceded to the Burra Saheb. There is no man who exacts respect more punctiliously than he who doubts his right to it. (Tickell, 2005, p. 33) Here is the instance of the more experienced and more efficient, and perhaps more intelligent, kerani writing back. The only intention of the Chota Saheb, Dutt writes, is to ‘gloss over his share of the blame’ (Tickell, 2005, p. 33) in case of any mishap in the office. Dutt gives us the instance when this junior writer mistakenly signs a challan for the transaction of 80,000 rupees, is either too lazy or unintelligent to understand the methods of transaction, and is quick to pass on the blame to the subordinate natives at the office. Consequently, the matter was taken to the Burra Saheb, or the senior writer, who promptly understood and resolved the matter: an order was simultaneously issued and necessary directions given to the chaprassies that no papers were to be taken to the Chota Saheb for signature. . . . But the Chota Saheb never attempted to understand what all this pother was all about. (Tickell, 2005, p. 34) There are many such instances that both Dutt in his memoir and other keranis in their writings have enumerated about their experience of sharing the office space with the white writer, young and inexperienced, just arrived from England, new to the ways of any employment, yet invested with the agency of superiority and power that they indiscriminately wielded on the native subject. Dutt writes of how this same writer, not knowing the 90

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importance of his position and signature, would leave behind blank sheets and blotting papers, signed by him, strewn across the table every day after work. He concludes by saying that ‘these Chota Sahebs were generally very young men, paid to learn their work, and not expected to perform it efficiently’ (Tickell, 2005, p. 35).

The firangi or the Portuguese Presently, in this chapter, I intend to take up in more detail this last claim that Dutt made about the British writer. But before that, I briefly talk about a second rung, or the middle rung, of writers, the firangis, mostly of Portuguese origin, who also were sometimes appointed as writers in the Company’s offices. They were the perfect examples of the ‘white but not quite’ population, and so, although higher in esteem than the native kerani, they were still regarded as lowly by the white population. There is a rather trenchant definition of the firangi or the feringy given by Howell: By Feringy, I mean all the black mustee Portuguese Christians residing in the Settlement as a people distinct from the natural and proper subjects of Portugal; and as a people who sprung originally from Hindoos or Mussulmen, and who by the law of nations cannot by their conversion to Christianity be exempted from their allegiance to the Mogul their natural Lord, any more than a British subject is freed from his allegiance to the King of England by embracing the Mohomedan Faith; and consequently this race of people are comprehended in the Royal Charter under the word Natives as much as the Hindoos or Mussulmen. (as cited in Long, 1869, p. 59) The explicit racial mapping at the heart of the colonial project is neither surprising nor unexpected and is in fact symptomatic of the nature of British imperial practice in India. What needs to be noted, however, is that this racial sanctity percolated to what may be considered the lowest rung of the office space as well. The junior writer, the firangi clerk of Portuguese origin, and the kerani were all performing more or less identical tasks in an emergent office space in an equally new city-space. But racial identity was finely embedded in the hierarchical structure of the office, almost similar to (although less complex than) caste identity in the native society. The new entrant into the colonial project, young boys and men from Britain landing in the ports of Calcutta or India, were immediately subsumed, by training and habit, into this differentiated and hierarchical office space. The project was based on domination and control and on strictly demarcated racial markers, and professional training or efficiency as a worker was not the primary marker in the office space. It is important to read the emergence 91

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of the office as a discourse in the colonial project against the grain of the almost parallel emergence of the modern office space in London that I discussed at length in the previous chapter. There were almost no points of contact—neither in terms of technology nor in terms of the philosophy of modernity. The colonial space was necessarily different—needed different registers of control—and the project of enlightenment had little to do with the business of empire. The fine-tuning of racial markers was therefore part of the discourse of domination and control and not of efficiency and rigour. The Portuguese population, chiefly Eurasians, with half or one-quarter of their parentage being of Portuguese origin, were frequently made fun of because of the colour of their skin and were never a part of the upper-class white society of Calcutta. Even the newly arrived griffin (the English freshly arriving in the colonial space from England and not acquainted with the manners and habits of either the natives or their fellow brethren living for a while in the colonies was generally referred to as the griffin or the griff) would not let their first encounter with a ‘half-caste’ Portuguese pass without a hint of sarcasm: two gentlemen passing in a gig, of the gimcrack order—gentlemen in white jackets and ditto hats; highly polished (italics author) men, i.e. in the face, which seems, indeed, to have had the benefit of a bottle of Day and Martin’s real japan blacking—who are they? Valiant Lusitanians, illustrious descendants of Albuquerque and Vasco de Gama—Messrs. Joachim de Roberero and Gomez de Souza, writers in the office of the salt and opium department. (Bellew, 1880, p. 97) In most of the literature of the period, the Portuguese are treated with contempt more or less similar to what the native population is subjected to. The first European conquerors of India, the Portuguese had already given way to the Dutch and the French, and by the time of the arrival of the English on Indian shores, their prestige as the master class had entered the annals of history. The English chiefly used the Portuguese population as artillery officers and thus referred to them as ‘topas’ or ‘topass’—from the word ‘top’, which meant a gun. Gradually, the word ‘topass’ acquired a pejorative sense and was used as an expression of contempt for the Portuguese. Percival Spear (1932/1980) writes that in 1790, ‘the name Topass was still given to Portuguese and Indians who wore a hat and European dress’ (p.  62). In British Social Life in Ancient Calcutta, Long (1983) notes that the Portuguese population is referred to as ‘a black degenerate offspring of the ancient Portuguese, not to be depended on, not one in ten of whom was fit to be a soldier’ (pp. 34–35). The general attitude of contempt for the Portuguese is quite evident, the questions of mixed blood and colour being the chief markers of their segregation from the white, ‘pure-blood’ Europeans. However, 92

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marriages were not uncommon, and mostly young soldiers or officers would get into these mixed marriages, out of either lustful extravagance or romantic youthfulness. With the young officers and soldiers moving frequently from one place to another or dying of disease or battle, the fate of both the mother and the children became uncertain: ‘The children of these temporary attachments lived with their pariah or prostitute mothers until the age of fourteen, when many of them disappeared into the interior and others drifted into the bazaars’ (Spear, 1932/1980, p. 62). The mixed, half-caste, or quarter-caste Portuguese population was seen as combining the bad qualities of both the races, and Spear (1932/1980) quotes William Carey saying that the Portuguese Roman Catholics should be ‘universally despised by people of all ranks and descriptions’ (p. 63). In Calcutta, the Portuguese lived in the black part of the town, and one of their chief sources of income or business would be to generally run seedy taverns with a free flow of wine and women. They had a nexus with the lower-level banians, who would lead the newly arrived, unsuspecting griffin from the port straight to the tavern for a few nights of revelry. Fleecing the sahib, getting him into debt with the banian, or seducing him into marrying a young half-caste were common practices of these small taverns and boarding houses. In his memoirs, John Beames (1961/1984) talks about Mrs. Howe, ‘a typical Calcutta character . . . halfcaste, or as she preferred to call herself, a Eurasian, old and ugly in face but had probably been good-looking when young and had still a tall, fine, well-shaped body’ (p. 84). She was a kind of a socialite, with her fingers into many charitable and benevolent schemes, and was keen to find wives from the underprivileged sections of the society for the population of griffins. Beames writes, She had an immense crowd of women hangers-on, old and young, mostly of the Portuguese section, who are the idlest, loosest, and most improvident of the half-caste community. These ‘high-born beggars’ who bore the lofty names of Da Souza, D’Almeida, Da Silva, D’Rosario, Da Cruz, and the like, sponged upon her unmercifully and for them she slaved cheerfully. (p. 85) Beames recounts how this romantic and sentimental Mrs. Howe would never tire of introducing them to ‘slight, graceful, coffee-coloured young ladies with Portuguese names’ (p. 85).

Racial mapping as a strategy My attempt in this minor digression has been to unpack the curious racial dynamic that was an intrinsic part of the social and administrative system that was in vogue since the early years of the arrival of the English in India. 93

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The stereotyping of the Portuguese (or, for that matter, the Armenians) was symptomatic not only of racial mapping but also of an official narrative of division that could be discursively established in the impressionable minds of the young civilians and army officers alike. The ‘lazy or dishonest native’ or the ‘loose half-caste’ were necessary stereotypes that would act as caveats for the griffin, help to sustain a clear binary between the ruler and the ruled, and provoke, through naturalized social, cultural, and religious distancing, a class of rulers distinctly different from and superior to the native or the half-caste population. With the establishment of the empire, it became necessary to create structures of identity and methods of separation that could be sustained for a period of time. This led to the emergence, out of a clearly demarcated and segregationist model, of a managerial modernity that was distinctly different from the enlightenment model, in terms of both method and execution. This, however, was part of a complex web that was contingent in its various assumptions and practice. It is imperative to enumerate the markers of distinction in the first place. The British master class was dealing with a heterogeneity that was never easy to comprehend. Naturally, therefore, it was not easy to assign the population into categorically defined social and cultural groups that could be comprehensible through methods. In this book, we are talking primarily about the Bengali kerani. At the first instance, therefore, following a segregationist model, a difference in the salary structure between an almost equally able population of clerks would be the determinant of this division. Under the same, or almost similar, category of job, the English writer or assistant in late-eighteenth-century Calcutta would draw, for example, a salary of 400 rupees a month, the Eurasian or Portuguese writer would draw 140 rupees a month, and the Bengali kerani a sum of 30 rupees a month (Chakrabarti, 2005, p. 133). The discourse on ability is framed in an economy of salary structures that becomes a determinant for all other mores of life—social, cultural, and corporeal. As Rev. James Long writes in his 1862 report read at the meeting of the sociological section of the Bethune Society, The Kerani system is so much the child of the English trade and Government, that it demands special attention. One thing is clear, that as certain as English education has been limited as respects caste to Brahmans and Khaistas almost exclusively, so have the chief occupations of its alumni been those of keranis or copyists—an effectual way to turn an educated youth into a mere machine, and to render him simply an imitator or a copyer—as he is a copyist . . . the Bengali is the Englishman’s right hand—in what?—as a machine for copying, as a sort of looking glass to reflect his views without having any views of his own. (Long, 1862, p. 23) 94

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Clearly, Long, in assigning the kerani system to English trade in India, is discounting a long and important tradition of scribal culture prevalent in the country for centuries. But that is the least of our problems in this extract. Invested with a spirit of benevolence, Long has already reduced the Bengali kerani to an automaton, unable to think on his own, merely an assistant of his English superior, who is incidentally employed in the same profession, with more or less the same skill set and performing equally mechanical tasks. In being the English’s ‘right hand’, he is already subordinated, and Reverend Long presupposes a predetermined ethnographic mapping, markers of superiority that have been put into the discourse of the managerial modernity of empire. The implicit heterogeneity of native society is, however, a narrative that goes against the grain of such markers. While Brahmins and Kayasthas or the upper-caste, upper-class, English-educated society was where the kerani belonged, they were not the representatives of this class. I have discussed this in much detail in an earlier chapter, but it is important to remember that this heterogeneous nature of native society offered a consistent resistance to the various essentialisms of empire. In the same vein, the Portuguese half-caste was looked upon as an ambivalent interloper. He was not the representative of the master class, a firangi, or a ‘mixed breed’. Yet somewhere in the discourse, he was also a person with European blood in him. Thus, he belonged to the upper echelon within the domain of clerkship. He had a better salary, a better workspace, and more agency than the native kerani. Once in a while, he could also be promoted to the rank of a writer, a position that the kerani could never dream of. In Long’s Selections from Unpublished Records, a 1761 entry specifically mentions, one imagines as an exception, the employment of a Portuguese person as a writer. The record of the Committee of New Lands features the following entry on July 30: The Committee observing that numerous and prolix accounts come in from the different quarters of the Company’s acquisitions, and that for perspicuity’s sake it will be necessary to have them digested in proper books. Agreed the accountant of this Committee be allowed a Portuguese Writer to assist him in transcribing the same and other necessary business. (Long, 1973, p. 345) Clearly, the Portuguese writer is being appointed because of his facility in the language. However, instead of appointing him merely as a munshi or a clerk, he is appointed in the position of a writer, a position generally belonging to the English clerk. The European, even though mixed, may thus be invested with an agency that will elude the kerani forever. To comprehend the colonial workspace, it is thus important to know these racial markers that have always played a crucial role in the functioning of the business of 95

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empire. Outside the space of the office, however, within the domain that was less involved in the immediate running of the government, social relations were less rigid, and this opened up newer spaces of communication and relationships in a different narrative of enlightenment modernity. But that is a different discussion altogether, not germane to the concerns of this book.

The British writer: their location in the system It is possible to trace the presence of the British writer in India from the late seventeenth century, and gradually with the consolidation of Company rule, and subsequently the establishment of the empire, the writer became a conspicuous presence in most Indian cities of the time but most particularly in the capital city of Calcutta. If one were to trace the kind of lives that the writers led in India, it may be possible to infer that in spite of the many crucial changes in the nature of British presence in the subcontinent, there was a sense of homogeneity or consistency in the life and the behavioural pattern of the writer as a civilian in India. Even though his fate or fortunes have taken various and significant turns with the changes in the working of the Company, and later on the British Empire, the sahib writer in India has been a stereotype of sorts, living up to an image of waste and extravagance. As I said, by definition, the writer was a clerk, his functions being limited to the office space, maintaining ledgers and accounts, writing letters, and serving other such minor albeit necessary functions at the lowest rung of the administration. Before I talk about the various and singularly interesting lives of the British writers in India, it is imperative, perhaps, to note that bringing this section of the population into our discussion in this book will require a digression of sorts, albeit a necessary digression. I have said previously that the writer is the one who writes accounts and maintains ledgers. However, as we shall see, this British writer that we discuss here only marginally fits into such a framework. No doubt, he has a job description that sounds similar to that of a common clerk of the lower division. But the possibilities that emerge out of the job belie, in every sense, its mundane description. In short, the writer is not the clerk or will not assume the body politic of the clerk whom we have discussed so far. He is much more than a clerk, an over-reacher, an ambitious agent of the dominant nation in a situation of hegemonic advantage, seeking to benefit from the assumption of such a lowly position. It is also important to bear in mind that the extravagant lifestyle that defines the presence of these writers and factors in India, or the riches they carry back home, is a narrative that mostly dried up towards the middle of the nineteenth century. Also, neither the Bengali kerani of nineteenth-century Calcutta nor the British clerk in nineteenth-century London has anything in common with this writer. It is the nomenclature and his job description that bring the writer into this discussion. The British writer in colonial India or Calcutta 96

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assumes, therefore, a subversive agency here. In a way, unconsciously, he deconstructs the very notion of clerkship or keranidom, although, I dare say, he does not refashion it. The question to ask here would be whether the writer is a clerk at all. There is a consistent historical narrative that may be traced for both the kerani in Calcutta and the clerk in London. The writer, as we shall see, is an aberration, an aporetic presence that discomfits the formation of the body politic. Neither historically sustainable, nor continuously visible, the writer becomes a tenuous link, an ephemeral presence in the idea of clerkship. The central motif of my discussion in this book, a reading of the Bengali kerani vis-à-vis the British clerk, is unsettled by the writer. He is both a clerk and not one. On the other hand, to discount him from the discussion would be an oversight. Most of the English writers arrived in India at a young age (Firminger [1910] mentions Thomas Falconer, who arrived at Fort William in January 1710 at the tender age of 11) and had little or no idea of the larger enterprise that they were a part of. Most of them were just out of school, or not even, and were sent to India to serve as assistants in the Company offices or the various agency houses and later on in the various offices of the empire. They did not have any training in clerkship nor any exposure to the corporate enterprise in a foreign land that they suddenly discovered themselves in. In fact, till the establishment of the Fort William College in Calcutta in 1800, there was no concrete structural framework that would train these new entrants into public life in a foreign country. After arriving, most of them spent a few months trying to learn the language of the land or the workplace under the guidance of a munshi, upon completion of which they were sent for public service: to start working as a writer in an office. From the outset, the presence of these writers posed a series of problems for the administration. A major concern for the administration was that, young and inexperienced, the writer was easy prey for his banian. The banian was the native agent who also, supposedly, acted as a facilitator to make the life of the newcomer bearable in this new land. Thus, he would find a house for the sahib, employ a steward, select an extensive staff of servants for him, procure anything that the sahib might need, and even lend him money when he would run out of his salary, due to extravagance. As Sreepantho points out in his essay, the expenses of a writer had little to do with his earnings. Even if he was earning a few hundred rupees as salary, the monthly expenses of a writer, still a bachelor, would sometimes run up to 300 rupees (Sreepantho, 1999/2012, p. 93). Obviously, the writer would run into huge debts with the banian, and this became a major problem. As Percival Spear writes, Faced with . . . the deceit of the banian, the new arrival soon gave up the effort to understand and to control in bewilderment and despair. 97

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Henceforth, the banian was supreme, and provided he managed with reasonable prudence, was in a fair way to making the fortune that his master dreamed about. The banian, a Bengali Hindu of the commercial class and often a Brahmin, was the chief of the establishment. His importance lay in his control of the whole financial side of the establishment, which gave him great power over the servants by means of his control of the monthly wages, and over his master by means of the loans which most new arrivals raised on the security of their future prospects. (Spear, 1932/1980, pp. 51–52) I mentioned in the first chapter how this banian, generally belonging to upper-caste Hindu society, would acquire immense wealth and belong to the uppermost echelon of the bhadralok class, wielding both power and influence in native society. Spear (1932/ 1980) writes of how the banian was looked upon with ‘reverential awe’ and how the English were suitably convinced of the ‘superhuman cunning and skill of the banians’ (p. 52). The trajectory of most of these young writers was more or less similar. They would work as writers for a few years and then become a factor. Soon they would become junior merchants and, subsequently, senior merchants. Simultaneously, the banian would also become rich. On the one hand, the merchant would now pay back the huge sum of money that he incurred as debt during his time as a writer. Also, the banian would frequently join in the business venture or have other businesses of his own. There is an interesting letter from the court published in Reverend Long’s Selections from Unpublished Records that expresses unambiguously the injurious effects of the banians on the writers: We are well assured that one great reason of the Writers neglecting the Company’s business is engaging too soon in trade; this, by the assistance of their Banians, either furnishes them with the means of supporting extravagant expenses or lays an early foundation for distressed circumstances and improper influences, the certain consequences of both of which are and must be an inattention to and neglect of the Company’s business. (Long, 1869, p. 287) The letter therefore urges the Company to restrict the issue of dastaks (a permit for exemption of customs duties for private trade) to writers until they became factors or until they attained the age of 21 ‘and provided they discharge their duty during their continuance in the station of Writers to your satisfaction’ (Long, 1869, p. 287). The system of dastaks introduced by Robert Clive in 1757 was eventually abolished by Warren Hastings in 1775. Incidentally, one cannot help but notice that Warren Hastings’s first employment in India was as a writer for the East India Company, and Clive 98

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first came to India as a factor. However, in spite of many sanctions and proposed checks and balances, writers continued their lives of luxury and leisure, and most of them amassed so much wealth that when they went back to England, they were referred to, sardonically, as ‘nabobs’. Sisir Das notes that Lord Wellesley expressed his grave concern about these young and inexperienced writers when he wrote to the Court of Directors of the Company in July 1800, expressing the grave need for a training college and championing the cause for the establishment of the Fort William College. Conceding that the British possession in India was an expansive and a populous empire, he emphasized the need for educated Europeans to be diffused to distant parts of the country. He also expressed the need for the evolution of an effective machinery of governance that would have a nuanced understanding of the complexity and diversity of India—its languages and religions and social divisions—and found the commercial agents of the Company ill-equipped for the task: Wellesley remarked very strongly about the boys who were sent to India as totally incompetent to execute the duties of any station ‘beyond the menial labours, unwholesome and unprofitable duty of a mere copying clerk’. . . . Those boys were kept confined in Europe ‘to the commercial and mercantile interest’ and a ‘premature interruption of a course of study’ before they were sent to India could be hardly beneficial for them. (Das, 1978, pp. 4–5) The problem, therefore, was manifold. Most of the writers were young and inexperienced and were not in possession of any training that was necessary to join the administrative workforce. They had impressionable minds, and it was easy for them to go astray, given the lures of a colonized land, the special treatment reserved for the ruler, and the obvious privileges that they assumed to be their right. Any overt attempt at disciplining them or showing them their place in the sphere of work would entail an undervaluing of the hegemonic nature of the imperial enterprise. The sahib could not be treated on equal terms with the native. Thus, even with similar or fewer qualifications (or none), the writer had to be placed in a position of dominance vis-à-vis the common kerani. The first year or the griffin’s year would generally be spent, as I have already mentioned, learning the languages or the culture of the land. Most of the writers, without much cultural or social agency, did not possess any academic acumen and were reluctant to put in much effort into learning or academic pursuit. Leisure was aplenty, and with a continuous flow of money coming from the banian, the writers-to-be became easily used to an indolent and voluptuous life of the senses. More often than not, the administration would find it difficult to discipline this lot of young men, and thus, 99

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there were frequent official sanctions issued in an attempt to discipline them. In Long’s introduction to a later edition of Selections from Unpublished Records, its editor, Mahadevaprasad Saha, writes, Palankins, horses or chaises were at first prohibited to writers going to office, under pain of dismissal from office, but they were afterwards allowed in the hot and rainy seasons. In 1757 the Court wrote about the luxurious, expensive and idle manner of life which too much prevailed. . . . In 1767 the Court insist on the need of a total change of manners in the settlement; they condemn the luxury and extravagance that prevail, refer to their previous orders, to which little attention had been paid, and recommend a set of sumptuary laws. (Long, 1869/1973, p. XXXIII) In spite of such official sanctions and various other arrangements made in later years, such as sending all writers with a salary lower than 300 rupees to stay at the Writers’ Buildings or disallowing them from keeping cookrooms and gardens (Long, 1869/1973, p. XXXIII), the writers continued to live a life of the senses and be a source of concern for the Company and the government.

A writer’s life Apparently, because the Company intended to create a framework of discipline and work ethic among its employees, there was a structure to the daily routine of the writer. Although there are various versions of this routine and various ways and means of interpreting it, the fact remains that in its intention of creating a system of managerial modernity, the Company tried to reduce the lives of its employees to an empirical function of system and method. Mahadevaprasad Saha, in his introduction to Long, clearly enumerates the office hours of the writer: Covenanted servants were ordered in 1754 ‘to attend office from 9 to 12 in the morning, and in the afternoon when occasion be’. They were recommended also a more frugal manner of living, indispensible for early hours at office. An early ride at day-break, breakfast at 8, office from 9 to 12, dinner at 2, sleep, tea, ride, visiting and supper filled up the day at that period. (Long, 1869/1973, p. XXXIII) Of course, this version of the writer’s routine may easily be interpreted as a sensible mixture of work and leisure and as commensurate with the attempts of the company to instil a work ethic and discipline among its servants, 100

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along with the uncomplicated pleasure of enjoying the fruits of colonialism. However, although the junior servants would sometimes return to the office in the afternoon in case of immediate need, the seniors would generally ‘repair to their own or the Company’s garden, or in Calcutta take to the river in budge rows’ (Spear, 1932/1980, p.  14). Evenings would be spent under the influence of arrack, punch, and shiraz wine. Blechynden (1978) writes how due to the difficulty and expense involved in the import of good liquor from Europe, the native spirit arrack became popular and ‘was the cause of an immense deal of drunkenness and terrible mortality, especially among the young writers and soldiers’ (p. 97). Food was also plenty, and Spear (1932/1980) talks about the unhealthiness of ‘a heavy meat diet and of gargantuan meals in the heat of the day’ (p. 18), which was the cause of much disease and mortality in the civilian and the soldier alike. Blechynden (1978) also mentions the ‘languid’ Calcutta dinners, which were elaborate affairs on almost a daily basis, consisting of ‘a soup, a roast fowl, curry and rice, a mutton pie, a forequarter of lamb, a rice pudding, tarts, very good cheese, fresh churned butter, fine bread, excellent Madeira’ (p.  95). Card games were played in the evening parties to the accompaniment of music, and five-card loo, whist, and tredille were popular games. Gambling was a popular sport, and Spear (1932/1980) writes that ‘Gambling is a good index of boredom and of the craving for excitement in an unintellectual mind, and we can measure the dullness of the early factors’ lives by the violence of the methods they adopted to relieve it’ (p. 17). Many young writers were known to have lost a fortune in gambling and became sorely dependent on their banians to help them out. Since there was always a ready flow of cash, with the banians fishing out an inordinate amount of money on the one hand and most of the writers being involved in private trade (at least till the time Cornwallis became the Governor General) on the other, many of them were able to maintain a large retinue of servants in their households. There was thus the gomostah, or the general superintendent of the household; the munshi, or the teacher of languages; the palanquin bearers; the head servant, or the khansamah; the cook, or the babarchy; the khitmatgar, who waited behind the master’s chair during a meal; the abdar, who was employed to keep and serve the wine at the right temperature; the hookah-bardar, who serves the tobacco after dinner. At the office, there were the duftaree, who conducted menial office work, and the hurkarrah, or the peon. Also, of course, the household had a durwan, or doorkeeper, and a chowkidar, or guard. Not every writer could afford such a large retinue of servants, but with time, as they became factors or junior merchants or senior merchants in the company, or depending on the deal that they struck with their banians, they could lead a life of luxury and leisure. To put an end to such extravagance, the Company ordered all writers with salaries under 300 rupees to move to the Writers’ Buildings. As Sreepantho points out, the quarters in the Writers’ Buildings were not exactly one-room 101

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establishments but instead big, spacious apartments. However, now they were allowed only two servants and one cook each. Nor was the writer allowed to maintain a private bungalow (or bagaanbari) without the sanction of the Company. There were also strict regulars on the clothes that the writer was allowed to wear (Sreepantho, 1999/2012, p. 93). But the writers were not too worried, writes Sreepantho, with these changes. They knew that none of these changes were of any permanent import. Promotions were quick and business lucrative. With the next promotion and increment, they would move out of the Writers’ Buildings to larger and more-comfortable houses. And, in a few years’ time, they would amass enough wealth to move back to England. In this context, I mention an incident narrated by William Carey in the novel Carey Saheber Munshi, by Pramathanath Bishi. The Fort William College used to function from the ground floor of the Writers’ Buildings. One day, as the professors, pundits, and munshis assemble for teaching, they do not find any students in the classrooms. Carey informs them that the guard had fetched him from his Bowbazar residence the night before to stop the hooliganism of the writers: The young rascals were carousing with wine and women all night.  .  .  . By the time I arrived all hell had broken loose. They were not ashamed even after seeing me. . . . I pointed to the church and told them of their shameful behaviour at such close quarters of the church to which one replied, nearest to church is farthest from heaven. Shameless bunch! (Bishi, 1958/2015, p. 322) There is another incident, on a similar vein, towards the beginning of the same novel. As they drive by the Writers’ Buildings, Katy and John, two characters in the novel, notice a few white young men on the balcony. John refers to them as the ‘young nabobs’: These are the writers of the Company, just arrived from England. There training in nobabi (euphemism for a luxurious lifestyle) is not yet complete. Once done, they will become full-fledged nabobs and rule the country. . . . The good name of England is being compromised in this country due to the behaviour of these people. (Bishi, 1958/2015, p. 28) In due course, these men notice Katy and Lisa in the car and begin teasing them. Referring to the women as ‘sweetie’ and ‘darling’, they start singing paeans for them in a tone mixed with mockery and lust. The writers break into rambunctious laughter at the noticeable discomfort of the women and the loud protests of John and then start blowing kisses at them: ‘One for the master, one for the dame,/ One for the lame man who lives by the lane’ 102

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(Bishi, 1958/2015, p. 29). Such a fictional representation of the writers is culled from their lives in Calcutta and have a certain veracity. Little wonder that Spear (1932/1980) refers to the writers as being ‘a constant source of trouble’ (p. 9), and the Company administration was kept busy continuously policing the various misdemeanours of these young men. Till the time that Cornwallis separated the Revenue from the Commercial services in 1787, private trade was rampant among the civilians, officers, chaplains, and doctors. Free trade licences were available for trading in salt, tobacco, or saltpetre. In the countryside, the factors and merchants extracted huge sums of money as taxes from the common people through their agents and gomostahs. Thus, a person arriving in India to work as a writer or a clerk would, in the span of a few years, be able to make a fortune out of his stay and would return to England as a rich man, or a nabob. While such private trade and rampant use of free trade to augment individual fortunes had complicated implications for Company rule in India and its relationship with the British government in London, there were little checks and balances till the passing of the Regulating Act of 1773 and Pitt’s India Act of 1784, which led to strict sanctions on the rights of private trade. In the meantime, however, the writers and factors had their own success stories to relate. Thomas Falconer, for example, whom I referred to in the beginning of this chapter, came to Calcutta at the age of 11 in 1710 and was stationed in Fort William as a writer with an annual salary of £5. After working for 18 years for the Company, he returned to England in 1729 with a fortune of nearly £19,000 (Firminger, 1910, pp. 47–48). A careful scrutiny of the entire project of the selection and employment of writers and factors in India by the English East India Company reveals, in certain instances, a nefarious play of interest groups and a nexus among some of the highranking officers of the Company. Sreepantho writes about how, according to a census done in 1833, among all those who had been appointed as writers in the previous five years, only three belonged to the so-called middle class. Among them, 21 were sons of chaplains, 46 were sons of writers themselves, 78 were sons of important army officers of the Company, 146 were sons of businesspeople and bankers, and so on. Also, sons of at least nine barons had worked as writers in India before they became members of parliament back home, and at least 11 sons of parliament members were also writers. In fact, Sreepantho (1999/2012) concludes, the job of a writer in Calcutta was considered more lucrative than being a member of parliament in England (p. 94). Nikhil Sur (2019) writes about how there were open advertisements in 1793 for a writer’s job in Bengal for a sum of 1000 guineas (p. 12). Such a narrative is consolidated by the account of the Barwell family. William Barwell, who was a writer in Calcutta, was dismissed from service in January 1749 due to ‘his violent behaviour’ (Firminger, 1910, p. 173), after which he returned to England. Two of his sons, Richard and Robert, came to Calcutta as writers in the years 1758 and 1764 respectively. In January 1769, Richard 103

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wrote a singularly interesting letter to his sister Mary Barwell in England, which leaves little scope for the reader to conclude on the nature of corruption that had become an intrinsic part of the administrative machinery of the Company during that time. Richard writes, in your letter of the 15th April, you have requested. . . . some account of my affairs, and what I should like to have. . . . I can only say that I would spend five thousand pounds to secure to myself the chiefship of Dacca and to supervise the collection of the revenues of that province. . . . I would spend the same to secure to myself the Patna chiefship and collection of the revenues. . . . For such a promotion and a proper support in England, [one] would not scruple to lay out ten thousand pounds. (Firminger, 1910, p. 175) The money to be made from these ‘chiefships’ can be imagined only if a writer was ready to spend 5000 to 10,000 pounds in 1769 to procure these positions. The editor of Bengal Past and Present concludes at the end of this letter that ‘bribery and corruption were the two great twin-gods worshipped at Westminster during the eighteenth century’ (Firminger, 1910, p. 175). It is not difficult to understand that the very business of writerships and factorships was enmeshed in a more complicated and nefarious political narrative involving imperialism, the East India Company, and the British government. Percival Spear notices the nature of this transformation in the profile of the writer in India during the middle of the eighteenth century. Initially, the only interest of the writer turned merchant was trade. He regarded himself as merely a businessperson, made a fortune, and if he survived his time in India, would return to England and retire as a rich man, or a nabob. From the middle to the later years of the eighteenth century, however, the writer turned factor turned merchant became less of a trader and more of a contractor: with his connexion with politics and intercourse with real nawabs, [he] quickly acquired the taste for being an oriental prince. He became a ‘nabob’ in ideal, and commerce was only the method by which he obtained the necessary wealth. Indeed he often gave up trade for contracts because that promised speedier results. So we get a rapid transformation from the purely commercial factor of the ‘fifties’ to the merchant turned soldier or politician in the ‘sixties’, and finally proclaiming himself a ‘gentleman’. (Spear, 1932/1980, p. 37) It is this nexus between trading and politics, the direct relationship between benefiting from contracts and gaining an administrative position through influence or bribery, that led to the rise of the nabob on the one hand and 104

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to the slow but inevitable fall of the fortunes of the Company on the other. It is important to make a subtle distinction here. Not all writers and factors who made a fortune earned the sobriquet of the nabob. Before 1750, many writers turned merchants made loads of money, went back to England, invested their money in land and settled down. It was only after Plassey that the factors and merchants moved to the districts and came in direct contact with the Indian nawabs and were introduced to a certain way of life and manners. Politics played a crucial role in collating desire for wealth with the desire for power; money with titles, prestige, and upward social movement. Thus the nabobs appeared in England only after Plassey ‘with their wealth and ostentation, their retainers, their despotic temper and their luxury . . . the tastes and habits which marked the “Nabob” of later eighteenth century England’ (Spear, 1932/1980, p. 32). Many young civilians were used to keeping a female companion (zenana or bibi), and it was often an aspect of social prestige. Also, most of the writers arrived in India as young unmarried men, and they had to remain in India for a considerable period of time. For some of them, their wives did not agree to travel to India; for certain others, the demands for luxury and the upkeep of an English wife could sometimes prove to be difficult. Therefore, the directors of the Company acceded to the demand of these young men to keep a native bibi in India. They also believed that the presence of a woman would help in controlling the unruly passions of the young hormonal men (Sur, 2019, p.  192). Kincaid writes that many of these young men ‘often ended by becoming genuinely attached to their dark mistresses’ (Kincaid, 2019, p. 133). However, the mistresses would also frequently stray, and the sahib was duped into accepting someone else’s child to be his. This is captured wonderfully in the satiric poem ‘The Grand Master’, which describes the birth of the master’s son. The master is referred to as Qui Hi (possibly because he would call for his servants by saying ‘Koi hain?’). A part of the poem proceeds as follows: Our hero now, without pretence, Thought himself of some consequence; A child he’d got, and what was curious, He knew the infant was not spurious; For though Qui Hi was never tied By licence to his Indian bride, Yet he was confident that she Had acted with fidelity. (as cited in Kincaid, 2019, p. 134) The fate of most of these half-caste children hardly resembled those of their fathers. Those that were taken back to England by their fathers could not adjust to the highly racist colonial society there. The white population 105

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in England did not accept them as one of their own. Thus, many of them chose to come back to India and in spite of having received a gentleman’s education ‘had to live the life of clerks’ (Spear, 1932/1980, p. 63). Others, who never went to England, led fashionable lives so long as their rich and influential fathers lived in India: ‘But when his father sailed for England, leaving his mother with a pension and no education, and himself with education and no pension . . . there was no other resource but to join the society of “krannies” or subordinate clerks’ (Spear, 1932/1980, p.  64). Here lies the answer to a conundrum. As I have iterated throughout this chapter, the writer was not exactly a kerani, and there is an inevitable racial marker that determines his location in the system of the managerial modernity of the empire. But as soon as the racial trope is compromised, education holds little value. The half-caste son of the writer is relegated to the level of the kerani, the lowliest possible marker of a seemingly white-collar profession. There is no redemptive aspect to the profession of the kerani. He must remain, within every epistemological framework, the figure of lack and deprivation.

Administrative reforms: writers as professionals Major and significant changes in the internal functioning of the Company followed the passing of the Regulating Act of 1773 and Pitt’s India Act of 1784. With Lord Cornwallis banning private trade by the civil servants of the Company in 1793, a string of important reforms was unleashed on the Company servants, and within a decade of the nineteenth century, the extravagance of the nabob, the pomp and splendour of the writer in the course of making a fortune, was already a thing of the past. The Company was already sinking into major debts and realized that one of the important factors for such below-par performance was the free rein that it had allowed its employees. The coming together of business and politics, rampant corruption, and horse trading between the employees in India and the Company officials in London led to significant depletions of the Company’s gains, and things were fast getting out of hand. Thus, from the last years of the eighteenth century into the first decade and after of the nineteenth, the Company tried to restore its past glory as well as bring back the confidence of the people in Company administration. Percival Spear notices in the Company rule of the first 30 years of the nineteenth century ‘the afterglow of former glory’ (Spear, T. G. P. Papers, p. 1): Gone were the spacious days of the Nabobs, when every merchant was a politician and every politician a merchant, when fortunes could be made, lost in England, and made again in the course of a few years. For if English life in India even to-day seems comfortable enough and even opulent compared to contemporary standards in 106

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England, it must always be remembered that compared to the past it is simple and almost frugal. (Spear, T. G. P. Papers, p. 1) Spear notes in his essay how Cornwallis was the real founder of the Indian Civil Service and how under his careful eye the notion of ‘public duty steadily replaced that of private gain’ (Spear, T. G. P. Papers, p. 2). Although both types of Company servants were still to be found, the one seeking fortune went into the commercial branch of the service, ‘which through its liberty of private trade, remained lucrative until its abolition in 1834’ (Spear, T. G. P. Papers, p. 2). But those who were looking for fame and power went into the political department of the Company, and gradually in the course of the nineteenth century, the fabric of the administrative machinery was transformed from the purposelessness of frivolous enjoyment to the purposefulness of an intense engagement in the politics of the times. The implications for such sanctions and the newly introduced acts and rules by the Company also affected our writer. The lucrative prospects of accumulating wealth within the span of a few years, the scant regard for the job of the writer, and the easy and certain rise from being a writer to being a merchant had all become a thing of the past. Writership had suddenly become a regular kind of job with a steady and modest salary, although more purposeful and with prospects of being involved in the larger and complicated politics of running an empire. The following is what an ex-civilian wrote to his future generation who plan to take up the jobs of writers in India: earnestly do I entreat you to reflect well on the step you take, when you accept of a writership, and not to rush blindly into a situation from which it is difficult, and in many cases impossible, to retreat, and which may make you unhappy for life. . . . The golden days of India have long gone by, and if you are to return at all, it can only be after an actual residence in that country of twenty-two years. . . . lay aside all notions of going out to India in order to make a rapid fortune: the chances are that you make none, and that, at the end of twenty-five years’ service, you find yourself as poor as when you set out, with a broken constitution, ruined spirits, and the knowledge of no one earthly thing which can enable you to gain your bread in any other country. (‘Advice’, 1832, p. 187) Interestingly, this ex-civilian lists the reasons for a writer to not travel to India to make a fortune, a prospect unthinkable till the late years of the eighteenth century. He mentions that a surgeon or a soldier is trained in such a manner that their expertise may be useful even outside of the colonial or 107

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Indian domain. But the writer, trained to perform typical professional duties specific to India ‘cannot carry his art away with him and make it profitable elsewhere’ (‘Advice’, 1832, p. 187). The author of this piece then launches a tirade against the East India College at Haileybury, which was a college set up in 1806 to train prospective writers who would be sent to India to work with the East India Company. The workings of the college, along with those who studied there to become writers in India, constitute an interesting episode in the narrative of writership and needs some careful attention.

The East India college and the writers A number of reasons resulted in the closing down of regular classes and technically signalled the closure of the Fort William College in Calcutta in 1854. Among them were the reasons of excessive pressure on the exchequer to maintain and train so many civil servants; many young writers took an inordinately long time to pass the examinations; discipline was also a major reason, with many English youths regularly misbehaving with their native teachers and munshis; the writers also got used to an indolent life in Calcutta, and most of them ran into huge debts; and on many instances, the necessary binary of the colonizer and the colonized that was instrumental in running the business of empire was being compromised by the proximity of the writers to a native population even before they had properly acquired the taste of ruling over a people. The Company thought it to be a much better idea to train the young writers and civil servants in England before they started on their journey to India. The college at Haileybury was thus an easy substitute for the Fort William College, and through a method of nomination, the directors of the East India Company sent prospective writers and civil servants to the college at Haileybury for training. There was of course an entrance examination, but for most of the nominated entrants, it was a cakewalk. A noted Haileybury alumni, John Beames (1961/1984), writes in his memoir, I and six other nominees were put through, what to me, was a very easy examination. The Antigone of Sophocles, Horace’s Epistles, the Gospel of St. Luke in Greek, Paley’s Evidences, a paper of easy Mathematics (Euclid and Algebra) and another equally easy on History. We all passed without difficulty . . . and . . . were admitted as students at Haileybury College’. (p. 61) The following ex-civilian who warns the prospective writers about the bleak prospects of taking up a writership in India is in all probability a Haileybury student and acerbic in his assessment of the college. He calls the institution a ‘monstrous absurdity’ (‘Advice’, 1832, p.  188) and finds its entire 108

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programme, and the project, unnecessary and unprofitable to the trainees and a waste of time and resources. He writes, The necessary examination for admission, absurd as it is, will not be a matter of any difficulty whatever: I say absurd, for what is the utility of vulgar and decimal fractions, a knowledge of the Greek Testament and Latin classics, to an East-Indian civilian? At the very commencement of your career, you will begin to experience that system of voluminous documents on affairs of no importance, which characterizes all the departments of the East-India Company. . . . One hundred guineas a year are paid by each student for the monstrous mummery of this college. . . . With regard to the system of education pursued there, I do not think it ever entered into the mind of man, to conceive anything so ill adapted to the purposes intended as the education at Haileybury is to the subsequent career of a civilian. (The Asiatic Journal, pp. 188–89) Interestingly, however, John Beames seems to be a rather proud alumnus of the college. An entrance to Haileybury signals, for him, ‘the unexpected opening of such a brilliant career’ (Beames, 1961/1984, p. 61), and throughout his career in India, in the future, he speaks of his special bonding with other Haileybury alumni. Another crucial development, in the meantime, complicated this reformed scene of recruitment of writers and civil servants to India. The Indian Civil Service examination was floated by the British government, and the first batch of men appointed through an entrance examination had gone out to serve in India in 1856. There was thus a division in the civil servants between who were now called the competition men and the Haileybury men. Beames writes that although ‘the discipline was shamefully lax, and the moral standard very low, the Haileybury men in most cases turned out well in India, and our having been two years together gave us a camaraderie which the Competition men had not’ (Beames, 1961/1984, p.  75). There was in place a sense of competitive zeal among this breed of young men who were employed through some form of checks and balances, and slowly the random and arbitrary nature of the earlier systems of recruitment were weeded out. There was a professionalism in place among the new recruits, who were ready to do the regular job of the writer before being promoted, in due course, to higher and more important positions. Some part of the old system still prevailed. Beames (1961/1984) refers to the Fort William College as an ‘imaginary institution’ (p. 80), which recruited a munshi for each civilian upon his arrival. It also conducted the examination that the new arrival still had to pass before he could formally join work. There was still a lot 109

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of leisure and luxury, and it was as late as 1858 when Beames (1961/1984) talked about getting into debt because of his expensive life in Calcutta: ‘Thus it came to pass that hardly any man left Calcutta without getting heavily into debt; a man was said to have ‘turned the corner’ whose debts exceeded one lakh of rupees’ (p. 83). Possibly, the new system coming into force also led to a change in nomenclature, and the writer was now called an assistant, with minor magisterial powers. Beames (1961/1984) describes his first posting as an assistant in an obscure station in Punjab where he was to assist his superior, a deputy commissioner named Adams: Adams let me first to his own court, a large-roughly-furnished room full of native clerks sitting on carpets on the floor, who all rose and saluted, bowing almost to the ground as we entered. . . . Then he took me into another room . . . pointed to a small group of clerks who were all bowing elaborately and said. . . . ‘This is your court, and these are your amla, now go to work’, and before I could open my mouth to ask him a single question he had turned and abruptly left the room. (p. 98) A number of interesting conclusions emerged from the interstices of this excerpt. Given the vast expanse of the empire, it was difficult for the British government to always find suitable officers to run the entire enterprise. Second, it would seem from the foregoing description that Beames was indeed playing the role, tentatively, of a head of office or a head clerk in charge of many native clerks, or amla. However, with minor magisterial powers as an assistant, and with all that bowing and saluting, the young civil servant would also be infused with a sense of empowerment. Perhaps then, Sreepantho’s definition of ‘writer’ with which I had begun this chapter, of his being nothing more than a lower-division clerk, had changed over time but had not been completely transformed. Even when the writer becomes the assistant, there is a part of him that manages the clerks, and he is still only next in a position of hierarchy. However, the colour of his skin would make all the difference, and that is how the managerial modernity of empire would keep its enterprise going.

The gradual transformation: an important example To conclude, then, I use an example of a writer’s life and the trajectory of his career which might reveal how the later generation of writers could, if they so wished and with diligence and a bit of luck, be important instruments of governance in the imperial enterprise. Neil Benjamin Edmonstone arrived in India as a writer for the East India Company in 1783 at the age of 17. His arrival in India was in the twilight of when the Company was 110

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already beginning to reassess the ill-effects of the fantastic lives that the writers led and trying to impose sanctions and a sense of discipline on its employees. The Regulating Act had already been passed, and the Pitt’s India Act was due the very next year. Immediately attached to the secretary’s office as an examiner and later as an assistant in a judicial office; he was soon after appointed as the assistant Persian and Bengali translator to the Board of Revenue and the second assistant to the registrar at the Sudder Diwani Adalat (Edmonstone, 1841, p.  3). He speaks of receiving ‘much personal kindness and attention’ (Edmonstone, 1841, p.  3) from Warren Hastings. During the time of Cornwallis, in 1788, he was appointed as an assistant to the Embassy sent to Hyderabad before coming back to Calcutta in 1790 to resume his post as a Persian translator. He recounts that his position as the Persian translator ‘was of a peculiarly confidential and responsible nature and of high importance in the scale of the local administration’ (Edmonstone, 1841, pp. 6–7) and that he had to meet the governor general on a daily basis ‘to impart information and receive instructions’ (Edmonstone, 1841, p. 7). He writes in his memoir that he was also involved in the translating into Persian of ‘the Voluminous Code of Laws and Regulations promulgated under the new system of Revenue and Indicature’, along with the Permanent Settlement (Edmonstone, 1841, p. 8). Having thus secured the faith of the governor general, he had a raise in salary in 1794 from 18,000 rupees per annum to 30,000 rupees per annum. Subsequently, Edmonstone accompanied the governor general to the important mission of dethroning Wazir Ali Khan from the throne of Lucknow and replacing him with Saadat Ali Khan. Overwhelmed by this mission, he writes, It is not going too far to say that this Revolution constituted one of many perilous conjunctures in the history of British India on the success of which the fate of our Eastern Empire was involved. . . . The duties of my official situation were on that occasion of a nature peculiarly important delicate and responsible. . . . As I was fortunately able to carry on our epistolary correspondence in the Persian language without the aid of a Moonshee, it became unnecessary to entrust a functionary of that class with the secret, the disclosure of which must have had the most disastrous consequences. (Edmonstone, 1841, pp. 10–11) The seriousness and application of Edmonstone in this crucial enterprise cannot be overemphasized. He was sincere, and he proved his expertise as a writer for the empire. His palpable excitement is discernible on the pages of his memoir. All this, however, was before the Haileybury days and before the days of the introduction of a formalized civil service. Clearly, however, after Cornwallis, things were changing in the basic governance practices of 111

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the empire in India. Eventually, Edmonstone became the private secretary of Lord Wellesley and Lord Minto. Governor General Minto wrote of Edmonstone in 1813: Of Mr. Edmonstone’s eminent and various talents I have profited in two relations: but I cannot augment the reputation he has long possessed by saying that he is as deeply and intimately versed in the vast and complicated political interests of India, as other Men can be in the simplest and most familiar branches of knowledge. His powerful judgement informed by his correct and unbounded knowledge has entitled him to be what I profess always to have esteemed him, the Minister, rather than the Secretary. (Edmonstone, 1841, pp. 30–31) Eventually, Edmonstone rose to the position of the chief secretary to the government, the vice-president in council and the deputy governor of Bengal till he resigned and returned to England to become a director of the East India Company in 1820. Although Edmonstone’s life and career may be read as an exception, he rose from the ranks of a writer, as an almost untrained teenager arriving in India, and eventually became an active witness and player in the history of the British Empire in India. This is also where one might clearly be able to distinguish the difference between the common kerani and the writer. The writer was after all a confidant. Whatever his qualification or experience, he was a representative of the ruling class. He had the faith of his employer. He always already belonged to the upper echelon within the hierarchical structure. The kerani was an appendage, the writer, a cog. On the other hand, in spite of a difference in class identity, both the kerani and the munshi were native informants, part of an interest group invested with dimensions of counter-discursivity. The writer may have been truant, unproductive, and wasteful, but after all, the writer was on the inside of the empire, and the kerani, however diligent, was always on the outside. There will always remain an ambivalence about the class position of the writer in terms of the narrative of his career. There were also different patterns that the life of a writer in India followed: there were untrained and wealth-craving writers; there were the Haileybury alumni; there were the recruits from the Indian Civil Service. However, in all these avatars, the writer was distinctly different from the kerani in Calcutta and the clerk in London. The writer was also an imperialist, belonging always to the master class, notches above both the clerk and the kerani, with different aspirations and quite a different career graph.

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5 FROM MANUALS TO MANIFESTOS Discipline and agency

In the previous three chapters, I have endeavoured to systematically unpack the peculiar problem of defining who the clerk or the kerani is. No doubt, the question is fraught and, as I have discussed, is distributed into aspects of social and cultural narratives that need to be understood through equally fraught lenses of colonialism, modernity, and empire. I have tried to show the emergence of three distinct albeit relatable strands that make up the constitution of this apparently simple low-rung cadre of ministerial workers who were a part of the administrative workforce both in India and in England throughout the long nineteenth century. Oftentimes, I have had to slip backwards into the eighteenth century or move forward into the twentieth in order to make sense of an implicit narrative of continuity and disruption that was intrinsic to the study of clerical labour across time and continents. Although the two had similar jobs and skill sets required to perform their duties, I have tried to distinguish each one of these three stands from each other in incommensurable ways. The clerk in London had distinct problems within a sophisticated structure of an emergent European modernity with its related mores of mechanization and the changing nature of the office space. Similarly, the narrative of the development of clerkship in the London of the nineteenth century was markedly different from what the job entailed for the kerani in the Calcutta of the nineteenth century, in a different pattern of colonial modernity with different expectations and rules for its workforce, with the newly emergent office space, and with significant changes in the model of daily existence that they had followed erstwhile. The writer arriving from England clearly belonged to a different discourse of managerial modernity and in spite of an ostensibly similar job description led a different life and had different expectations from his career in India. Therefore, in spite of a shared history of sorts, it should ideally be read more as a history of difference than as a history of similarity. Both the clerk in London and the kerani in Calcutta in the nineteenth century share a history of accountability in the office space, a discipline and rigour, and a practice of routine office life in spite of a significant psycho-cartographic gap in their discourses. They are a part of different narratives of modernity, emergent 113

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and tentative in their own ways, whereas the writer in India may be seen as an anachronistic reminder of an unfinished premodern narrative that had a curious relationship with these forms of emergent modernities.

The clerk manuals To trace the history of clerical service is to notice the emphasis that employers across continents have laid on ideas of discipline and rigour. This has led to a significant body of publications, in the form of clerk manuals or handbooks, that enumerate the rules and regulations that a clerk must follow for professional development on the one hand and for the smooth running of the office and its tributaries on the other. Apparently, this will not be construed as a problematic contention. As I discussed in two earlier chapters, the job of a clerk did not entail either a predisposition towards or affinity with ‘becoming’ a clerk, nor was there any programme in place that would systematically train a clerk before he had a job. Most of his training would be on the job, and a guidebook or a manual is a helpful companion to have under the circumstances. Presumably because most of the clerks would begin young, some fresh from school, or not even, the general tone of many of these handbooks is patronizing and pontificatory. For example, a clerk’s manual published from London clearly considers the clerk to be little more than a schoolboy: The situation of every clerk at the beginning of his career, is that of a pupil: he is still at school, though no longer a school-boy: the physical discipline has disappeared, but the moral discipline which has superseded it, is yet more severe. (Houlston Industrial Library[HIL], 1878, p. 15) As part of such training in moral discipline, the manual suggests in no uncertain terms that the clerk be able to discount feelings of ‘imaginary injury’, ‘suspicion of insult’, ‘silly pride’, or ‘childish vanity’ (HIL, 1878, p. 15). All of these feelings betray a ‘true manliness of character’ and ‘with a sulky clerk, everything goes wrong, and everybody is displeased’ (HIL, 1878, p. 15). Undoubtedly, such instructions open up the debate on the representation and the fashioning of the ‘self’ of the clerk at multiple levels. The trajectory of the emergence of the ‘self’ from being a mere schoolboy to ‘true manliness’ is one that is also curiously marked by submission and subordination. On the one hand, there is the infantilizing of the ‘self’, calling it a pupil, suggesting a register of necessary moral disciplining; in the same breath, it introduces a trope of masculinity by situating the presence of the clerk in his office space in an almost transcendental narrative of ‘true manliness’. The journey towards that epitome of manliness is marked by the act of ensconcing the ‘self’ in a concealment of the subject by relegating the personal into 114

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the private, thereby effacing it completely. By introducing the notion of the ‘moral’ as a necessary tool for effacement, the fabric of the self is thrust into another narrative of diffidence, lack, and guilt. The clerk must possess the qualities of ‘patience, perseverance, courtesy, cheerfulness, and perhaps more than any other quality, an humble distrust of self and a deferential respect for the judgment of others’ (HIL, 1878, p. 16). It is possible to read in these lines the essential assessment of the position of the clerk in the office. A distrust of the self and faith in the judgement of others are clear signals of discounting the ability of the clerk to ‘think’ or decide for himself, of instilling a blind faith in hierarchy, or in short, of making him feel inadequate and always dependent on the system. The tone of most of these handbooks is one of complete control and intended at framing the body politic of the clerk in set moral, ethical, and physical dimensions that may not be flouted under any circumstance. On the other hand, however, there is another important narrative that locates the clerk in the workspace as a ‘brain worker’, as opposed to the labourer, who earns through physical labour (Heller, 2011, pp. 66–67). That is to say, in a larger society, the clerk, due to his white-collar job, has a salary (instead of a wage), and his apparent middle classness is construed as ‘respectable’; he earns his bread by brainwork, in the office space, where he is discouraged from thinking or acting on his instinct of the reasonable or the rational. In a longer discussion on this, it is possible to read such a location of the clerk in his office space in terms of a narrative of feminizing the clerk body, thereby divesting it of reason or rationality and thus rendering him incapable of judgement and thought. Therefore, the young clerk is seen in most of these manuals as ignorant, and it is suggested that he practises a ‘submissiveness to rebuke’ (HIL, 1878, p. 20). A closer look at the manuals reveals that there is a systematic attempt in these volumes to establish a register of control over the life of the clerk, not only in the space of the office but also outside it. The apparent gesture is one of a master or a father figure giving life lessons to the young clerk recently initiated into the professional world: Regularity, punctuality, and precision—neatness, propriety, and decorum of person, habit, and conduct—are amongst the essentials of youth, in a Counting House, as in the world at large. Perseverance in the practice of these virtues—always premising the strictest integrity, in thought, word, and deed—will rarely if ever fail to procure respect, distinction, wealth, and honour. Never, even for a moment, must one of them be neglected. (The Young Clerk’s Manual, 1846, p. 5) These are the opening lines of The Young Clerk’s Manual published in London in 1846. It is not difficult to see that the preaching of the Victorian work ethic in the office space is packed in a moral register that easily extends 115

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beyond the space of the professional and into ‘the world at large’. The manuals establish a code, almost a carceral structure of virtues that promise to make a ‘man’ out of a young clerk, showing him every step of the way, including those that have no direct dealings with his professional duties. Thus, Houlston’s manual assumes the role of a conduct book for the clerk, advising him on matters such as self-discipline, relaxation, marriage, and sartorial choices. First, the young clerk is put in his place by reminding him that of the many hundreds of clerks that are easily available, his employment is merely a matter of ‘chance’ and not of skill, and ‘it is a mere chance if they ever earn more than enough to maintain themselves, or if they ever deserve even these scanty earnings’ (HIL, 1878, p. 9). The notion of the ‘self’ is thus relegated immediately into the domain of dispensability. It is by making him a cog in the wheel, divesting the clerk of a personality, that a discourse of control is established which extends out of the domain of the office and into his private life. The manual talks of a systematic distribution of the 24 hours in the life of a clerk. Amusements are not out of place nor unjust and improper if ‘they are pursued in strict subordination to a system of daily labour’ (HIL, 1878, p. 23). However the clerk must be careful to ‘refrain from pushing relaxation to the extent of habitual excitement’ (HIL, 1878, p. 24). The manual also clearly instructs the clerks about the kind of company they should keep or friendships that they should indulge in after work. It understands the needs of men, but then ‘it should be the society of the intelligent—not of the idle; and the three or four hours devoted to it, should neither be absorbed in frivolous gossip, nor spent in trifling, and perhaps dangerous amusement’ (HIL, 1878, p. 25). Also, he should choose friends who have an affinity for reading and the fine arts rather than theatre and cards. Letter writing, when practised in moderation, is a good skill that may stand the clerk in good stead even in his office. However, ‘epistolary correspondence has its dangers as well . . . more especially if carried on with friends of the other sex’ (HIL, 1878, p. 26). Likewise, while novel reading is a moderately decent habit, the clerk must avoid the ‘depraved volumes of French intrigue . . . the profound folly of German sentiment’ (HIL, 1878, p. 33). Also, it will be good for the clerk with a reading habit to remember the caveat that too much indulgence in the habit is ‘as hurtful to the mind . . . as habitual dram-drinking is to the body’ (HIL, 1878, p. 34). Soon after, the volume engages with the important question of marriage. Unhesitatingly, it declares that ‘an automaton would prove a better clerk than a lover’ (HIL, 1878, p. 38). The idea of marriage is contrary to ‘steadfastness of application’ at work and ‘freedom from anxiety’ or a ‘uniform cheerfulness of temper’ otherwise (HIL, 1878, p. 39). The pages that follow give the young clerk a simplistic and misogynistic exposition of the tricks that young women might play on the innocent clerk suitor. The handbook warns the clerk in no uncertain terms about the peculiar snares of womankind: 116

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The graces of the ballroom . . . will too often evanesce in the truthdetecting glare of open day. What is alluring in the person is brought out into bold relief, exhibited to the extent that modesty will allow, and sometimes a trifle beyond it; what is repulsive is as studiously veiled—a little supporting here, a little tight-lacing there, a padding in one place, and pasteboard in another . . . and make all charming by candle-light. (HIL, 1878, p. 40) Initially, the woman would woo and exchange hair and locket and portrait, but soon she would burn his letters and go ‘to the next dance to flirt away her momentary vexation with another’ (HIL, 1878, p. 42). The unsuspecting clerk would be ruined and in his despair would lose prospects of betterment in his job. Both of the manuals that I have used in my discussion so far were published in the nineteenth century—one towards the middle and the other towards the end of it. Thus, to closely read these manuals and a concomitant narrative of enlightenment modernity will give a curious turn to our debate here. I have already discussed in the chapter on London clerks how rapid mechanization, a change in the nature of the office space, and the corporatization and systemization of clerical work had come together as a narrative of modernity that deconstructed the stability of the counting-house days and called for a fresh perspective that would define the nature of clerical work for the future. The publication of these manuals opens up the liminal space where it is possible to read this entire project of modernity and the office space against the grain and to question the authenticity of such claims. The changes in the physical space, or shifts in technology, are less significant as markers of modernity than the less cosmetic and more representative change in the way there could be epistemic or discursive shifts. Modernity, it seems, did not change the subject position of the clerk in any major way. The proof of this claim remains in the publication of these manuals that systematically refuse to assume any agency in the body politic of the clerk. The overt and complete control of the life of the clerk is symptomatic of a relationship of power that has not changed, because of this shift from the counting house to the modern office. The clerk remains an automaton, dispensable and worthy of contempt, and the code of the discourse is laid out in such a manner that it is possible to encroach on every aspect of his life outside the office, rescue him from the many snares of everyday existence, and remind him of his purpose in this world, which is the office.

Manuals for native keranis A similar narrative is played out in the colonized space, with a sharper focus on divesting all possible agency from the kerani and with forbidding 117

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restrictions on his life both inside and outside the office. It is unnecessary to reiterate the dissimilar nature of the space and the different kind of power dynamic involved here: the idea of the office itself was new to the kerani; he was using a foreign language, mostly unaware of its nuances; as the colonized native, his rights were always contingent. A manual for clerks in India first published in 1889 from Calcutta seems to have been quite popular and quickly went into a third edition by 1903. The publication and popularity of the clerk manuals had a direct correspondence with the way the employment of clerks was being controlled by a regulatory authority. The process of random selection on the basis of personal choice was gradually giving way towards the latter half of the nineteenth century to structured entrance examinations and a more rigid system of checks and balances, both in England and in India. The government of India had introduced competitive examinations from 1883 for filling up clerical posts in the Imperial Secretariats. Interestingly, however, a close look at the manual reveals the machinations of an imperial logic rather than a simple attempt at stratification and ordering of the clerical population. The salary grade for which this manual is typically directed generally applied to the native kerani and rarely to the sahib clerk. Thus, although a pretence of fair practice was introduced through the competitive examination, an implicit mechanism of a systemic division between the ruler and the ruled could also be perpetuated through a carefully crafted handbook of rules and reprimands. Charles Hardless’s manual for the ministerial staff in India is more direct in its coercive intent than most of the manuals published in London were. The fatherly advisor in London has quietly given way to the figure of the master in Calcutta. The kerani must not be ‘guided alone by the amount of salary, the length of office hours, the frequency of holidays . . . [and] must be willing to do any work that is allotted to them’ (Hardless, 1889, p. 194). Although the nature of ‘any work’ has not been specified, the nature of the punishment and its consequence are clearly spelled out. If the kerani loses his job due to insubordination and incurs the wrath of his master, ‘he will find it very difficult to secure another [job] in Government Service’ (Hardless, 1889, p. 194). The threat is conspicuous. All aspirational markers for the kerani have been cautiously clipped away: he may not ask for a better salary; he must not complain about long office hours; and holidays will be few and far between. The corporeal self of the kerani is almost entirely taken over by a closure of the economy of space that allows no shifts. The trope of incarceration is overwhelmingly present. And any lateral shift to another job is also rendered impossible by the threat of the delinquent being thrown out of the government register. The kerani is prohibited, in no uncertain terms, from ‘pressing too often and persistently for promotion’ (Hardless, 1889, p. 193) and making himself indispensable to his superior by due diligence and perseverance. He is also asked to ‘not be always thinking that his salary is too little’ (Hardless, 1889, p. 193): 118

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The clerk who constantly applies to other offices for appointments, who does as little work as he can for his salary, who is the last to come in the morning and first to leave at evening, will certainly be superseded in promotion, and in the event of a reduction of establishment the first to be dismissed. Heads of offices keep a kindly eye on those clerks who are assiduously attentive to their duties, who are ready for work at any time and make no complaint of long hours, pressure of work, or small salary. (Hardless, 1889, p. 193) The manual concedes that it is possible for the clerk to think of a method of performing a particular job, ‘but he should not carry his ideas into effect before receiving permission to do so’ (Hardless, 1889, p. 161). Ideally, every kerani should attempt to be the first to arrive at the office and the last to leave (Hardless, 1889, p. 162). He should look upon holidays as a matter of privilege and not a right (Hardless, 1889, p. 163). Even the fact that a poorly paid kerani could incur debts and become insolvent is prohibited by a government order. The manual quotes Circular Memo No. 67–2816 to 2821 dated November 19, 1874, as clearly stating the desire of the governorgeneral-in-council ‘of taking severe notice of the misconduct of clerks . . . who allow themselves to fall into embarrassed circumstances’ (Hardless, 1889, p. 165). The notice further reads as follows: It is no valid excuse for hopeless indebtedness to show that it has been caused by standing security for friends. . . . Assistants in Government offices should clearly understand that if they voluntarily contract debts or obligations which they are unable to meet, they render themselves liable to summary dismissal. (Hardless, 1889, p. 165) One is tempted to read this notice against the kinds of debts that the writers fell into during their time in India, particularly Calcutta, and the kindly eye with which the government would deal with such cases of insolvency. But the native clerk had accepted his fate of being the neglected automaton with a sense of equanimity and minimal resentment. The average native clerk was used to both his mundane labour and his low pay. A short pamphlet on the daily life of a nineteenth-century clerk in the city of Bombay features the following about the almost mechanical affinity of the person with his job: He either walks fast or takes a tram, for with him it is a point of honor to reach office just in time. . . . He will not stay away from his work for any trifling reason or because he is late, on the contrary he takes great delight in attending the office regularly. If he stays away he will not feel easy, for what has a Hindu clerk to do in his house, 119

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or who has he to go to? His friends are all busy, and even if one was at home, he would not like to go to him then, much less to let the neighbor know he has stayed at home. (Hindu Clerks, 1879, p. 8) The native clerk had naturalized his labour as much as he had accepted his low pay and lack of respectability. It was only sometimes that his wife lamented the English education of her husband, which she believed had reduced them to such a state of penury: Dancing girls and other bad women eat sweetmeats .  .  . and are covered with jewels, but a good chaste woman like me suffers from want of comforts . . . what shall I say to my husband, he is so clever yet he gets such small pay. Others who know little and are untaught are well off. Cursed be the English books, these books have turned the world upside down. (Hindu Clerks, 1879, pp. 9–10) The more familiar social discourse that was an intrinsic part of the manuals published in London, opinions on friendship or marriage or the effects of theatre, is significantly absent from the manual published in Calcutta and meant for the kerani. The kerani or the native clerk is decidedly outside the social register of the master class, and any engagement in his social or cultural praxis is unnecessary. Here is a complex problem. The advice meted out to the London clerk, regressive as it may be, deconstructing the narrative of enlightenment modernity, is still a sign of engagement with a human subject in a communitarian manner. The refusal to engage with the kerani becomes a double marginalization: first by the refusal to engage with any form of valid social discourse that represents the kerani and second by this disavowal, which does not become a counternarrative to the narrative of regression in case of the London clerk. It becomes, rather, a consolidation of a non-modern discourse that pushes any possibility of social or cultural representation of the kerani to the margins. The kerani is rendered a machine, a thing that performs a set task, one who cannot be engaged with. What needs to be emphasized, however, is that in the latter half of the nineteenth century, there was considerable engagement of the sahib with the native population, particularly in Calcutta, and many instances of their participation in the social and cultural life of the native gentry. The kerani always remained outside.

Clerk manifestos and organs: gentle jolts Myriad discursive trajectories and multiple ideological narratives have coalesced in informing the marginal existence of both the clerk in London 120

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and the kerani in Calcutta. Each one of these symptoms has affected, in its singularity and all of them taken together, the location of these two groups, who are again similar and different at the same instant of representation. It is a complex web, and it is imperative to understand the representative contingency of these two groups on the basis of these cultural trajectories that have tried to locate them. We have already noted how a major part of the training of the mind of the London clerk has revolved around the notions of manhood, manliness, and masculinity. Most of the handbooks pledged to make a ‘man’ out of the boy who had joined the clerical workforce. Nineteenth-century English society put a heavy premium on these notions of masculinity, and almost every profession had its own narrative of ‘maleness’ that was synonymous with such ideas as virtue, character, perseverance, and restraint. Philip Mallet (2015) writes in his introduction to The Victorian Novel and Masculinity that masculinity was understood subjectively . . . ‘as a mode of being’ . . . Central to this new subjectivity . . . was the emphasis on self-discipline, and in particular the learned ability to control potentially disruptive male energies. Victorian representations of manliness abound in metaphors of iron restraint, patience and reserve, opposed to images of volcanic chaos or excess . . . the struggle for self-mastery could itself be construed as a sign of masculinity, since women, with their supposedly gentler natures, were thought to be exempt from such trials. (p. vii) Mallet thus views nineteenth-century British manhood to be in a state of permanent crisis, a site of ‘anxiety and contradiction’ (Mallet, 2015, p. vii) borne out by a public school emphasis on ‘character’ which denoted ‘selfrestraint, industry and perseverance in the face of difficulty, and when so used a virtual synonym for manliness’ (Mallet, 2015, p. vii). The control over the clerk’s body in nineteenth-century Britain, therefore, was an intrinsic part of the cultural politics of the time, and the prescription of the handbooks was provoking a sense of duty and character that was already discursively embedded in the mind of the contemporary man. Samuel Smiles wrote in Self-Help, first published in 1859, that Though a man have comparatively little culture, slender abilities, and but small wealth, yet, if his character be of sterling worth, he will always command an influence, whether it be in the workshop, the counting-house, the mart, or the senate. . . . Truthfulness, integrity, and goodness . . . form the essence of manly character. (pp. 192–193) 121

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It seems that the moral prescribed for the clerk in the handbooks was directly lifted from Smiles’s treatise. Evidently, Smiles here is talking about a man with little ability, culture, and money. Yet it is in the quality of his ‘manliness’ that the lowly clerk at the counting house is equal to the parliamentarian. It may thus not be an exaggeration to suggest that the almost exploitative and carceral manoeuvre in the clerk manuals was carefully engineered to suit its purpose. The clerk was trapped in a veritable narrative of manliness and its association with perseverance, restraint, or reserve; on the other hand, by manufacturing consent through a naturalized cultural discourse, the office was able to procure clerks who would not object to exploitation by compromising on the ideals of masculinity. Such a context embedded in an ideal of work ethic was evidently not a breeding ground for mechanisms of protest or for the development of a subversive logic that would challenge the abiding trope of manliness and its association with ‘a willing submission of one’s own interests to a larger goal or cause’ (Mallet, 2015, p. viii). Pickard (1950) argues that even as early as the 1850s, there is evidence that ‘some London clerks were driven by low wages to common action against their employers’ (p. 101). However, these were sporadic incidents and not part of any mainstream symptom of dissent. As I discussed in an earlier chapter, the counting-house clerk who was generally selected on the basis of personal acquaintance or through family connections and who generally worked through a close personal contact with his employer was not liable to form associations or organizations dissenting against authority. Also, there was the ‘snobbery of clerkdom’ (Pickard, 1950, p. 102) and the obvious associations of the clerk with middle-class gentlemanliness as opposed to the low-class wage-earning labourer, which led to an aversion of this section towards the forming of unions. It was only after the mechanization and streamlining of the office space, the introduction of entrance examinations, and, in a sense, the professionalization of clerical work that clerk unions and associations began to be popular in England: The fact remains that 1890 is the earliest date for the founding of any clerical trade union proper. The Clerks Union was founded early in that year . . . and about the same time the National Clerks Association. . . . The two amalgamated as the National Union of Clerks in 1898, becoming the National Union of Clerks and Administrative Workers in 1921. (Pickard, 1950, p. 102) Consequently, the railway clerks, the post office clerks and even female clerks and temporary clerks came up with their own organs and associations. But within the time frame of the nineteenth century (which is largely the scope of this volume), these associations were still in their formative stages, and neither had the wherewithal nor much inclination for subversive movements 122

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against the class of employers. Victorian work ethic with all its associated markers was still instrumental in guiding office practice, and the gentleman clerk was still somewhat unsure about methods of participation in dissent and protest. Also, most of them probably were of the opinion that mass-scale protests or strikes were the symptom of a class identity clearly different from the white-collar gentleman. It was only into the twentieth century, and with the advent of the war, that despondency, unemployment, and the general atmosphere of uncertainty led to concerted protest movements by the clerks. Picking up the thread from our earlier discussion on masculinity and the clerk, it will be interesting to read how this narrative was reflected in the colonized space with the native kerani in Calcutta. Colonial modernity was noticeably different from European modernity. Also, the perception of the colonial subject is a major question that needs to be addressed here. The Indian male clearly fell short of the Victorian expectations about maleness and masculinity. Ashis Nandy (2009) discusses that all that was feminine, childlike, and ‘primitive’ in the European cultural logic had already been undermined by a hypermasculine conception of the self by the end of the seventeenth century, and the dispensable qualities were quickly ascribed to the colonies: It was as part of this process that the colonies came to be seen as the abode of people childlike and innocent on the one hand, and devious, effeminate and passive-aggressive on the other. . . . This was the ultimate meaning of the spirit of colonialism and its civilizing mission mounted on behalf of modernity and progress. (pp. 37–38) In a similar vein, Saayan Chattopadhyay (2011) also notices a consistent derogation in the colonial rhetoric of Bengali bhadralok masculinity vis-àvis the national masculinity. Chattopadhyay reads in this a form of ‘internal cultural imperialism’ (p. 267), whereby the Bengali male is stereotyped in an Indian context as weak, effeminate, and therefore a figure of lack: the Hindu male in general, and the Bengali in particular, was constructed, and ultimately widely perceived, as effeminate. Hindu males were thus othered in comparison with British and Muslim males, and Bengali males in comparison with both of them and all other martial races, especially certain North Indians. (Chattopadhyay, 2011, p. 268) Here is an instance, once again, of double marginalization. In the colonial context, already, the Indian male is perceived as effeminate. With moreintimate ethnic mapping, the Bengali male emerges as more feminine than many other Indian males from other provinces. In a nuanced argument, 123

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however, Chattopadhyay redefines the male Bengal bhadralok by investing him with an alternative form of compensatory masculinity, where buddhibal (intellect) is prioritized over bahubal (physical prowess). He takes his cue here from one of Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay’s essay ‘Bhabubal o Bakyabal’. In the essay, Bankim (B. Chattopadhyay, 1877/1959) argues that empires are never established unless kaushal (strategy) or buddhibal (intelligence) is appended to bahubal (physical strength). What is singularly interesting, however, is the essayist’s reference to the Bengali clerk or the kerani in this context: Bengalis may be identified at a glance throughout the Empire, wherever their remarkable aptitude for clerical pursuits had given them employment. Clerical pursuits implied a lack of heroism, for when compared to the war-like races of the Punjab, the Bengalis did not have any stomach for fighting and submitted tamely to the periodical raids of the hill people. (Chattopadhyay, 2011, pp. 270–271) The Bengali bhadralok, particularly the kerani, is thus situated in the paradigm of cultural history as the effete and effeminate subject without prowess or agency. To read the location of the Bengali kerani in the larger context of work ethic, colonialism and dissent, it is important to be critically aware of the various layers of representation that must be unpacked before one may begin to grasp the problem. The masculinist discourse that is at the heart of clerical labour in Britain in the nineteenth century encounters an effeminate other in the very act of the cartographic shift: in colonial discourse, the Indian male is effeminate. The Bengali bhadralok is further removed, as a lack of a lack, through careful ethnic mapping and by relegating him to an even-baser form of effeminate. The kerani hangs precariously from the lowest rung of the bhadralok formation (as I have discussed in much detail in the second chapter) almost as an appendage, bereft of any bahubal and unsure of his buddhibal. Through these many interstitial layers, any possible representation of the kerani becomes contingent and underscored by precarity. Where, then, does one locate the kerani’s dissent? Before we begin to answer this question, there is one other strand of locating the kerani that needs to be explored. While the colonial master stereotyped the Bengali bhadralok (a class identity where the kerani is tentatively and contingently placed) in his effeminate and weak avatar, there was an implicit refusal to such an essentialist identity inherent in the milieu of the bhadralok. This refusal may not be read as an opposition. It was a faith in the liberal dynamism of colonial modernity and what it brought, on the one hand, along with a dependence in the glory of a Hindu past, and traditional forms of dominant discursive masculinity on the other. As Nandy (2009) writes, 124

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Probably the uniqueness of Indian culture lies not so much in a unique ideology as in the society’s traditional ability to live with cultural ambiguities and to use them to build psychological and even metaphysical defences against cultural invasions. Probably, the culture itself demands that a certain permeability of boundaries be maintained in one’s self-image and that the self be not defined too tightly or separated mechanically from the not-self. This is the other side of the strategy of survival—the clue to India’s post-colonial world view. (p. 107) Along with such an interstitial location in the larger sociocultural space, the kerani was also a unique presence in provincial native society due to his employability. In spite of a conception of lack, he was otherwise acceptable as an employee, after all, in the larger enterprise of the empire. Emerging out of so many complex layers of representation, the Bengali kerani in the nineteenth century remains a docile body. The newness of his existence—an alien office space, a regular job, a part of the colonial enterprise, and above all a certain representative anxiety in his own native milieu—did not leave much scope for the kerani to engineer any structured dissent. Nationalist politics was for the real bhadralok, not for the hanger-on. For him, there was sly civility. Also, as we have already seen, clerical unions were formed in London towards the last years of the nineteenth century, and they started performing as effective organs of dissent only after the war years. Trade unions started to take proper shape in Calcutta only from the 1920s, by which time there was also a significant evolution of the kerani population as well. Our kerani, the nineteenth-century pen pusher, would still not have imagined trade union movements, still labouring in a system of patronage, lack of political agency, the novelty of his workspace, the awe of the colonial master, and the basic and all-encompassing struggle to survive.

Resistance through consensus: dissent without disruption From the early years of the twentieth century, there was a gradual proliferation of clerk organs or magazines that were exclusive to the profession and raised important debates about the trials and tribulations and rights and obligations of the clerical population. It may be said that they occupied the middle space between the formation of the clerk unions on the one hand and the flourishing of concerted and often militant trade union movements on the other. These organs provided a platform for the articulation of identity, as principles of representation that would stake a claim for the clerks through the published word and thus perform as an important agency for a population that has, throughout history, inhabited the margins. Some of the earliest journals published through these unions were 125

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The Railway Clerk (beginning in1904) published by the Railway Clerks Association and The Clerk (beginning in1908) published by the National Union of Clerks. These were followed soon after by The Woman Clerk (beginning in 1919), The Temporary Clerk (beginning in 1920), and other similar organs of representation. Since I have tried to limit the major thrust of this work to the nineteenth century and since these organs developed in the twentieth century into interesting political agents that demand close reading and lengthy critical analysis on the subject of the evolution of clerical representation across space and time, I shall leave such discussion for another time. However, it may not be out of context to attempt a brief look at one of the earliest organs to try to understand the trajectory that the profession of clerkship had taken from the nineteenth century as it evolved into the twentieth—a movement qualified by the evolution from the counting house to the modern office space, from patronage to professional expertise and specialization. The January 1908 issue of The Railway Clerk, for example, argues for the need of summer holidays for the clerks and puts forward a demand for an annual summer holiday that the clerk should demand as a right and not a privilege: Railway companies are proud of the fine healthy appearance of their horses, and rightly so, but why are they apparently indifferent to the well-being of so many of their clerks? A summer holiday is an absolute necessity to an office-worker, especially under the highpressure conditions now prevailing, and yet when these, coupled with bad accommodation, have caused a lot of illness, no leave can be obtained. (‘Deferred Annual Leave’, 1908, p. 10) The rhetoric is one of anger and dissent, but not of outright revolt, keeping with the motto of the journal: ‘Defence Not Defiance’. The voice, however, is clearly one of collective demand and is ready to engage in a debate with the employer for the realization of rights and privileges. The February 1908 issue quotes a comment made by George Bernard Shaw in the pages of New Age, where he questions the honesty and integrity of the railway clerk. Shaw wrote, If any shopkeeper were to attempt to cheat his customers in giving change by the trick of putting down part of the proper sum on the chance of the customer picking it up and going away without waiting for the rest, as systematically as some railway booking-clerks do, he would soon lose all his business’. (as quoted in Editorial Notes, The Railway Clerk, February 1908, p. 24) 126

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The following is how the journal reacted to Shaw’s comment: The italics are ours, and we wish to challenge the writer’s statement. Perhaps Mr. Shaw will furnish us with the evidence upon which he makes so serious an accusation, reflecting as it does upon a body of men whom we have no hesitation in declaring to be as honourable as any other class of the community. (as quoted in Editorial Notes, The Railway Clerk, February 1908, p. 24) It is quite evident that as a community, the clerical population was already willing to take on the intelligentsia, if need be, to protect the honour of the ‘class’ to which they belonged. In the same issue, the journal takes on Shaw once again, for an article that he had written in the pages of “The Clerk” where he recounts his days as a clerk. In this article, Shaw discovers in the character of the clerk the qualities of sheepishness, docility, and cowardice. He argues that it is natural for the clerk to possess these qualities because he is born in a poor middle-class family, whose father could neither give him any capital for business, nor afford to let him finish his education, ‘but who would yet be disgraced if his son became a ‘working man’. Given these circumstances, what can the poor wretch do but become a clerk?’ (Editorial Notes, 1908, p. 24). Agreeing, in a way, with Shaw’s description of the sad trajectory of the clerk’s growing up, the journal wrote, We are disposed to agree with Mr. Shaw so far as to admit that the man having become a clerk there is now a supreme need for converting the clerk into a man. This is an object which the R. C. A. has in common with the N. U. C. (Editorial Notes, 1908, p. 24) The acronyms are for the Railway Clerks Association and the National Union of Clerks respectively. What is interesting is that although women had joined the clerical workforce by the late nineteenth century, masculinity was still one of the more abiding tropes of the profession, even into the twentieth century. The fundamental narrative was one of the women encroaching upon a profession meant primarily for the male population. The appeal to the clerk’s masculinity was a consistent ploy to organize dissent and unionism. The article ‘The Railway Clerk: Where Will He Stand Tomorrow?’ published in the May 1908 issue reads, Where will the railway clerk stand to-morrow? It all depends upon himself. If he is prepared to take a man’s part, to stand for his rights, to fear no intimidation, then he will come into his own. . . . This is your Association. You are the Association. Act like men, and then 127

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instead of meekly accepting privileges you will be able to demand your RIGHTS. (p. 69) On a different note, although authors such as George Bernard Shaw and P.G. Wodehouse had been clerks at some point in their lives, scholars such as Heller were sceptical about taking their words at face value: Individuals like Shaw and Wodehouse often criticized clerical workers for carrying out work, the purpose of which they had no idea. Such writers’ criticisms, while providing amusing and sometimes original insights, should consequently be treated with caution when historically discussing clerical workers. (Heller, 2011, p. 80) The fact remains, on a final note, that with the advent of the twentieth century, there was a discernible shift into unionism and the discovery of the voice of the clerk through the birth and growth of clerk organs across the city of London. On the one hand, of course, it was a significant departure from the counting-house days of mutual dependence, patronage, and the informal nature of the relationship, and with the modernization and professionalization of the office space, the body politic of the clerk was politicized. On the other hand, however, certain practices of masculinity and in general the nature of the work were deeply embedded still in the mindset of the clerical population, and this continued into the twentieth century. But all this was in London. The Calcutta kerani in his colonial milieu was still stuck in his lack of representative agency, and neither had a union, manifesto, or organ either in the nineteenth century or a few years into the twentieth. He remained, within the domain of cultural politics, the classic figure of lack, only represented occasionally in the letters to the editor columns of newspapers. Such an example could be found in a letter written by a clerk to the editor of John Bull on January 26, 1828. He refers to himself sarcastically as ‘an uncovenanted assistant’ (Ghose, 1978, pp. 20–21) (most of the white writers appointed by the imperial government or the Company were ‘covenanted’). In the letter, he expresses his disgust at the way the editor of the Calcutta Chronicle had referred to the lives of the clerks as ‘genteel slavery’. He goes on to examine the difference between the corresponding life of the slave and that of the kerani: Let us examine it: the Keranees are living in a state of ‘genteel slavery’. What is a slave? An unfortunate whose physical power is devoted thro’ dread of punishment to the unrequited service of a fellowman. What do Keranees? They not only are copyists, but accountants, &c. and it is thro’ their unostentatious labours, that 128

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the mighty engine of Government is kept in constant play: they are the connecting links, however humble, still as serviceable, as the proudest in the chain of society. (Ghose, 1978, pp. 20–21) Later, he argues that in many cases, the hired editor of a newspaper is ‘the servant of the servant of a servant’ (Ghose, 1978, p. 21). According to him, the editor does much less than the kerani in terms of the labours of the land, the application of the mind, or feeding and clothing the people of his country. Such narratives are symptomatic of the awareness in the kerani: of his social location on the one hand and of his desire to manoeuvre out of this condescending stereotype on the other. However, such instances of intervention in or undercutting the dominant narrative were few and far between and may only be read as exceptions rather than a consolidated effort to subvert the dynamic of domination and exploitation of the kerani in general.

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6 WRITING CLERKS, CLERKS WRITING Representations in literature

In this chapter, I intend to discuss the representations of the clerk and the kerani in the literature of the period through select readings of pieces written either by themselves or by contemporary authors. The comparatist trope is not intended to read the works of/on the English clerk and the native kerani side by side and reach certain premeditated conclusions on the consequences of imperial practice in cultural history but to try to see if it is possible to read the very act of writing, on a purportedly identical subject, against the grain. The intention is to read the texts through the lens of a cartographic mismatch, along with the problematic templates of modernity and imperialism. There is an inherent complexity in the design. In the first place, as I discussed in the third chapter, the trajectory of the nature of clerkship and its manifestations in British society in London went through a series of changes along the length of the nineteenth century. It will be interesting to see how literary representations of the clerk were affected by these important changes in clerical practice. On the other hand, the putative similarities between the clerk in London and the kerani in Calcutta, seen through a lens of cultural history, could be rendered tenuous at many levels of representation and agency. Thus, the literary text as a cultural artefact becomes an affective site of difference where imperialism, modernity, colonial modernity, material culture, and other paradigms of analysis come together in a complex web that needs careful analysis. It is my intention in this chapter to read this difference and recover tenuous links in order to put them in the context of a cultural praxis that has an inevitable albeit implicit link through a history of relationship between nations and cultures, written in both a discourse of power and its subversion. Also, the subversion is discernible in the literary cultures of both the colonizing and the colonized spaces.

Representation of the clerk in British literary culture I wrote at length about the London clerk and the development of office practice in London in the third chapter of this book. Along the trajectory of 130

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the nineteenth century, clerical practice in Britain had undergone important and systemic changes in the gradual passage from the counting house to the modern office. The figure of the clerk, likewise, went through various stages of evolution from the almost unprofessional and untrained teenager who got his position either through recommendation or by chance in the counting house to the specialized and trained professional who qualified in clerkship examinations and entered the modern office for a specific kind of clerical work. This change, however, was spread across the span of a century, systematic and gradual, and it was not as if the introduction of the modern office was a clean break from the nature of erstwhile-clerical practice, and it was thus a totally alienating experience for the clerk. Lockwood (1958/1989) makes a crucial point in the opening lines of the chapter ‘The Modern Office: Introduction’ of his book: ‘There is no sharp dividing line between the counting house and the modern office. There is only a gradual development of the administrative unit in terms of size, equipment and mode of organization’ (p. 36). It was, therefore, ‘a gradual development’ as the counting house slowly gave way to the machinations of modernity. Meanwhile, the Elementary Education Act of 1870 was instrumental in ascertaining a steady flow of white-collar professionals into the job market, many of them typically trained to take up clerical jobs. Jonathan Wild (2006) writes of how census figures reveal the total number of white-collar employees in Britain rising from 262,084 in 1871, to 534,622 in 1891, and further swelling to 918,186 in 1911. But more than just a growing workforce, the era witnessed the supplanting of the Dickensian counting house by the modern business office. (p. 3) Wild brings in the reference to the ‘Dickensian’ counting house in the middle of statistical figures and calculations, not only as if it were a generic marker of the nature of the clerical profession but also as a kind of historically authentic expression that would suitably express the manifestation of the nuances of the profession. Wild’s reference to Dickens has a number of important implications that need to be grasped to make sense of our present discussion. First, it seems that the expression and the reference to Dickens came naturally to Wild, and as a cultural historian, he assumed that the lot of his readers would immediately comprehend his allusion to a particular historical past. Second, clerkship as a profession was indelibly marked in the social formation of the period and in such a manner that it was an intrinsic part of the cultural expression of society. Therefore, the reference to clerkship or the presence of the figure of the clerk in the literary or cultural scene was a natural development, and an allusion to it would not seem to be unnatural or forced. That 131

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is to say, the Dickensian clerk emerged out of a literary culture that was familiar with a milieu that lived and cultivated the society of clerks in general, and as a natural corollary, the clerk featured as a presence in the literary text. Third, that the Dickensian clerk became a generic reference for Wild is an indication of the counting-house clerk’s being a systemic part of society, with a history and tradition of presence as a professional entity and who, therefore, could be represented as a subject in the literary text without context. The clerk was not a novel figure who happened to the literary culture of nineteenth-century England as an exception and therefore needed a footnote. On the other hand, the Calcutta kerani, a new entrant into an imperial office space, a stranger to the work ethic of the modern office, unceremoniously thrust into it, was thus an exceptional presence in his society and culture, at least for most of the nineteenth century. More often than not, therefore, his representation in indigenous literary culture was also an exception. The fact that the kerani remained mostly an aberration or a caricature in literary representation was a result of his newness in his social milieu, and therefore, he was seen with a certain degree of incomprehension by most authors. I will come back to this point later in this chapter. It must be conceded, however, that the question of the representation of the clerk in English literature is a fraught one. Certain scholars writing on the subject believe that in spite of a reasonable population of clerks in the mainstream London society in Victorian England, the ‘representations of the petit bourgeois clerk in British literary history have been almost entirely overlooked’ (Wild, 2006, p.  2). Wild (2006) wonders why ‘such a representative member of the urban scene apparently left behind so few traces in British literature between Charles Dickens and the inter-war period?’ (p. 1). In his own work, however, Wild chooses to focus on the presence of the office clerk in literary culture between 1880 and 1939. The reason for his neglect of almost the entire nineteenth century is assigned to certain ‘extraordinary changes’ (Wild, 2006, p. 3) after 1880, possibly based on the effects of the Elementary Education Act of 1870. In fact, it seems that the Education Act had quite far-reaching consequences for the petit bourgeoisie. Jonathan Rose (2010), taking up John Carey’s argument in The Intellectuals and the Masses, suggests that most of the great modernist writers, such as George Gissing, H.G. Wells, Bernard Shaw, T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, and others, suffered from a sense of class superiority and that one of the markers of the modernist movement, its intellectual sophistication, its deliberate attempt to be obscure and difficult, was predicated on a calculated hostility towards the common reader. Rose writes about the modernists: ‘They convinced themselves that the typical clerk was subhuman, machinelike, dead inside, a consumer of rubbishy newspapers and canned food’ (p.  393). Both Carey and Rose, as well as Wild, seem to believe that the turn of English literary culture towards a spirit of democracy, however forced, was necessitated by the Education Act, 132

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and therefore, most of them chose to mark the final decades towards the turn of the century (between the nineteenth and the twentieth) as crucial to establishing the presence of the less-privileged lower-middle class in literary discussions and intellectual circles: By the early twentieth century the Board schools had introduced great literature to the masses, who were buying the shilling classics of Everyman’s Library by the million. Workers and clerks had by no means caught up with the educated classes, but some of them were coming uncomfortably close. Many intellectuals felt threatened by the prospect of a more equal distribution of culture: it is telling that the epithet they loved to spit at the masses was not ‘uneducated’, but ‘half-educated’. . . . The fear was that the 1870 Education Act would succeed in creating an enlightened proletariat. (Rose, 2010, p. 393) Although there is enough scope to debate and argue over the opinions of Rose and Carey on the question of the modernists, it seems that there is a consensus that there was a distinct cultural difference, in terms of both representation and agency, between the early Victorian clerk and the lateVictorian clerk. Wild (2006) writes, ‘Even if one remains sceptical about the scale of the effect of the Education Act of 1870 and successive legislation, it is still possible to see the late-Victorian clerk as an individual distinctly different from his earlier counterpart’ (p. 4).

The late-Victorian clerk and the Edwardian clerk: Leonard Bast et al. It is not typical to trace the history of a people or a class backwards, but since most critics writing on the Victorian clerk focus meticulously on the 1870 Education Act, it might be useful to use it as a pivot and move both backwards and forwards. It may also not be off the mark to include the brief Edwardian period in our discussion since, as I mentioned in the most recent chapter, the period could be seen as an extension of the Victorian period till the advent of the war changed too many things and too quickly. In the course of their discussion on the late-Victorian and the Edwardian clerks, both Wild and Rose seem to be somewhat fixated on the figure of Leonard Bast, the clerk character in E.M. Forster’s novel Howards End (1910). The portrayal of Bast by Forster, the pathetic clerk, pretentious and ridiculous at many levels of representation, becomes an emblem of upper-class condescension for the clerk figure. In spite of their aspirational attempts to belong to the ‘cultured’ milieu, the assignations of being ‘half-educated’ and parvenu were consistently stamped on them by the upper-class practitioners 133

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of culture, and they were rarely considered better than the underclass in debates and discussions: Although we might consider that the dividing line between an abyss-dwelling underclass and the suburban clerk was clearly recognisable. .  .  . this dichotomy was by no means readily apparent in Edwardian social debates: E. M. Forster’s portrayal of Leonard Bast provides a prima facie case of the prevailing liberal sense of the proximity of apparently distinct urban types. (Wild, 2006, pp. 82–83) Virginia Woolf, supposedly an important voice for the emancipation of women, was also deeply implicated in such a discourse on the relationship between knowledge and class. Although she introduced a volume of essays written by members of the Women’s Cooperative Guild, Woolf’s condescension towards their literary attempts is obvious: ‘they read with the indiscriminate greed of a hungry appetite, that crams itself with toffee and beef and tarts and vinegar and champagne all in one gulp’ (as cited in Rose, 2010, p.  401). This is perceived to be the impression of the upperclass intelligentsia about the ‘gentleman’ clerk, and according to both Rose and Wild, the Education Act did little to change this attitude, although now it was laced, perhaps, with a sense of apprehension and nervousness, even anger. Despite his supposed left-wing liberal leanings, Rose (2010) displays towards Forster a similar attitude of condescension and dismissal for the clerk and uses his portrayal of Bast as a case in point: For all his gentle liberalism, Forster embraced the class prejudices of modernist intellectuals. Bast is anxious and envious among the rentier intelligentsia, and his attempts to acquire culture are hopeless. Forster frankly stamps him ‘inferior to most rich people’. He is ‘not as courteous as the average rich man, nor as intelligent, nor as healthy, nor as lovable.’ He plays the piano ‘badly and vulgarly’. . . . In literary conversations he is only capable of repeating cant phrases and dropping names. (p. 402) Rose concludes that although Howards End is generally read as a critique of the class system, it is ‘fragrant with nostalgia for a rigid social hierarchy’ (p. 402). Later in the book, Jonathan Rose argues that Leonard Bast was not, after all, an authentic representation of the Edwardian clerk. If it was not a failure of Forster’s imagination, it was definitely an expression of his class prejudice. In due course, he refers to three clerk figures, all products of the late-Victorian and Edwardian board school system who went on to become 134

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important public figures in later life—W.J. Brown, Joseph Toole, and Neville Cardus. Unlike the modernists who liked to view the clerk figure as ‘a prisoner, trapped in a suffocating office and a mind-killing job’ (Rose, 2010, p. 406), Rose was not ready to discount the mind of the clerk as quotidian and commonplace. He saw many of them having literary ambitions sparked by their autodidactic education, regular visits to the library, and a regular training of the mind through other works of literature: The authors were not isolated or alienated: they depict themselves as part of a large and lively community of philosopher-accountants. Along with schoolteaching and journalism, clerical work attracted the brightest Board school graduates. . . . Already, the best minds were being skimmed off the working classes and concentrated in offices, where they often achieved a critical intellectual mass. (Rose, 2010, p. 407) Rose’s contention is consolidated, in a way, by the memoirs of some of these clerks. In So Far, his memoir published in 1943, Brown, now a Labour MP, talks about his early days as a clerk, engaged in a lively community of two hundred other boys sitting in a room and exchanging ideas and influences within the confines of the office itself: ‘We discussed, argued, and disputed interminably; approving, questioning and debating every proposition under the sun and in the process adding enormously to our stock of ideas and knowledge’ (as cited in Rose, 2010, p. 407). In a similar vein, Joseph Toole, another future Labour MP, whom Rose (2010) calls ‘one of the most successful of the intellectual clerks’ (p. 409), is seen to be using the opportunity of periodic unemployment as a clerk to read the works of Adam Smith, Herbert Spencer, Emerson, Dickens, and the like (p. 409). Neville Cardus, who began his career as a junior clerk for a marine insurance agent, would regularly spend his evenings with his friends, discussing Elgar, Shaw, Nietzsche, Debussy, Dostoevsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov: ‘It was a renaissance; the twentieth century opened on a full and flowing sea; thus we emerged from the Victorian Age’ (as cited in Rose, p. 410). Thus, there was a significant cultural and literary frothing in the clerical population during the passage from the late-Victorian period to the Edwardian period. Even if it may be an overstatement to suggest that most of the clerical profession was engaged in intellectual pursuit; the emergence of the figure of Leonard Bast as a pathetic caricature of the culture-hungry clerk is symptomatic of a narrative that could not be overlooked. The obvious corollary to this assumption was that not everyone was a Bast. With the mechanization of the office and the gradual professionalization of the workspace, late-Victorian clerical culture also saw the emergence of the clerical unions and mouthpieces. They not only empowered the clerk politically but also opened up opportunities of expression. Thus, although the narrative of the 135

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upper-class disparagement and ridicule of the clerk as a literary figure could be a possibility, the agency of expression was something that could not be ignored. This was also facilitated by other factors that were instrumental in revolutionizing the publishing industry: the production of paper, which was cheaper with the introduction of mechanical methods of preparing wood pulp; the introduction of the Hoe press; and the emergence of the Monotype composing machine. Wild (2006) writes, The massive jump in new novels . . . was influenced by the demise of the three-decker in 1894 and the subsequent emergence of the single volume novel as the standard format for new works of fiction. An increase in opportunity for new writers was also promised at this time by the popularity of the weekly paper Tit-Bits and its successors. With an average weekly circulation of half a million copies during the thirty years following its launch in 1881, Tit-Bits heralded a new epoch for the popular press. (p. 4) The clerk, with his firm conviction about belonging to the class of gentlemen and with aspirations towards a literary career, seized this opportunity of the flourishing of the popular press. No matter what the highbrow culture brigade thought of him, the clerk had found his reader in the general public, many of whom could afford to buy the work now and who were also interested in his life and his stories. Thus, books such as The Loosed Interval: A Holiday Handbook and Out-of-Harness Annual (1878) by ‘A Bank Clerk’; The Story of a London Clerk: A Faithful Narrative Faithfully Told (1896) written anonymously, possibly by a clerk; or A Man from the North (1898) written by Arnold Bennett, himself a clerk, became quite popular with the reading public. I intend to return to these texts later in this chapter and discuss some of their contents in the context of the present volume.

Looking back: the tradition of clerk authors in the nineteenth century It may be redundant to point out that there already was an established tradition of clerk authors in English literary culture of the nineteenth century. The late-Victorian and Edwardian clerks who were writing successfully, or making a name for themselves, were only consolidating this tradition. Clerks had also been written about and considered as literary subjects (though mostly as caricatures) since the 1830s: the first sustained group of petit bourgeois office clerks in print appeared in periodical literature in the 1830s and 1840s. . . . during this period numerous satirical depictions of minor clerks were printed in publications such as New Monthly Magazine and Liter136

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ary Journal, Bentley’s Miscellany, Fraser’s Magazine and Punch. In these periodicals, clerks with evocative names like Julius Nosebody and Jeremiah Fubkins are routinely duped by more wily individuals from the upper or lower classes. (Wild, 2006, p. 11) It was undoubtedly from these minor clerk characters that later on the characters of Leonard Bast or Mr Pooter in The Diary of a Nobody (1892) were imagined. The crowning glory of this tradition was perhaps the fact that some of the clerk authors of the early and middle decades of the nineteenth century, such as Charles Lamb, Charles Dickens, or Anthony Trollope, were already celebrated in the English literary canon. This fact would not only have influenced later clerks to imagine themselves as potential authors and intellectuals but also have given them an agency of lineage that would counter the modernist anxiety about the parvenu clerk author. In spite of the board school education, the professionalization, and the streamlining of the profession, the late-Victorian or Edwardian literary milieu did not produce such venerated authors from the population of clerks such as Dickens or Lamb. It is difficult to deduce the reason for this. Was it that, the counting house was more conducive, perhaps, to literary production than the modern office? Is it possible that the gradual corporatization and streamlining of the office space and a panoptic mechanization led to the clerk being less exposed to the variety of human life around him and hence could not produce abiding literature? Or was it the changing nature of the literary market, with more production and mass consumption, that led to the quick moving on from one piece to the next that led to authors being forgotten more easily? Or was it that the professional clerk in the modern office had much less time at his disposal to practise his literary art and skills than had his countinghouse predecessor, whose leisurely life gave him more scope to contemplate? These are important questions, as yet unanswered, and they are beyond the scope of this book. Clearly, however, for clerks working in the East India House (Charles Lamb being one of them), the employees were many and leisure enough to read and write in office hours. This is how Thomas Love Peacock describes the latter part of his day at the East India House: From twelve to one, asked, ‘what’s to be done?’ From one to two, found nothing to do; From two to three began to foresee That from three to four would be a damned bore. (as cited in Monsman, 1990, p. 97) We shall come back to the larger implications of these lines later in this chapter. Charles Lamb may be taken as a good case in point to illustrate the nature of the clerical office in the counting house. Although he was much more 137

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privileged than the typical counting-house clerk, such as the fictional Bob Cratchit in Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (1843), his literary acumen is the reason for his choice in this case. Also, the fact that he used to work at the East India House for the Company and was thus entrenched in matters colonial makes him an important choice for the purpose of this book. Apparently, it would appear to the reader of Lamb’s literary works and correspondences that he was as weary of his clerical life, as most clerks would be, confined to the counting house for hours every day, worn out by the monotony and quotidian nature of his job. In a letter to William Wordsworth on March 20, 1822, he writes, I grow ominously tired of official confinement. Thirty years have I served the Philistines, and my neck is not subdued to the yoke. You don’t know how wearisome it is to breathe the air of four pent walls without relief day after day all the golden hours of the day between 10 and 4 without ease or interposition. (as cited in Lucas, 1968, p. 319) This is the familiar narrative of the counting-house clerk, and an intellectual at that, pent up in the accounting office, tied to his chair. However, it seems that Lamb did not particularly look forward to his Sundays either: ‘there is a gloom for me attendant upon a city Sunday. . . . I miss the cheerful cries of London, the music, and the ballad-singers—the buzz and stirring murmur of the streets’ (Lamb, 1900b, p. 87). It is apparent, therefore, that as an artist, Lamb found his subjects from the busyness of the city, and the space of the counting house with a continuous presence of the human subject was, in a way, instrumental in inciting the imaginative temper in him. Similarly, the weeklong annual summer holiday for the clerk at the East India House was not something that Lamb would look forward to. He saw them as ‘a series of seven uneasy days, spent in restless pursuit of pleasure, and a wearisome anxiety to find out how to make the most of them’ (Lamb, 1900b, p. 88). Instead, it seems from his writings that the space of his office was the fodder for the many character sketches in his essays and letters, and therefore, he generally enjoyed being in the middle of things. He would notice each and every one of his colleagues and discover and write about their peculiarities and idiosyncrasies. A classic example would be the way that he portrays Evans, a cashier in the office: Melancholy as a gib-cat over his counter all the forenoon, I think I see him, making up his cash (as they call it) with tremulous fingers, as if he feared every one about him was a defaulter; in his hypochondry ready to imagine himself one; haunted, at least, with the idea of the possibility of his becoming one. (Lamb, 1900a, p. 5) 138

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At the end of a long clerical career of 33 years, Lamb requested his employers to superannuate him at the age of 50. Seemingly tired of the daily grind, he writes, ‘I had grown to my desk, as it were; the wood had entered into my soul’ (Lamb, 1900b, p. 88). His wish was granted, and he retired with a handsome pension. But the question remains whether he was happy upon his retirement. As Baladouni (1990) puts it, It was not long after Lamb had retired or, as he put it, gained his freedom, that he started longing for the old routine and fellowclerks. Despite the fact that during those long, tedious years at the counting-house he had dreamt of this day, now that his release or emancipation was finally here Lamb was beginning to entertain second thoughts about it. (p. 34) Lamb continued to visit his office colleagues, but their kind reception would not restore his sense of old familiarity. In ‘The Superannuated Man’, he writes, ‘My old desk; the peg where I hung my hat, were appropriated to another. I knew it must be, but I could not take it kindly’ (Lamb, 1909b, p. 94). In his freedom to go anywhere he pleased, he kept on discovering himself at 11 o’clock at Bond Street: ‘I missed my old chains, forsooth, as if they had been some necessary part of my apparel’ (Lamb, 1909b, p. 95). A number of important strands of our debate would emerge out of the case of Charles Lamb as a clerk, and each one of them needs careful attention.

The case of Charles Lamb: rule or exception? There is a peculiar ambivalence surrounding the clerical career of Charles Lamb, as has been apparent from the foregoing discussion. On the one hand, there is the expression of tiredness and boredom at the monotonous nature of the job; on the other, there is a clearly discernible nostalgia directed in his writings at the humdrum circularity of clerical existence. It is necessary to prod beyond the surface of this ambiguity to discover the layered nature of this problem. First of all, as I suggested earlier, it is important to understand that Lamb was not the Cratchit of his profession. He belonged to the upper echelons or the creamy layer of clerical recruits, and a job at the East India Company was easily one of the most coveted clerical jobs in contemporary society. For the first two years in office, Lamb was a probationer and did not receive a salary but received a gratuity of £30 per year: He started his third year with an annual salary of £40. His salary increased steadily to £240 when in 1815, as a result of an internal reorganization, his salary doubled bringing it up to £480. From that 139

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year on, Lamb’s salary continued to increase until it reached £700 in 1821 and £730 in 1825, the year of his retirement. (Baladouni, 1990, p. 22) Not many London clerks in the early decades of the nineteenth century could boast such a handsome salary. On a similar note, it is quite evident from various literary and historical sources that Lamb enjoyed considerable power and position in his job at the East India Company. Monsman (1990) argues that given both Lamb’s salary and the freedom to communicate that he enjoyed in his office space, his complaints about the carceral nature of his job had more to do with the larger debate about the ‘conflict between art and financial necessity that plagued his whole generation’ (p. 97). Lamb’s exasperation was more ideological in nature than an immediate censure of his job and position. He considered himself less of a clerk and more of a writer, and the general opinion in the office, including those of his employers, seemed to consolidate such a stance: although the class distinctions between the directors and employees were significant, a clerkship in the higher echelons of industry and commerce would not have been the debased position of Dickens’s Bob Cratchit. Moreover, in some measure Lamb’s native intelligence, education, and literary accomplishments would have rendered him sui generis among his fellow workers. (Monsman, 1990, p. 97) Such a view of Lamb’s position is also consolidated by accounts of his general demeanour in office. There are apocryphal stories of Lamb quipping back to his supervisor when questioned on his late arrival—‘But see how early I go!’ (Monsman, p. 97). When a certain supervisor expressed that he did not like Lamb’s answer to a certain query, Lamb replied, ‘Nor I your question’ (Monsman, p. 97). One would wonder why this kind of latitude (I have used this word in the title of the book) was allowed to Lamb. Was it peculiar to him, as a writer who also happened to be a clerk? Or was it that his position in the East India House entitled him to such insubordination? Although it might be an unequal mixture of both, there are other possible strands of the argument that cannot be missed. Evidently, not all clerks in nineteenth-century London were allowed the latitude that Lamb apparently seems to have enjoyed. Neither the real clerks nor the fictional ones would claim such agency at their workplaces. A completely new strand of argument would be opened up if one were to consider the agency of the kerani in Calcutta during the corresponding period, but that is an issue I shall take up later in this chapter. Another possibility that may not be discounted is the fact that Lamb’s job in the East India House had a direct association with the colonial enterprise in 140

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India. The significant amount of revenue that the Company was earning till the middle of the nineteenth century could have been a reason for the special status of employees at the East India House. They were part of the massive revenue-generation process on the one hand and also, in a sense, players in the larger scheme of the civilizing mission of the British Empire as such. They could be compared to the writers in British India whom I discussed in the fourth chapter of this book. In fact, they were possibly more powerful, as they were placed in the capital city of the empire. In a way, therefore, there was possibly a significant gap between the average counting-house clerk in London and those that worked for the imperial mission. The Lambs were exceptions. On the other hand, the humdrum clerical worker in London, although better placed in terms of agency or quality of life, had more in common with the kerani in Calcutta. However, it is also true that the clerk who was also a man of literature would be in possession of a degree of cultural capital unknown to the common clerk.

The writing life of the common clerk To carefully go through the narrative of the lives of clerks in London in the nineteenth century is to discover in many of them a pleasure of reading, a desire for literary expression, and a fascination for the city of London. It is quite certain that most of the clerks in London, either in the counting house in the earlier part of the century or in the emergent office spaces towards the later years, did not enjoy either the agency or the relative solvency of clerks, such as Lamb. Life was difficult; the salary was mostly paltry and sometimes uncertain; jobs, particularly in private firms, were on the line; and it was difficult to make ends meet. Raising a family was mostly a nightmare for a young clerk, and marriage was thus a frequent theme that the clerk would write about or contemplate. With his paltry salary, the young clerk would mostly not find a decent bride. In George Gissing’s The Nether World (1889), for example, the author writes about the prospect of Charles Scawthorne’s marriage: ‘Suppose he had wished to marry; where, pray, was he to find his wife? A barmaid?. . . . Never had it been his lot to exchange a word with an educated woman—save in the office on rare occasions’ (pp. 269–270). A similar sentiment is expressed, in the garb of patriarchal superciliousness, by Regent Sparke, a fictional clerk at Lincoln and Bennett: Marriage, my dear fellow,’ he would say, with a half-suppressed yawn, ‘is no longer considered the thing. Wives, you see, don’t pay nowadays. As profitable investments, they went out with stagecoaches. Possibly they will come in again with balloons, but meanwhile they are much too expensive articles for any save the very wealthy. (The Loosed Interval, p. 38) 141

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If there was a direct correspondence between the disappointments in the workplace with the desire to write is difficult to ascertain. However, for most portrayals of the London clerk throughout the nineteenth century, in either memoirs, anecdotes, or fictional renditions, the apparent keenness for both the acquirement of knowledge and the affiliation with creative writing is clearly discernible. Thus, even if we take the Education Act of 1870 as an important marker of time, the aspiration of the clerk towards being a ‘learned’ or a ‘wellread’ gentleman was noticed both before and after this time. It may be topical, in this context, to briefly discuss the various strands that emerge from one of those classic anonymous texts, possibly written by a clerk, towards the later years of the nineteenth century: The Story of A London Clerk: A Faithful Narrative Faithfully Told (1896). It tells us the story of Osmond Ormesby, who flees home to become a junior clerk in London. His two goals in life were to tread ‘paths of progress’ and make ‘headway in life’ (The Story, 1896, p. 1). Where better to pursue these dreams than the city of London? As the first firm he is employed in goes bankrupt, Ormesby, after much effort and many tribulations, finds a job in another for a paltry salary of 15 shillings a week. The rosy view of London that was in his imagination is subsumed by the reality of a cruel and disinterested city, supposedly the financial capital of the world. As he stood on the Vauxhall bridge lonely and in despair, the city seemed to devour him: ‘On either hand the might and majesty of London rose; but the flowing river, cold, deep, and swift, held his attention. London had no need of him. . . . It was driving him to destitution’ (The Story, 1896, p. 47). But the pull of the city was overwhelming in myriad ways. Back in his room, as he sees the turrets of Westminster School from his window, his resolve slowly comes back to him. He revises his erstwhile-romantic views on the city: ‘Life as seen through the rose-coloured spectacles of the poet was very different from the hard practical daily round of ordinary existence; the real beauty of life was only revealed in the real duty of life’ (The Story, 1896, p. 49). It is interesting to witness along the narrative the deep desire of Ormesby, in spite of his penury and struggle, to try to become the well-read gentleman. London was the seat of civilization, and as an aspiring member of middleclass gentility, the clerk consistently tried to educate himself in spite of odds: It may be impossible to buy books on next-to-nothing-a-year; but it is not impossible to read them. Osmond became a borrower at the old Westminster Library. . . . Many a volume did he read in the cold comfortless room up the six short flights of stairs in Great College Street. When the nights were cold he would get into bed, and read until Big Ben struck twelve. (The Story, 1896, p. 67) The images evoked in the narrative both romanticize and demystify the mythical idea of London as the city of aspirations. The clerk figure is the 142

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quintessential aspirant, always hoping for something better—a better job, a better life, a better standing in society. On the one hand, London symbolized the epitome of such aspiration, while on the other hand, many clerks who came to the city from suburban England were crushed by its immense objectivity.

The London clerk and the Calcutta kerani: possible interfaces Before I move on to the literary representations of the Calcutta kerani, it may be relevant to establish a cultural interface that will facilitate our analysis. Generally speaking, both the clerk in London and the kerani in Calcutta were figures of lack in the society they represented. The vein of representational caricatures and ridicule of the ‘body’ of the clerk were common tropes. Poverty, affliction, chronic illness, being in debt, and an inability to provide for the family were associated with the profession. However, while there is a tradition of the representation of the clerk in English literature throughout the nineteenth century, representations of the Bengali kerani are few and far between. Of course, there is a good reason for this. I have already drawn attention to the fact that the idea of a routine nine-to-five job within an alien confinement of the office space was considerably new to the Calcutta kerani. Also, the notion of modernity that Western epistemic practice brought into the fold of its colonized population was sudden and abrupt, unleashed on them by force to serve the need of the times. On the other hand, for the clerk in London, the graduated development of a dynamic of modernity was easy to trace and could be historically formulated across space and time. In the timeline of the nineteenth century, it was possible to develop a clear narrative of the shifting focus of clerical practice from the counting house to the streamlined office. Consequently, the literary representation of the clerk in London could also be formulated according to a clear narrative of cultural history and its social manifestations. If one were to trace literary representations of the clerk in nineteenth-century London, it would be possible to develop a trajectory that began with Dickens, Lamb, Thackeray, or Trollope and move on to Bennett, Besant, or Gissing. On the other hand, no such trajectory may be traced in the literary or cultural narrative of nineteenthcentury Calcutta that could suitably represent the kerani. The few literary works that focus specifically on the kerani could be found only towards the later years of the century. The major authors would generally write on the larger issues of the time, relegating the kerani either to the fringes of the narrative or turning him into a diminutive caricature. However, it is possible that certain points of contact may be established between the Calcutta kerani and the London clerk of the late-Victorian period or the Edwardian period, in terms of representation. Although Lockwood sees no sharp dividing line between the early Victorian clerk and the 143

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late-Victorian clerk, there are reasons why this notion of continuity may be challenged. First, the counting-house clerk, being part of a narrative of familiarity and recommendations, and nurturing dreams of being involved in a partnership with his employer in the distant future, had a vision of respect, value, or equality as a person that the modern office clerk could never imagine. The dividing line between the employer and the employee was more clearly drawn in the case of the latter, and professional improvement would rarely be confused with a chance of partnership or equality. Therefore, the aspirational value of the clerk being or becoming a ‘gentleman’ had different connotations for the early and the late-Victorian clerk. Second, in terms of colonial politics, particularly with reference to India, the nineteenth century saw many significant changes. With the British government taking over the reins from the East India Company, the process of revenue generation and motives of profiteering came under many sanctions and rules. Thus, the imperial clerk in London, in the late-Victorian period or the Edwardian period was not as well off as a Charles Lamb, for example. Third, with a change in the nature of the office job, with more mechanization and therefore the subsequent curtailment of the workforce, the London clerk in his modern office enjoyed much less latitude than did those from an earlier period of time. This would perhaps explain why the late nineteenth century produced fewer clerk authors than been produced earlier. This is where, at least notionally, a comparison may be drawn between the lateVictorian or the Edwardian clerk on one hand and his contemporary kerani in Calcutta on the other. Both of them were dearly pressed for time and in their different ways had to accept a standard of living not comparable to the London clerk from an earlier period. This relationship of similarity, however, has its own paradox. The clerk in London was moving into a manifestly evolved modernity, an office space different from its earlier version. On the one hand, it was a continuity from an earlier pattern of clerkship and its mode of functioning through the evolution of a similar pattern of work; on the other hand, it was also a dissociation from it, in terms of the introduction of new technology and a moderately different ethic. For the kerani, however, it was almost an epistemic shift from earlier patterns of work into colonial modernity. It was not possible for him to refer to a historical past and extract an ethic out of it. Indigenous patterns of clerkship were distinctly different, run on a dissimilar ethic, and practised differently, and most of the keranis in Calcutta were not, in any way, part of that ethic. The Calcutta kerani came from nowhere and belonged nowhere. He could not claim a past or elicit a traditional logic to either comprehend or critique his workspace. Therefore, any similarity in predicament for the kerani in Calcutta and the clerk in London could not be fully explained by a logic of similarity. But of course, there were criss-crosses, occasionally similar anecdotes to share, and above all the abiding desire in both to be construed a ‘gentleman’ or bhadralok. However, although situations may 144

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have occasionally been similar, it will perhaps be historically untenable to use a comparative logic in assessing their respective sociocultural locations. The power dynamic instrumental in fixating any class identity is qualified by the trope of colonialism, the ruler/ruled binary, and this cannot be overcome by any attempt at assigning similarity. It will not be off the topic to briefly point out an interesting aspect in terms of the literary production by clerks, or about them, in nineteenthcentury London. I have emphasized, more than once, the dissimilar nature between clerical practice at the counting house in the early decades of the century and that of the modern office space in the later years. Interestingly, however, in literary representations of the clerk that were produced during the late-Victorian or Edwardian periods, we rarely see the reflection of this change. Either in novels written about them, or in tracts written by them, whether to celebrate or ridicule the clerk, this new trope of mechanization has rarely been used. The reader would rarely witness a narrative from the post-mechanization period, either in the nineteenth century or immediately into the twentieth, where the clerk is found using the typewriter or the adding machine or any other such modern wonder that revolutionized the profession. This is an important silence, and it cannot be ignored. Is it possible that the creative clerk viewed technology with an implicit disdain? Or could it be that the romantic aura in portraying a clerk as quintessentially challenged and lacking, bent over ledgers and account books, a pitiable figure struggling for a living, would be compromised by the new setting? Or was it a nostalgia for tradition, a harking back to a Lambian past and the prestige associated with the counting-house days, that the authors wanted to cling on to as more ‘gentlemanly’ representations of the clerk? For the kerani in Calcutta, however, this was not relevant in the nineteenth century. Mechanization was still distant, and he was the classic pen pusher.

The kerani in literature: some perspectives The representation of the Calcutta kerani in the contemporary literature of the nineteenth century was as inconspicuous as his agency in the social and cultural milieu of his times. As a parvenu figure, as a random and incidental presence within the cultural and the political scheme of things, he was much unlike the London clerk, who could trace a presence for himself throughout the literary trajectory of the nineteenth century. Also, so that the kerani would feature as an important or a major character in a literary work, it was imperative that his professional and sociocultural location in his milieu be located and understood within a discursive framework that was both comprehensible and representable. He was a new entrant in the social field, without a history to fall back on. There was a randomness in his recruitment, and the fold of the kerani included within its rubric a number of different categories of professionals with varying nomenclatures and varying degrees 145

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of responsibility and various job descriptions. Understandably, therefore, representations of the kerani in indigenous literature began to emerge only towards the later years of the nineteenth century. Perhaps one of the most significant and important interventions as a kerani was by Shoshee Chunder Dutt, an alumnus of Hindu College. Dutt belonged to the famous family of the Dutts of Rambagan, and his uncle Rashomoy Dutt had also begun his career as a kerani before he became an important man in society. Shoshee Dutt joined the government treasury as a kerani in 1842. Subsequently, he was transferred to the Bengal Secretariat, where he gradually became a head assistant. The British government had also conferred on him the title of raybahadur (in 1873) and justice of peace (Dutt, 1877/2013, p. 8). As a kerani who was also known as an author of sorts and as a regular contributor to both the English and the vernacular dailies of his time, Dutt’s narrative interventions may be read as a good example of ‘reading against the grain’. Dutt humorously recounts his first day as an apprentice at the firm of Smasher, Mutton, and Company. As an alumnus of Hindu College who considered himself to be a follower of the Young Bengal, Dutt was taken aback by the questions that Mr Pigeon, the managing clerk, greeted him with: Does he understand accounts? Does he know what a ledger was? Would he be able to docket a letter? Consequently, he was put in the hands of the head Baboo, Kinooram Chuckerbutty, who promptly asked Dutt to mend his pens. Dutt writes, Was Young Bengal to submit to this? Shades of Bacon, Addison, and Johnson, was the student who had kept company with you so long, and pored over your pages night and morning, now to mend the pens of an old kerani? (Tickell, 2005, p. 26) The entire narrative is peppered with references to the unprofessionalism, incompetence, and impropriety of the white master class. He speaks of jobs given to undeserving applicants in spite of the presence of more-deserving ones (Tickell, 2005, p.  69); of how a native kerani was caned by a sahib assistant for having mistakenly given a pat on his shoulders (p.  65); and of the nepotism practised in the judiciary in favour of Europeans (p. 47). Not that Dutt spares the native his sarcasm. He seems to be scathing in his critique of the rich but uneducated babu, who flaunts his wealth but is compromised in culture: Unfortunately these illiterate Baboos represent all native gentlemen in the estimation of Englishmen. They are insolent themselves and teach their servants to be insolent. . . . Education has done nothing for them; they have received no castigation at school; a little whipping now and then would be of inestimable service to themselves. (Tickell, 2005, p. 49) 146

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Eventually, Dutt resigned from his position in 1873, protesting against his forced subordination to two European officers who not only were junior to him in service and years but had also worked under him at some point in their careers. The Hindu Patriot of April 21, 1873, reported that ‘The circumstances connected with the retirement of Babu Shoshee Chunder Dutt deserve to be placed on record, if only as warning to, and for the information of Keranidom at large’ (Dutt, 1877/2013, p. 156). Eventually, Dutt did not even receive the pension that he thought he rightfully deserved after 34 years of sincere service to the British government. The same article in The Hindu Patriot ended with the following bitter remark: For old and invalid European and Eurasian servants there be, ‘special pensions’, and better still, sinecure appointments, which require the use neither of eyes nor brains; but for the Bengali there is nothing beyond what cannot absolutely be refused under the rules, with any amount of sugar plums that his stomach will digest. (Dutt, 1877/2013, p. 160) It is important to decipher the strands that emerge from the foregoing narrative of Shoshee Chunder Dutt and analyse each one of them carefully. Clearly, Dutt belonged to an influential family in Calcutta with considerable agency and cultural capital. He was a student of Hindu College, and this was an important marker of social position in contemporary society. One would also wonder whether the sobriquets of raybahadur and justice of peace were conferred on him as an acknowledgement of his long and sincere service to the government or due to a certain social capital that he had accrued due to his family and lineage. Also, from the excerpt that I just quote narrating Dutt’s first day in office, there is little doubt that his own perception of the kerani was laced with disparagement and contempt. As an alumnus of Hindu College, well trained in Western epistemic systems of knowledge, deeply sceptical of indigenous ideological apparatus, Dutt was properly a product of colonial modernity. The job of the kerani was incidental to him, and his critique of the Western master class was trained more on a rhetoric of nationalism rather than on the question of individual representation. As a contributor to the columns of dailies, a critic of imperial practices, reading the dynamic of colonial power against its grain, Dutt was more the intellectual than the kerani. His quick promotion to the upper echelons of clerical bureaucracy is, therefore, more a marker of agency than one of efficiency. He was already the bhadralok who chose to become a kerani. The typical aspirational markers of cunning or sly civility were not germane to his representation as a native in the system. Alex Tickell points out in his introduction to the Trent edition of Dutt’s Bengaliana that he throws into sharp relief the limitations of interpretative strategies that look for signs of agency in emergent cultural nationalisms, sub147

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altern resistance, or in forms of psychic disturbance within the colonial text. Instead, bridging colonial and metropolitan culture, Shoshee’s prose is densely inter-discursive and at times derivative, but in its critical edge, humour, and self-confidence it also serves very clearly as the foundation for later, more highly theorized nationalist writing. (Tickell, 2005, p. 8) Dutt belongs, therefore, to the class of the nationalist bhadralok, an interlocutor capable of using a rhetoric familiar to the imperialist, subversive but not militant in his discourse, and therefore located contingently on the register of native agency. Most definitely, he was not the chhaposha kerani or the macchimara kerani—iconic representations of the lot of keranis in the contemporary social narrative. Understandably, Arindam Dasgupta, an editor and translator of Dutt’s works, writes, ‘at least we do not know of any other contemporary kerani who, like Shoshee Chunder, wrote about himself’ (Dutt, 1877/2013, p.  7). Singularly different, Shoshee Chunder Dutt would possibly not, therefore, fit into the generic representation of either the condition or the agency of the nineteenth-century Bengali kerani in Calcutta. I am tempted, at this point, to mention the fictional character of Muchiram Gur, who may be seen with a refractive lens vis-à-vis the real-life Shoshee Chunder. A novella or a short fictional tract titled Muchiram Gurer Jibon-Chorit, written by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, was serialized in Bangadarshan from 1880 and published as a single volume in 1884. Muchiram is the perfect foil to Shoshee Chunder. Born into a lowly brahmin family in a remote village in Bengal, Muchiram could not boast of either any financial or social capital. Through myriad farcical circumstances, Muchiram is adopted by the kayastha kerani Ishan babu, who sends him to school. Although not a bright student, Muchiram writes a good hand. After a few tedious and futile years in school, Muchiram lands a job, on the recommendation of Ishan babu, as a muharri with a salary of 10 rupees. He quickly adapts to the underhand manifestations of the job, demands bribes indiscriminately, and starts making money. A complete lackey to his sahib masters, he pleases the stupider or the more gullible among them with his obsequiousness and is soon promoted as a peshkar over and above morequalified candidates. The more qualified aspirants are found unsuited to the job of a kerani by the sahib recruiter: I dare say you are well up in Shakespeare and Milton and Bacon and so forth. Unfortunately we don’t want quotations from Shakespeare and Milton and Bacon in the office. It is not the most learned man who is best fitted for this kind of work. So you can go Baboo. (Chattopadhyay, 1884/1959, p. 119) 148

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As luck would have it, although completely untrained for the job, Muchiram discovers a junior kerani Bhajogobindo Chakraborty, poor and efficient; shelters him in his own home; and makes this man do all his work. The farcical narrative takes Muchiram to newer heights of success: he becomes a deputy collector; subsequently, he moves to Calcutta, as all rich babus do; at the end of the narrative we see Muchiram becoming Raja Muchiram Raybahadur. There are interesting implications of this text, peculiarly relevant when read as a foil to the career of Shoshee Chunder Dutt. Chattopadhyay writes of how Muchiram was popular with most of his sahib superiors, for five crucial reasons: first, he was a stupid man; second, he knew little English; third, he was not confrontational by nature, and he would feel vindicated if the sahibs would insult him; fourth, he was an excellent flatterer; fifth, he would solve most cases without much reflection or even reading the matter with care. Thus, most cases would be solved quickly, and this made his superiors happy (Chattopadhyay, 1884/1959). There is no reason to doubt that there is some truth in this farcical portrayal of the native character who rises from being a lowly kerani to a raybahadur. Shoshee Chunder, like Muchiram, is also a raybahadur. However, of the five reasons for Muchiram’s success that Chattopadhyay enumerates, Shoshee Chunder clearly fails four of them, and the fifth is irrelevant in his case, because he was not a deputy magistrate. Whereas a fictional character fits into the set stereotypes of colonial cultural mapping (the lazy native, the cunning native, the conniving native all subsumed into the figure of a lowly but aspirational kerani), the real-life kerani shows a subversive intent that is conspicuous in its elements of surprise. Both in real life and in his writings, Shoshee Chunder Dutt comes across as the kerani who is difficult to either comprehend or imagine. He represents all that is not the kerani; he becomes the non-kerani. However, if one probes beyond the surface, it is not difficult to make sense of this contrariness apparently so peculiar in Dutt. Dutt is the typical subject of colonial modernity, and his writing is an expression of his enlightened consciousness, reacting like a European to Western epistemic practice. The agency he claims for himself is rarely the agency of the kerani. It is the agency of the bhadralok nationalist who is as disparaging and dismissive about the kerani as the colonial master. Even as a fictional character, Muchiram Gur is more organic to the class identity of the kerani than is Shoshee Chunder. This is not to say that the kerani is generically inefficient, uneducated, or dishonest. It is that Muchiram Gur reacts to his situation from an implicit sense of insecurity and incomprehension. For Shoshee Chunder, on the other hand, neither of these senses is valid. Firmly ensconced in his bhadralok class identity and financially secure in his family property, Dutt is the neoliberal nationalist, always and inevitably relegating his kerani identity to the fringes of his existence. In fact, he uses it as a source of power against the master class when he resigns his position, claiming agency against the white assistants, turning the 149

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act of resignation into a rhetoric of nationalism, thereby cancelling out the very act of supersession as a possible act of power. If it is a choice between the two, the fictional character of Muchiram Gur is perhaps a more authentic representative of the kerani (who transforms himself) than is the real-life character of Shoshee Chunder Dutt.

Two kerani narratives, some important questions Neither Shoshee Dutt nor Muchiram Gur is the typical representative of the kerani. Whereas one is ensconced in his comfortable bhadralok identity, the other does not remain a kerani but assumes the accoutrements of bhadraloki (and the demeanour of a bhadralok) and becomes an important person. We are towards the end of the nineteenth century when these texts were being written. After 1857, colonial modernity mingled in myriad ways with nationalism and its multiple tributaries. The press began to play a significant part in moulding and circulating narratives of dissent or their detractors. What some historians call the Bengal Renaissance was already under way, and its effect was being felt by the imperial government. Calcutta was the centre or the focal point of all these narratives. It was an interesting time. The political climate of Calcutta was rife with debates about representation. Laws were being passed and flouted, religious reformism was being refashioned, and the best minds—both in India and England—are engaged in crucial debates on ideology, imperialism, and the question of freedom. The protagonist of this monograph, our lowly Calcutta kerani, was literally in the thick of things. He was an important part of this entire dynamic. He wrote the history of these events in the ledgers and account books and registers and legal documents and decrees and orders. But who wrote the kerani? What happened to his representation? Unfortunately, the texts that talk about the kerani in particular are not many. Construed perpetually as a lack or aberration, his role in the narrative of history was relegated to such marginal coordinates that it is difficult to recover them as an oeuvre. More or less completely absent in literary representations of the first half of the nineteenth century, the kerani was seen at last, in the later decades of the century in two texts that seem to have gained some popularity and readership—the Kerani Darpan, a play published in 1874, and a long essay titled the Kerani Puran, published in 1886. There is some confusion regarding the authorship of Kerani Puran. Tithi Bhattacharya, in her book, assigns the play to Taran Sharma (p. 257), whereas other versions of the play are available which claim the text to be anonymous (Saha, p. 376). The edition that I have consulted also does not have a name of authorship. Structurally loose, and written anonymously, possibly for the battala, Kerani Darpan recounts the sad plight of a number of these lowliest of employees in nineteenth-century Calcutta. Though not of much worth, perhaps, as a work of art, the play raises a few crucial questions on the subject position of the kerani. As Gokul Banerjee rushes off to work in the early hours of 150

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the morning, unable to finish his breakfast lest he be late and humiliated or thrown out of his job by the sahib, the maid-servant raises an interesting debate in her innocent query with Gokul’s wife: At our place the men folk tend to the land, and as the day progresses, sit with a bowl of puffed rice after a bath. In the afternoon the farmer, with his hands, assembles for lunch; it is a pleasure for both the one who cooks and the one who eats, but here the situation is such a scandal! (Kerani Darpan, 1874, p. 9) Here is the illiterate maid opening up the debate between colonial modernity and the premodern way of life. The farmer in the village is caught in a time warp, in his premodern existence predicated on agriculture, the ownership of land, and all the associated tropes of having missed the emancipatory narrative of enlightenment. On the other hand, the narrative of emancipation is associated with a slavish dependence on clock time, the rush for the office, a compromise on time spent with the self or the family, and an inability to fruitfully engage with the basic impulses of daily living. The life of the farmer harks back to a past engaged in what I have called a wholesome community, of sharing a meal with one’s workers (an act performed with complete awareness of class and caste boundaries yet symptomatic of a communitarian conviviality), eating food cooked at home, at a leisurely pace. The maid turns the binary upside down and questions the veracity of an insistence on the emancipatory logic of modernity. One wonders whether this debate brought up by the illiterate maid in Kerani Darpan is the same what Bruno Latour brought up about a hundred years later: the debate about nature and culture. He questions the claims of modernity about initiating an acceleration, a rupture, or a revolution in time: When the word ‘modern’, ‘modernization’, or ‘modernity’ appears, we are defining, by contrast, an archaic and stable past. Furthermore, the word is always being thrown into the middle of a fight, in a quarrel where there are winners and losers, Ancients and Moderns. ‘Modern’ is thus doubly asymmetrical: it designates a break in the regular passage of time, and it designates a combat in which there are victors and vanquished. If so many of our contemporaries are reluctant to use this adjective today, if we qualify it with prepositions, it is because we feel less confident in our ability to maintain that double asymmetry: we can no longer point to time’s irreversible arrow, nor can we award a prize to the winners. In the countless quarrels between Ancients and Moderns, the former come out winners as often as the latter now. (Latour, 1993, p. 10) 151

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No wonder why the maid’s question also complicates the association of labour with class, immediately deconstructing the bhadralok trope linked to the profession of the aspiring kerani. Although challenged by the question hurled at her by the maid, Chandramukhi, Gokul’s wife, cannot but admit later on to one of her daughter’s friends that it was better to be a coolie or a beggar than a kerani (Kerani Darpan, 1874, p. 12). In fact, that Chandramukhi’s opinion is not entirely unfounded is proven in a later scene where the kerani Gourmohun and three coolies, all late for work, wait at the doors of the office to be allowed to enter. There ensues an altercation between the kerani and the coolies: COOLIE:

Ei Bangali, why do you push? Don’t try to feign power just because you wear clean clothes and pretend to be a babu. G O U R : Shut up! How dare you argue, you insolent coolie. CO O L I E 2 : Hey babu, don’t show airs, I’ve seen many babus like you. I can keep two-three keranis at 10/15 rupees a month. (Kerani Darpan, 1874, p. 21) As a matter of fact, the sahib allows the coolies to go in, and Gour is severely reprimanded. The narrative of the play, simplistic at many levels, is predicated on a discursive binarism that possibly contains the truth of the simple power relationship between the kerani and the sahib master in the office—none of whom were possibly engaged in the larger debates of the time. It is possible that the play consolidates the truth of the general perception of the masses about the daily nature of interaction between the representative of the empire and the native kerani. As the discourse on coming late to office continues, Gokul protests: GOKUL:

Mr. Fop always comes late, he attends the Office at 11 o’ clock, and no words to him. S U P DT : Hold your tongue, you beast; Mr. Fop is a Gentleman, he is not like you, he has other business to attend. Get out of the office you wretch. (Kerani Darpan, 1874, p. 27) Clearly, the narrative of the aspiration to ‘become’ a gentleman or a bhadralok is thwarted in the space of the office. For the superintendent, the kerani is clearly not the gentleman. Harish Mukherjee, one of the more mature representatives of the kerani population, has a better perspective of the futility of the kerani’s life. He recognizes that the life of the kerani has been one of stifling incarceration not only inside the office space but also outside. And he recognizes that keranigiri was not the problem, but rather, the problem was an aspiration for security and the consequent narrative of fear that confounds all principles of education or enlightenment: 152

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We are like thieves at the workplace, cannot say a word. This life is built on the principles of fear, fear of the gurumoshai, fear of the teacher, fear at the workplace, fear of the wife’s tongue. It is better to be a coolie than be educated. . . . we received our degrees to lie, to deceive, to be impostors; All moral principles, learned in schools and colleges at the expense of paternal money, are at last offered into the feet of an Office Superintendent, to procure a keranigiri. (Kerani Darpan, 1874, pp. 33–34) A subversive intent gradually develops in the play, where the keranis collectively react to the inhuman treatment meted out to them. However, the reader needs to realize that this subversion is not borne out of an ideological agency. There is no strategy involved in the protest; no ulterior motive of nationalist fervour is implicit. The reaction to the superintendent is borne out of the basic corporeal inability to keep up with the pressure of the job. The kerani has been pushed to his limits, and his reaction to impossible labour can be manifested only through a verbal altercation. Peculiarly, even when reduced to the level of the subhuman by the employer, the kerani clings on to his claim of being a ‘gentleman’, refusing to be construed as a ‘machine’: S U P DT : You are no better than cooleys—incorrigible wretches. P R ATA P : . . . don’t abuse us we are gentlemen, and we are not your

menial servants . . . You make us come to the Office without breakfast . . . allow us no holidays and make us work double. S U P DT : Are you not paid for that? . . . PRATAP : . . . there is a limit to human exertion, we are not iron-machines. We are paid for our work and you get your pay for doing no work . . . B O N OA RY : Are you not paid as well? But you don’t work; you have nothing to do, but to draw faces on blotting papers, and when tired of that you come upon us.  .  . . Don’t you know we are family-men and not loafer like yourself. (Kerani Darpan, 1874, pp. 37–39) This excerpt may be read as a confluence of at least three discursive principles. The kerani refuses to be identified as a machine worker, a symptom I discussed in the third chapter with reference to the clerk in London. Being called a ‘coolie’ is an abuse to the ‘gentleman’ self of the kerani. The basic unfairness of the system where the white man does little or no work becomes a source of major grievance. This is more complicated than it apparently seems. The kerani as such was not disrespectful to his white master. The larger scheme of the colonial enterprise was beyond him, and the rhetoric of political subversion was generally the forte of the ones who were construed as the ‘real bhadralok’, with social capital and cultural 153

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agency. However, there was always an implicit resentment for the lower rung of the administration: generally run by brash, young sahibs, who were less qualified than the kerani and mostly inefficient and drunk with power (also see my discussion on the novel Keri Saheber Munshi in the third chapter of this book). The play ends with the tragic death of Shyamlal Chaudhuri’s son. He receives news of his son’s illness but cannot make it back home, because the sahib refuses to let him leave. By the time he resigns his job and returns, his son has passed away. The word ‘darpan’ means a mirror. It is perhaps in the words of Shyamlal’s fellow villager Jiban that a mirror is held up to the self of the kerani and the life he has chosen for himself: When will the youth of our land . . . break their shackles and try to be independent? . . . when will the sons of India learn trade and commerce and not give themselves up to the lowly and hateful job of a kerani? (Kerani Darpan, 1874, p. 85) The Kerani Puran is a serious work on the condition of the nineteenthcentury Bengali kerani, although it begins with a rather comedic description of the kerani. The masculinist discourse, which I mentioned earlier, has generally been used with respect to the portrayal of both the English clerk and the Bengali kerani, consistently feminizing them and showing them as figures of lack. The Kerani Puran (1886) is no exception, and it begins on a similar comparatist note: [the keranis] have a similarity with the womenfolk. Their physique is as tender and unskilled as that of women. They do not know much about the dynamics of the market, do not venture too much out of their homes, nor do they want to travel to distant lands and improve their lot. They do not involve themselves in untoward incidents, their only interest being to get through life without any sort of confrontation. They are as faint as womenfolk, always afraid of displeasing the sahib. (p. 4) The subtitle ‘a true picture of the kerani, his home, health, and his social status by experience’ leaves scope for speculation. The word ‘experience’ is problematic. Whether this means that it was a kerani who was writing himself or whether the author knew the keranis through social interaction, perception, and therefore experience is open to speculation. However, the apparent distaste for the person of the kerani and the entire discourse related to kerani life seems to suggest that the author, Taran Sharma, was probably not one of them. Or, if he was, then he was someone like Shoshee Chunder, 154

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who would view the profession from above. The text is rife with disparagement for the kerani’s working life: Promotion would generally depend on a little efficiency, salaams, flattery, gifts, telling on others, cunning and being in the ‘good books’ of the sahib . . . once in a while it is possible to find a kerani with a university degree or a college scholarship, and some of them are also journalists, critics, orators, or authors . . . but most keranis come for the job after a quarrel with Ma Saraswati. (Kerani Puran, 1886, p. 8) Clearly, once again, there is an attempt at situating the kerani in a defined binary between him and the gentleman or the bhadralok. Whereas bhadraloks do sometimes take up the job of a kerani, but they generally have other, more-respectable vocations. The bhadralok is an incidental kerani, whereas the kerani proper is one who is unemployable otherwise. It is his dispensability that makes him the figure of lack who has to resort to flattery or cunning or some such connivance to keep his job. The author of Kerani Puran also assumes an interesting contrarian approach while discussing the health or the body of the kerani. The kerani, already feminized and kept out of the general discourse of sturdy, hegemonic masculinity, is generally seen as a diminutive figure suffering from chronic illnesses and discomforts, such as ajirna, agnimanda, dyspepsia, or dhatudourbalya (Mukharji, 2009, p.  104). Projit Bihari Mukharji (2009) emphasizes, in his book on indigenous medical practices in the nineteenth century, the dependence of these poor keranis on exotic advertisements that promised magical cures to chronic illnesses through indigenous medicine and cure-alls: In daktari advertising we have a[n] . . . example of the ‘consumption of exoticism’. The angst of the lower-middle-class keranis (those in clerical or semiclerical jobs)—the prime consumers of the surface modernity of bigyapans, undoubtedly influenced the popularity of such exoticism. Chained as the keranis thought they were to the soul-killing urban rhythms of clerical work, they came to crave the imaginary escape offered by the exotic. (p. 104) The author of Kerani Puran admits to these chronic illnesses of the kerani and certain others, such as constipation, nasal polypus, and heartburn, but he insists that the chronic heartburn of the kerani has more to do with the moyra or the confectioner near his office than anything else (Mukharji, 2009, p. 11). However, he is of the opinion that other than these minor indispositions, the kerani is generally of sound health. He insists that the Westerner’s 155

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emphasis on sedentary habits as the root cause of ill-health may be true for the European but that in India the kerani alone has proven otherwise: The health of the kerani is not bad, and the root cause of this is his generally simple eating habits, a regularity of meals and sleep, and moderate labour. The kerani has little reflection and does not have much work for the brain. These are the reasons for his good health. (Mukharji, 2009, p. 10) There is enough scope to challenge this contention, although the author of Kerani Puran has also made a gradation of keranis (kulin, bongsojo, and moulik), and according to him, the head keranis have a decent standard of living, unlike those on the lower rungs. Although not specified, it is possible that this contention about health refers to the head babus and not generically to all keranis. However, the subtle hint at the refusal to admit the kerani as a brain worker cannot be missed. In spite of a certain amount of humour at the expense of the kerani, the Kerani Puran is mostly sympathetic to their lot. In fact, it launches a critique against the bhadralok, who, the author believes, is squarely responsible for the humiliation of the kerani. The bhadralok reformer launches consistent attacks on the colonial master in his political lectures and editorial essays. The angry colonist, unable to lay his hands upon the bhadralok intellectual, focuses his wrath on the poor kerani. The kerani loses his job, his promotion, or his leave: The big babus need to have some patience. First, let there be improvements in agriculture, trade and industry; let superstitions be addressed; let there be ways to earn one’s bread other than keranigiri. Let us first attempt to be equal to the English before demanding political privilege. (Kerani Puran, 1886, p. 20) The author calls on both the sahib and the native civilian to show some mercy to the kerani. The kerani, he says, is a good subject, easy to govern. Even though he gets one promotion when five are due, he remains the meek subject, happy with his little progress. Finally, the author of Kerani Puran clarifies to his readers and the keranis alike his intention for writing this tract. As he says, it is not his intention to hurt the kerani or to have fun at their expense; it is to narrate the sad plight of the kerani’s life and incite compassion for them in the hearts of the influential people of society (Kerani Puran, 1886, p. 30). It is perhaps the author of this tract who sows the first seeds of the possibility of an association for the keranis: ‘As there are associations for the betterment of various classes

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of people, we need an association for the keranis as well; because it is not an easy task to uplift the kerani from his present condition’ (Kerani Puran, 1886, p. 30). The Kerani Puran ends with a similar clarion call to the keranis as the Kerani Darpan did. It warns them of how it was their duty to not let their sons fall into the same miasma of keranigiri; of how they must try to make bhadraloks of their sons so that they could get a foothold in society: Kerani bhadralok! If you want prestige and comfort for yourself, if you want to educate your sons well. . . . now is the time to act. Take up agriculture, trade and industry. Begin to till your land as your grandfathers or great-grandfathers did. Let ten of you come together and cultivate paddy . . . grow vegetables . . . build a small factory with native workers .  .  . learn your trade in workshops, read about agriculture and establish schools where your bhadralok population may learn the trade. . . . Otherwise your own sons will become keranis once again. (Kerani Puran, 1886, p. 41) Quite possibly, the author of the Kerani Puran was a nationalist. The narrative of going back into tradition was a familiar trope in the late nineteenth century. In the concluding pages of his tract, he does call the kerani a bhadralok. But he tries to redefine the notion of the bhadralok. Higher education for the bhadralok should not only mean the security of a job; he must be ready to risk going back to agriculture and industry, to learn trade and commerce, and to refashion his identity through an emancipatory logic that dislocates the monochromatic logic of colonial modernity. Progress is not blind imitation of the white master, nor technological advancement, unless it lends a voice to the subject. Confinement to the office, novel as it is, is not the path to modernity for the native subject. The text possibly insists on a premodern understanding of traditional resources and practices and of using modern technology to revive them. The profession of the kerani, both the Kerani Darpan and the Kerani Puran argue, is not emancipatory but exploitative and dehumanizing in its intention. No wonder why there are major differences in the respective discourses of the clerk in London and the kerani in Calcutta in the nineteenth century. As the former was emerging into a well-defined framework of modernity, the latter was still grappling with an identity in a network of confused representations where enlightenment, colonial modernity, and a premodern but not too distant past criss-crossed. The London clerk was ready to write a history for himself that had a clearly defined trajectory ensconced in a gradually developed narrative of identity formation; the Calcutta kerani, on the other hand, was a subject ready to implode in the contingency of a colonial moment, uncertain about his past and without a future that he could

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claim for himself. Perhaps the only link between the two was their aspiration towards being a gentleman or a bhadralok, and it may be said, tentatively, that both of them failed in this respect. The clerk never became a gentleman, nor the kerani a bhadralok, but it is from in this precarious contingency that their peculiar identity in history has been etched. The story of the clerk or the kerani was rarely written; they wrote themselves only into the interstices of other grand narratives. The body of the kerani stands as a contingent witness to the carelessness of history towards significant hinges.

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7 THE SIGNIFICANT OMISSION The female clerk

The reader may notice the significant omission of the figure of the female clerk in the book. In the third chapter, I mentioned, in passing, the presence of the female clerk in nineteenth-century London. However, I also discussed how there was an abiding trope of masculinity and maleness that largely defined the clerical profession in Victorian England. Much of this book, as I already pointed out, is predicated on the assessment of the cultural and professional life of the Calcutta kerani, and it thus uses the comparatist analytical model. Women in the colonized space of India (and Calcutta) were still confined to a defined and structured domesticity, and the prospect of a regular job or chakri was not yet germane to their cultural logic. Even if one were to set aside the colonizer/colonized binary, the debate on the woman question was complicated by the modern/premodern binary, and the logic of emancipation of women was still not focused on the question of economic independence. The nineteenthcentury cultural space in Calcutta was rife with important debates about society, representation, and the notion of independence, and the woman question was occasionally a significant point of departure. However, there was no immediate link that could be established, as yet, between the idea of woman’s emancipation and the question of a livelihood or a chakri for the woman. On a corresponding note, however, the Victorian woman in London was already a working woman, although there was a predominant masculine framework within which they were employed. The reason for the absence of a sustained and informed discussion on the female clerk in this book was due to the use of the comparatist model. It would not have been possible to find corresponding frameworks of comparison for a possible critical analysis. However, important changes were unfolding in clerical practice in nineteenth-century London, and the presence of the female employee was a significant reason for this. In the final chapter of this book, therefore, I will briefly discuss, in the comparatist trope, the presence of women in the world of clerks in the nineteenth century.

The female clerk in nineteenth-century London It is difficult, but not impossible, to craft narratives of similarity between the clerk in London and the kerani in Calcutta in the nineteenth century. 159

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However, the same cannot be said on the subject of women, because the comparative trajectory, in this case, is far more complicated and fraught. I shall take up the comparative trope later in the discussion. It is clear from the available literature that there was an increasing and significant presence of female clerks in London from the last decades of the nineteenth century. However, there is no reason to assume that the entry of women into the workforce was easily accepted and that they were immediately assimilated into the workforce. In a section of his book humorously titled ‘Angel in the Office’, Michael Heller (2011) writes about the introduction of the female clerk at the office: Female clerks not only had the potential to damage clerks financially, their increased employment also posed the danger of upsetting the gender boundaries of the nineteenth-century middle-class Victorian world which confined women to the private sphere and men to the public. (p. 128) Clearly, the assimilation of women into the sphere of regular and systematic employment in a salaried job involved a discursive shift in Victorian society. The andarmahal and bahirmahal debate that was crucial in shaping the cultural history of Bengali women in the nineteenth century was also instrumental here; only the paradigms of their constitution were different. The women who entered the workforce in London largely belonged to the middle or the lower-middle class, and it was a curious mixture of need, on the one hand, and conservatism, on the other, that resulted in a confused reaction of the society towards these female clerks. As Jane Lewis (1988) writes, ‘While middle class men .  .  . had no hesitation in relying on the arduous work of their female domestic servants they had no intention of permitting either their wives or daughters to engage in paid employment’ (p. 37). The narrative of modernity, hand in hand with the question of women’s empowerment, was thus emerging in London in a discourse of confusion that was coupled with need. If one were to examine the employment and salary patterns for female clerks in the nineteenth century, it would not be difficult to arrive at certain easy conclusions. The women were mostly hired for the lower levels of clerical work that involved mechanical labour, skills that involved repetition, or those that did not involve any amount of intellectual application. Gender stereotyping was at the heart of this pattern of employment, and the modernization and mechanization of the office, which was largely instrumental in the hiring of women, was far removed from a parallel narrative of modernity that emerged from the enlightenment. Interestingly, the women not only accepted the lower salary that was offered them compared to the male clerks but also willingly conceded to the gender stereotyping: 160

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for the most part female clerks accepted the gender stereotyping that was being actively imposed in the office. They accepted the fact that although they were office workers, they were also future wives and mothers, and that primacy had to be given to the latter rather than the former. There was subsequently . . . a willingness to accept many of the limitations which employers and managers, no doubt with the support of majority of their male clerical employees, ringed around them. (Heller, 2011, pp. 128–129) For most of the nineteenth century, therefore, there was a marriage bar imposed on the female clerk. She could keep her job only as long as she stayed single, and the moment she got married, she had to resign her position. Only those women who chose to remain single for a longer period of time, or forever, were able to reach senior managerial positions. Heller argues against the popular idea of pin-money clerks—the common perception that women who came for these low or mid-level clerical jobs spent all their salary on clothes and entertainment. He is of the opinion that it was impossible for a woman with a low clerical salary to sustain an independent life outside the family. Hence, most of these women stayed in bigger family homes and, as was the common Victorian custom, would put their money ‘in a common household “pot” .  .  . for the common benefit of the household. Individual contributors were allowed to keep some ‘pocket money’ which would go towards entertainment, holidays, travelling, or lunch money’ (Heller, 2011, p. 126). Heller (2011) argues that the common perception about pin-money clerks was essentially a male term of abuse for the female worker. The general dissatisfaction of the male clerks with their female colleagues was based on the idea that these women were not only the reason for a drying up of jobs for the male population but also that their salaries were brought down by the generally low salaries at which women could be hired. Heller (2011) notes that there are strong grounds for questioning the whole idea that the feminization of . . . clerical work was detrimental to male clerks. Despite the increase in female numbers, male clerical incomes went up, not down. . . . In many cases, it was . . . [the] concentration of women in entry-level jobs which subsidized the pay increases and opportunities for better positions for men between 1870 and 1914. (p. 127) However, this hostility towards female clerks in no way affected the regular hiring of female staff in both government and private offices. Clearly, though, there was a well-defined hierarchy till at least the First World War, between the men, who were hired for the ‘difficult’ managerial jobs, and the women, who were hired for more mechanical jobs, such as typewriting, 161

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reception services, or other low-level clerical work. Interestingly, as the perception that women were going to be an intrinsic part of the profession gained currency, female-centric advertisements began to appear for the sale of clerical material. A typical advertisement by ‘The Noiseless Typewriter Co.’ appearing in the February 1920 issue of The Woman Clerk read as follows: ‘NOISE IS UNDIGNIFIED: The “NOISELESS” adds DIGNITY and REFINEMENT to the work of the Woman Clerk and Secretary’ (p.  36). Likewise, Isaac Pitman and Sons brought out a series of handbooks, such as The Business Girls’ Handbook, The Junior Woman Secretary, and Business Methods and Secretarial Work for Girls and Women. They advertised the entire series as Pitman’s Books for Business Girls (Isaac Pitman and Sons, 1920, p. 37). All of this, though, was into the first and second decades of the twentieth century, by which time the female clerk had begun to get some foothold in the profession. Clerical unions began to accept female members, and the female clerks formed associations and published magazines of their own. It was only in the Edwardian years that the female clerk in London was able to find her expression as a professional woman in the true sense. Political awareness was imperative, the associations realized, if women were to be taken seriously at their workplaces. The editorial of the February 1920 issue of The Woman Clerk expresses this in no uncertain terms: Women, as a whole, need to look at things from a wider standpoint. The problem of their own unemployment is bound up with many other problems which touch the whole nation. Their political responsibilities must be shouldered and taken seriously if they want their own affairs to be taken seriously. . . . We do urge our members to see to it that they fit themselves, not only for their own special ‘job’, but for the right and proper use of the vote, and for the fulfilment of their other duties as citizens. (p. 27) Empowerment was thus seen as an attribute of awareness and unionization a way of expression. All this, however, was happening in the twentieth century. The nineteenth-century female clerk, if taken out of the context of the wider trajectory of a developmental praxis of women’s labour that extended into the twentieth century, was the pliable, ill-paid, and exploited woman without either agency or any representative voice. She could be seen as the worker who could be easily paid less than she deserved, used merely as a replacement of the young office boy, denigrated by the male members of the profession, and located at a distance from any emancipatory logic of enlightenment.

Women in nineteenth-century Calcutta Women in nineteenth-century Calcutta (or Bengal) were far removed from the professional world of the chakri, or salaried employment. The notion of 162

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emancipation was played out in a completely different paradigm of social and cultural changes, and employment for the middle-class woman within a public domain was not even remotely a possibility. To understand this location of the indigenous female subject in perspective, it is important to comprehend how the structures of modernity played out in the native society of the nineteenth century. An emergent and dominant structure of modernity that was evolving rapidly in the West had its ripple effect in the colonized space in the form of books and sociocultural tracts that were accessible by the nineteenth century. The intellectual in Bengal was well read in Western philosophical, political, and historical tracts. Colonial modernity had its own complications qualified by an immediate disconnect between what was read and what was witnessed. The colonial government was not always a champion of the values that enlightenment modernity held up as just, and thus the colonial subject on the other side of matters of governance was caught in a conundrum of a theory/practice binary. There was also the presence of a strong counter-discourse of premodern indigenous knowledge, stoked by enlightenment modernity through the notions of nation and nationalism. The bhadralok intellectual was thus caught in a mesh of influences and discourses that promulgated separate narratives of emancipation and representation. In the first and second chapters of this book, I discussed how the kerani was defined by the precarity of a locational confusion and how he was not exactly a bhadralok. However, due to a lack of categories, he was sometimes accommodated within the lowest rungs of a bhadralok identity. The ‘real’ bhadralok was the English-educated, upper- or middleclass, upper-caste male, trained on ideals of nationalism, and approaching the question of identity formation with a reformist zeal. For him, one of the important questions was the emancipation of women, to educate them and to rescue them from the darkness of a premodern existence qualified by idol worship, vrats and fasting, and the complete subjugation to male dominance and to playing the role of the patibrata wife. The emergence of the modern woman in nineteenth-century Bengal was, however, another problematic narrative. What constituted ‘modern’ for men was not necessarily ‘modern’ for women. The ideological assimilation of modernity (or what constituted the notion of being modern) was clearly marked by a gender divide. More often than not, what constituted adhunikata for Bengali women was associated with a kind of materiality, in a pejorative sense. The ideological thrust that accompanied the claim to modernity of Bengali men was absent in case of women. As Tanika Sarkar (2013/2001) writes on the question of the modern woman in the nineteenth century, They . . . served as the target of both nationalist appeal and blame. A large body of tracts and folk art depicted the modern woman as a self-indulgent, spoilt and lazy creature who cared nothing for family or national fortune. This charge encompasses the triadic relationship between women, gold and servitude—kamini, kanchan, 163

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dasatva—that the nineteenth-century saint Ramakrishna was to engrave so deeply upon the Bengali moral order. (p. 35) Sarkar goes on to suggest that the archetype of evil for women in nineteenth-century Bengal was defined neither by immorality or economic independence but by modern education that led women to exchange their snakha-sidur for luxury items manufactured abroad. Thus, while modernity and its manifestations were seen to be an intellectual influence on Bengali men, and a reflection of their cultured mind, the same agency was seen in women as an attribute of an uncultured or vilified body. Nineteenthcentury women in Calcutta were thus seen more or less as passive subjects of history. The manifestation of such passivity was also used to make an idol or an ideal of women in nationalist discourse. The discourse of nationalism grounded in modernity and deeply male, used the ‘purity’ of the non-modern woman as a trope of transcendence to feed the idea of the nation. Emancipation for women was predicated on the symbolic, in the image of the matribhumi or the Bharat Mata, sundered from the subjugation to colonialism and its discourse of servitude: The male body, having passed through the grind of Western education, office, routine, and forced urbanization . . . was supposedly remade in an attenuated, emasculated form of colonialism. The female body, on the other hand, was still pure and unmarked, loyal to the rule of the shastras. . . . Since the new economic man did not appear in Bengal, it would be the new domestic woman who had to carry the image of a class. (Sarkar, 2001/2013, pp. 43–44) Thus, the ‘new woman’ borne out of the narratives of colonial modernity was symbolic of a fulfilment that replaced the ‘lack’ inherent in Bengali men compromised by their surrender to Western epistemology and their participation in the outside world of trade or service or administration. The ratification of the cloistered or ‘untouched’ female body through a narrative of purity, as emblematic of the purity of the nation, untouched yet by the snares of modernity, was the trope used most frequently. This fulfilment, however, although emerging from a discourse of modernity, was ontologically premodern, or non-modern, and harked back to the glory of a Hindu past that was lost forever. Bengali literature of the period, particularly the works of Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay and Rabindranath Tagore, is replete with such transcendental images of women: the woman as a widow, the unmarried woman, and the married woman with agency, subsumed under their literary and cultural identity the image of the devi or 164

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the goddess who was inviolable by modern epistemic practices or participation in a colonized society. My contention here is to suggest that the female subject in the colonial space was used as a symbol of a premodern, precolonial pastness that could be evoked as a reservoir of power and virtue, of a potent chastity pitted against the implicit violence of modernity symbolized by colonial power. Nationalism, a notion absorbed from training in Western modernity, harked back to the premodern image of the mother as goddess as an expression of outrage. It was an attempt by male agency, rendered powerless by its submission to a narrative of colonial modernity, to appropriate the woman as the counternarrative of indigenous strength and passionate resistance. The woman as a modern subject was thus undercut by the usurpation of femaleness as precolonial iconography. The mind of the modern woman is rendered redundant by appropriating her body as the symbolic representation of the nation. Thus, even if a woman were educated, her agency as the mother figure, the saviour figure, or the goddess figure was more relevant to the cultural politics of the nineteenth century, rather than her agency as an earning and thinking subject. Therefore, the question of the woman going out to work was way beyond the imaginative hagiography in which the Bengali man had ensconced her subjecthood. In the nineteenthcentury cultural space, there was clearly a denial of consciousness involved in the woman conceived as the passive-aggressive icon of the nation. The woman, on the other hand, was silently working towards a subjecthood, a singularly difficult exercise given her iconographic appropriation. It was a double bind. The bhadralok wanted women to be educated, to become a bhadramahila. But the call was to radically transform the bhadramahila from bidushi (learned/educated) to mohiyoshi (noble), so that her agency could be transferred to a transcendental plane, thereby denying her the necessary consciousness. The woman, more precisely the bhadramahila, who wanted any agency for herself, would generally be self-taught. Tanika Sarkar talks about the striking use of the word jitakshara by Rashsundari Dasi when she secretly taught herself to read and write. (See Sarkar, 2001/2003, p. 48. Also see a discussion on the use and the history of the word in Bhadra, 2011, pp. 104– 105, endnote 43). There were other significant instances of the educated or literate woman writing her memoir as a mark of any agency that she could garner. Significant among them would be the memoir of Binodini Dasi, a popular stage actress in the nineteenth century, Amaar Katha (1912), or the memoir of Keshab Chandra Sen’s mother, Saradasundari Devi, titled Atmakatha (1913). Another significant memoir was that of Krishnabhamini Das, of her journey to England in 1882, Inglonde Bongomahila (1885). Although the event of Krishnabhamini’s journey to England was significant and singular, and her memoir was a novel insight offered by a Bengali woman of the space beyond the domestic, the editor of the volume, Simonti Sen, has felt 165

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that Krishnabhamini was naturally caught, in her narrative, in the easy male/ female or masculine/feminine stereotypes: The division that she protests against in the sphere of education, is the same division that she endorses in case of the social roles of the man and the woman. She garners support for this theory from her observation of domesticity in England. She discovers the Victorian ideal of the two spheres in the domestic life of England. Krishnabhamini tells her readers that the newly acquired qualities of education, refinement etcetera had not separated the English woman from her domesticity. In fact, it was the domestic that had become the centre of their mental and intellectual excellence. (Das, 1885/1996, p. 22, translation mine) Thus, although Krishnabhamini’s memoir and the other memoirs speak to subjects such as women’s education and its relationship to a guided emancipation, none of them mentions the possibility of the Bengali woman going out to work. Emancipation was contained within the domestic, and the question of earning a salary, or having a regular job, was still not a proposition of merit in the imaginative geography of the bhadramahila. In Provincializing Europe, Dipesh Chakrabarty (2000) brings out interesting evidence from the prose writings of Tagore, where, Chakrabarty argues, the poet makes a clear inferior/superior binary between the world of chakri, or job, and the world of the griha or home. While the kerani belongs to the inferior world of chakri, the woman belongs to the superior world of the griha as a grihalakshmi: That we can call the grihalakshmi Lakshmi [the goddess of wellbeing] signifies something by the mere hint of a word. But we never feel any desire to call the head clerk kerani-narayan (kerani=writer, clerk; the god Narayan is also the husband of Lakshmi), even though religious theory says that Narayan is present in every man. So it is clear that the head clerk of the office has nothing ineffable about him. (Tagore, as cited in Chakrabarty, p. 159) Clearly, therefore, there was little or no endorsement for the woman in nineteenth-century Calcutta to step out of the griha for salaried labour. It is singularly interesting how Tagore posits the figure of the woman as grihalakshmi, against that of the salaried labour of the kerani. The opposition between the female subject position and keranigiri is complete. I shall end this section with an excerpt from Kerani Darpan (1874), where Malati, the daughter of the kerani Gokul Banerjee, has a discussion with her friend Bidhumukhi regarding the subject of the woman and keranigiri: 166

THE SIGNIFICANT OMISSION M A L AT I : Didi, do you read anything at home these days? B I D H U M U K H I : We don’t employ a teacher anymore. They

M:

B: M: B: M:

say that the woman should know how to read and write, and know needlework well. She doesn’t have to look for a job after all. Just because a woman doesn’t have to look for a job doesn’t mean she should remain uneducated. The other day father said that if a woman is educated she becomes more intelligent, the family prospers, the nation is benefitted. Especially the wives of keranis must be educated. (laughing) Why? Will the man and the woman work together? . . . What are you saying Malati? No didi, I didn’t mean that the woman has to work. I said it benefits the husband. How? Why, to not pester the husband to buy fine clothes, and jewellery, and other things. (Kerani Darpan, 1874, pp. 17–18)

Significantly, this excerpt, while advocating for the cause of women’s education and a consequent liberalism, addresses two other debates: on the one hand, it does not endorse the idea of a working woman, and on the other hand, it consolidates the take of Sri Ramakrishna on the relationship between kamini, kanchan, and chakri. The necessity of educating the woman in late nineteenth-century is not predicated on the idea that she would become an earning member of the family; it would only help the male/earning member to convince her of the uselessness of worldly acquirements such as clothes and jewellery. It may be concluded, therefore, that in spite of certain possible interfaces between the Victorian woman in London and the woman in Calcutta in terms of the conditions of their domestic duties, there was a significant difference in perceptions of emancipation and freedom. For the native female subject, the idea of mukti, or freedom, was enmeshed in a complex discourse that involved nationalism, premodernity, colonial modernity, and domesticity. To become a working woman (the simplest form of which was, perhaps, to become a kerani or a teacher) was still some years away. For the woman in London, though, becoming a working woman or a female clerk involved a simpler debate about modernity and domesticity. Because my work focuses, more or less, on the nineteenth century and uses a comparatist mode, a more elaborate discussion on the female clerk would have been anachronistic.

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In this book, I have largely attempted to write a cultural history of the kerani in nineteenth-century Calcutta vis-à-vis the corresponding identity and existence of the clerk in nineteenth-century London. A chapter in the book has also been dedicated to the writers and factors who came to Calcutta in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, mostly to work for the East India Company. I used the comparatist frame for a number of reasons: first, I wanted to determine whether the kerani in Calcutta and the clerk in London could be read as corresponding representations of each other in a historical setting that had multiple interfaces; second, I wanted to trace the relative impact of the evolution of modernity and its machinations in two spaces separated geographically, but with an intense understanding of each other through a dynamic of colonialism; third, I tried to examine the possible genealogy of the patterns of clerkship or keranigiri that was manifest in both these spaces around the nineteenth century and to understand the essential difference that the idea of clerical labour signified in these two spaces; finally, I intended to estimate the ‘latitude’ that clerical life allowed these keranis and the subversions or counter-discursive techniques that they used to undercut the surveillance strategies, through the act of writing. Although I used the London clerk, or the British writer in India, as figures of comparison, the focus of the study has been the kerani’s life in the Calcutta of the nineteenth century. As I mentioned in the introduction and tried to point out throughout the book, the kerani in nineteenth-century Calcutta was a figure who belied a historical understanding of scribal culture in India. The uniqueness of his location in the realm of colonial history in the Indian subcontinent has to be read as a failure of genealogy and as the possibility of the formation of an identity that is manufactured through a particular context that cannot be traced back to an origin. In his uniqueness, the Bengali kerani of the nineteenth century foregrounds the sociological or the cultural over the historical and elicits his place, from in the sometimes-dubious and often-irregular crevices of a gradually unfolding colonial modernity, as an aberration. Neither the successor of the rich scribal culture of the subcontinent nor an exact 168

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replica of the contemporary clerk in London, the Calcutta kerani of the nineteenth century will always remain a figure who appears on the uneven interface of a complex cultural and imperial praxis. From the moment of his conception till well into the twentieth century, the kerani has remained a problem child of colonial history in the subcontinent. I have consistently observed that in the emergent social fabric of a subcontinental colonial modernity, the kerani, as a social subject, belongs nowhere. It is almost impossible to place the kerani either in a consistent pattern of the development of a labour class and a labour economy of a newly emerging city-space or in the various, yet traceable, genealogy of a tiered middle-class or bhadralok population of nineteenth-century Calcutta. This is the reason why, in spite of being an indispensable cog to the imperial machinery as a community, the individual kerani was rarely a representative figure in the larger historical narrative of class structure and identity. As a corollary, therefore, the history of the lowly and unrepresentable kerani was never written by the historians of the empire. It was my intention in this book to try to extricate the kerani from this overarching web of neglect and locate him as a representative figure of colonial history. In the introductory chapters, I discussed in much detail the representative ambivalence and the lack of a defined social position in the milieu for the kerani in nineteenth-century Calcutta. In the process, what emerged was how the historical contingency of the period was instrumental in the emergence of a peculiar variety of modernity (that I have termed managerial modernity), which invented this native avatar of the London clerk, invested him with certain qualities (such as a working knowledge of the English language), made him a functional automaton in the larger structure of the administration, stereotyped him in a set context, and due to his individual dispensability refused him a set and secure identity. This book may be read as an implicit apology for the forgetfulness of history. The enterprise of the postcolonial writing of history in the subcontinent has suitably attempted heteroglossial reinterpretations of marginality. It has tried to revive or rediscover moments in colonial history that have fallen prey to assimilationist neglect, the muffling of minority voices, and the majoritarian neglect of precarities. The study of nineteenth-century Bengal has often been a major concern for postcolonial historians, and much research has been done on the subject. This book attempts to address an aporetic moment in this project of the revival of minoritarian voices. It is possible that revivalist strategies have followed standard epistemic methods to claim agency only for those subaltern or marginal voices that have a clearly defined discursive framework: caste, class, religion, or gender. The critique in and the criticality of disciplinary historiography have suitably glossed over the crevices and stuck to well-defined registers of counter-discourse. The protagonist of this monograph, the kerani from nineteenth-century Calcutta, would not fit into any of the set epistemic registers of representation. His interstitial location, 169

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appended to a complex and problematic representational conundrum, was possibly the cause of the oversight: minoritarian writing cannot possibly engage with the English-educated, upper-caste marginal subject of history. I have focused in some detail on this inability of representation, or for that matter the lack of it, and have attempted to register the ambivalent presence of this unique colonial subject in an unfolding narrative of colonial modernity. What is difficult to represent may not be effaced, although it is admittedly problematic to place the kerani in a set epistemic framework and write his history. My intention here was to intervene at the moment of effacement, where bereft of a class identity, or a distinctive discursive presence, the kerani from nineteenth-century Calcutta (so peculiarly symptomatic of his time) was possibly to have become a martyr for a logic of incidentality. Another major concern of the book has been to explore the subject position of the kerani. In terms of corporeality, the kerani could serve as the perfect example of the Foucauldian ‘docile body’. All the four characteristics that Foucault associates with the docile body are indelibly etched on the body of the kerani (Foucault, 1995, pp. 164–169): 1 2 3

4

It was cellular—that is, constricted within a fixed space. It was organic—that is, the kerani functioned according to fixed codes without any autonomy over his work. It was genetic, from the moment of their initiation into the workforce— that is, every moment of their lives was marked by the symptom of keranigiri in a manner that was bereft of either a past or a future. It was combinatory, where strict disciplinary boundaries were marked by sustained injunctions, signals, and clarity of prearranged codes of behaviour.

Thus, the question of subjecthood and agency remained one that did not have an easy answer. Agency for the kerani was thus, often, relegated to the realm of sly civility, cunning, and deception, which I have explored through the fictional character of Muchiram Gur. These qualities, once again, led to the easy stereotyping of the kerani character and made him into a figure of ridicule and condescension. As an individual, the kerani was a singularly unimportant and dispensable presence in the administrative machinery. His voice and opinion did not matter. Therefore, as a political subject, the kerani had little or no agency, unless he was also someone else. As I have emphasized, since there were no set qualifications for being a kerani, the workforce was a motley group of people whose agency as subjects often varied. There would occasionally be characters such as Shoshee Chunder Dutt, a kerani by choice, who would have considerable agency and would represent his self to a population outside the realm of keranidom. As a political subject, therefore, the kerani was relevant only in terms of a miniscule population of employees, ostensibly 170

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better qualified than the others, with agency that was acquired through means other than keranigiri. They were writing the self through sociocultural acts of writing letters to newspapers or publishing memoirs or through political acts of belonging to nationalist or radical groups, but these were few and far between. These acts of self-expression, or free will or agency, which I have termed ‘latitude’ in the book, were rare and incidental for the kerani in nineteenth-century Calcutta. In most cases, both the body and the mind of the kerani remained unwritten on the larger canvas outside their workplace. As both the Kerani Darpan (1874) and the Kerani Puran (1886) portray, the kerani’s life was bereft of latitude, and the only emancipation that they envisioned for the kerani was through either private enterprise or a refashioning of premodern or traditional modes of livelihood. The latitude, therefore, was mostly outside. This book is by no means a comprehensive cultural history of native or indigenous clerkship in India during the colonial period. One of the major omissions of the book has been the parallel narratives of clerkship in two other emerging metropolitan spaces, the presidencies of Bombay and Madras. Both of these city-spaces could claim a complex and fraught interface between tradition and colonial modernity, and this would include the question of clerkship. One of the reasons why I did not collate the three spaces was the fact that, unlike Calcutta, both Bombay and Madras had set indigenous scribal cultures and professions of writing much before the arrival of the British master and its governmentality or ‘papereality’, as Bhavani Raman has put it (Raman, 2012, p. 3). Calcutta was an emerging metropolitan space, and the kerani was a new addition to the professional sphere of the city. Whereas most associations of the profession of clerkship in Calcutta were novel and linked directly to colonial governance, both Bombay and Madras saw a curious mix of traditional writerly practices with newly emergent trends brought in by the new colonial masters. As a result, it is difficult to read the life of the nineteenth-century Calcutta kerani with his contemporaries in the other two metropolitan spaces. It is not impossible, but such a project would require a different set of comparatist frameworks than those I have used to locate the Calcutta kerani vis-à-vis his contemporary in London. Also, that would entail a considerable change in the central thesis of the book and would require addressing a different set of problems than the ones that have taken up in this book. This is an important subject, nevertheless, and would perhaps require another book. Another possible critique of the book could be how I have taken the entire nineteenth century as a period for analysis when there were major changes in the form and nature of colonial governance between the first and the second halves of the century. It is true that in terms of colonial practice, there were major reforms between the two halves of the century, caused by important political upheavals and unrest among the colonized population. The most important among them, perhaps, was the Crown taking over 171

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the governance from the Company in 1858. Although this led to important executive changes in the nature of governance, there were no significant changes in the life and profession of the lowly kerani. I have written about the large-scale mechanization and changes in office practice in London during the nineteenth century. However, no such major mechanization was attempted in the colonized space. Except maybe for more accountability or professionalism that was demanded of the kerani and the introduction of entrance examinations towards the late years of the century, the essential fabric of keranigiri remained more or less unchanged. Of course, there were certain significant advances that affected the life of the kerani: the introduction of the railways, horse-pulled trams, and electric trams; the gradual development and evolution of the city-space; and the rapid and uneven spread of English education. None of these, however, was instrumental in making the Bengali kerani less of a caricature, more socially acceptable, or less a figure of pity than he was at the beginning of the century. Towards the end of the century, he was still the poorly paid automaton, easily dispensable, aspiring to be a gentleman—as unimportant and vain as he was towards the beginning of the century. Thus, the treatment of the long nineteenth century as a homogenous block of time was singularly predicated on there being no revolutionary changes in the affective life of the kerani during the span of the century. The idea of this book emerged accidentally, when I laid my hands on the memoir of Shoshee Chunder Dutt. The book stoked my curiosity, and I wanted to read more on the subject of the Bengali kerani, only to find no comprehensive scholarly work on the subject. The comparatist mode was an automatic choice, as nineteenth-century English literature was peppered with references to the common clerk. It is my hope that I have done justice to a subject that not only incited my interest but also lacked suitable representation in the large body of scholarship on the nineteenth-century cultural history of Bengal.

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178

INDEX

Acock, R.G. 83 adhunikata 163 Advice to young civilians 107–108 Ahmed, Sharif Uddin 20–21 Alam, Muzaffar 4, 6–7 andarmahal 160 Attewell, Paul 64–65, 67, 78 babu 2, 8, 17, 26, 35, 39, 44, 52, 55–60, 63, 69, 72–74, 89; borobabu 59; definition 56; phulbabu 58; see also kerani, and babu bahirmahal 160 Baladouni, V. 139–140 Bandopadhyay, Bhabanicharan 32, 57 Bandopadhyay, Haricharan 10–11 Bandopadhyay, Rangalal 36, 47 Banerjee, Baboo Doorgagutty 49 Banerjee, Jiban Dhan 72 Banerjee, Sumanta 32, 35 banian 32–34, 41–42, 56, 93; see also writer, and banian battala 61, 150 Bayly, Christopher 5 Beames, John 49, 93, 108–110 Bellew, H.W. 92 Bengal 20–23, 30, 37–39; colonial 7, 38; Mughal 11–12, 21; nineteenth century 1, 37; pre-modern 10 Bhabha, Homi 38, 46 Bhadra, Gautam 22 bhadralok 2, 11–12, 14–15, 17, 40–42, 47–48, 56–60, 63, 69, 74, 85, 98, 124–125, 144, 147–150, 152–153, 155–158, 163, 165, 169; Bengali 124; and bhadraloki 2, 31–32, 150; masculinity 123; see also kerani, and bhadralok bhadramahila 165–166

Bharat Mata 164 Bhattacharya, Tithi 32–33, 36, 46–47, 59, 150 Bhnaru Datta 13–15 bidushi 165 Bishi, Pramathanath 102–103 Blechynden, Kathleen 26, 101 Bombay 9, 119, 171 Braverman, H. 64–65, 67–68, 78 Broomfield, J.H. 31 Brown, David 45 Brown, W.J. 135 Bullion, Thomas 77 cakurijibi 21 Calcutta 1–5, 9, 15, 18, 20, 23–26, 29, 32–37, 39, 40, 43, 45, 48, 50–52, 55, 57, 59–62, 67–68, 71–72, 75, 79, 80, 84–86, 88–89, 91–94, 96–97, 101, 103, 108, 110–113, 118–123, 125, 130, 140–141, 143–145, 147–150, 157, 159, 164, 168, 171; colonial 3, 19; fenced city 40; nineteenth-century 2–3, 5, 7, 10–11, 15–18, 19–20, 36–37, 96, 143, 162, 166–167, 168–171; public sphere 41–42 Cardus, Neville 135 Carey, John 132–133 Carey, William 10, 93, 102 caste 7, 12–15, 24–25, 27, 29–30, 32, 35, 37–38, 41, 57, 59, 60, 63, 86, 91, 151, 169; brahmin 5, 12, 14, 37, 95; half 92–95, 105–106; high 41, 48; kayastha 5–6, 11–15, 35, 37, 95, 148; khatri 5–7; lower 9, 37; quarter 93; subarna banik 35; upper 7, 15, 28, 31–32, 35, 37, 41, 43, 48, 50, 58, 60, 62, 95, 98, 163, 170; vaidya 31 Chakrabarti, Dalia 37, 48–49, 61

179

INDEX

Chakrabarty, Dipesh 15–16, 27–28, 32, 166 Chakrabarty, Mukundaram 13 chakri 11–13, 19, 50, 73–74, 159, 162, 166, 167 Chandrabhan Brahman 5–6 Chattopadhyay, Bankimchandra 13, 36, 46–47, 56, 58, 148–149, 164; Babu 56; Bahubal o Bakyabal 124; Muchiram Gurer Jibon-Chorit 148 Chattopadhyay, Saayan 123 Chaudhury, Sushil 21–22 chhotolok 30 clerk 3, 8–11, 19–22, 25–29, 31, 37, 40–47, 54, 57, 59, 63–81, 88–89, 94, 96–97, 99, 103, 106, 110, 112, 113–119, 122–123, 126–128, 130–146, 153, 157–158, 159–161, 166, 168–169, 172; body-politic of 115, 117, 128; British 63, 97, 124; Christmas box 77; clerkship 64, 67–69, 77, 79, 83, 95, 97, 113, 130–131, 140, 144, 168, 171; colonial 8; counting house 68, 80, 82–83, 122, 132, 138, 141, 144; Dickensian 3, 132; Edwardian 133–137, 143–145; English 58, 130, 154; female 3, 82, 159–161, 167; firangi 91; gentleman 123, 134; head 110; indigenous 89; and kerani 2, 84–87; late-Victorian 133, 136, 144; London 65, 67, 69, 73, 86–87, 117, 120–122, 130, 140, 142–143, 145, 157, 168–169; lower-division 110; manuals 3, 55, 114–115, 117–118, 120, 122; masculinity 114, 121–123, 127–128; and modernist movement 132–135, 137; native 64, 71, 110, 119–120; pin-money 61; unions 125, 135, 162; Victorian 64, 133 Clive, Robert 98 Cohn, Bernard 44 colonialism 1–3, 8, 16, 28, 53, 78, 85, 101, 113, 123–124, 145, 164, 168; European 8 Company see East India Company Cornhill Magazine, The 76 counting house 3, 67, 75, 80, 115, 117, 121–122, 126, 128, 131, 137–139, 143, 145; ethic 67; see also clerk, counting house

Das, Jnanendramohan 10–11 Das, Krishnabhamini 165–166 Das, Sisir 99 Dasgupta, Arindam 148 Dasi, Binodini 165 Dasi, Rashsundari 165 Deb, Raja Nabakrishna 23 Deb, Shibchandra 36 Devi, Saradasundari 165 Dey, Durgadas 62 Dhaka 2, 20–21, 23–24, 26, 38, 41 Dickens, Charles 131, 132, 135, 137–138, 140, 143 docile body 125, 170 Dutt, Rajani Palme 23 Dutt, Rashomoy 146 Dutt, Shoshee Chunder 90–91, 146–150, 154, 170, 172 East India College (also Haileybury College) 108–109, 111–112 East India Company 1, 2, 8, 21, 23, 31, 40, 42–44, 58, 77, 79, 95, 98, 103–104, 108–110, 112, 138, 139–141, 144, 172 East India House 137–138, 140–141 Edmonstone, Neil Benjamin 110–112 factor 49, 53, 62, 168, 96, 98–99, 101, 103–106 firangi (also feringy) 91, 95 Firminger, W.K. 97 Forster, E.M. 133–134 Fort William College 97, 99, 102, 108–109 Foucault, M. 170 Gissing, George 132, 141, 143 Grant, Sir Charles 44 griffin (also griff) 92–94, 99 griha 166 grihalakshmi 166 Grimley, W.H. 49 Hardless, Charles 118 Hastings, Warren 5, 98, 111 Heller, M. 76, 81, 128, 160–161 Hindu College 45–47, 146 Hodder, Edwin 71 Houlston’s Industrial Library 66, 116 Ilbert Bill 59 Indian Civil Service 107, 109, 112

180

INDEX

Jack, J.C. 31 John Bull 128 Joshi, Sanjay 27–29 kamini 61, 163, 167 kanchan 61, 163, 167 Kathamrita 61 kerani 1, 4, 7–15, 21, 26, 40, 42–43, 60–62, 63–64, 69, 71–72, 74–75, 79, 84–87, 90–91, 95, 97, 99, 106, 112–113, 121, 124–125, 129, 132, 140–141, 143–150, 152–158, 159, 163, 166, 167; ambivalence 48; and babu 56–60; Bengali 7, 9, 14, 19, 72, 94–97, 143, 148, 154, 168; and bhadralok 30–39; body and stereotypes 48–56; Calcutta 19, 26, 39, 72, 88, 89, 128, 132, 143–145, 150, 157, 159, 169, 171; chha-posha 7, 61, 148; conveyance 51; education 43, 47; etymology 10–11; and European clerk 49; expenditure 50, 51, 54; habitation 52; health 52, 155–156; income 47, 49, 51; in literature 145–150; location of 2, 46; macchi-mara 7, 62, 148; manuals 117–120; and masculinity 3, 84, 124, 155; and middle class 26–30; native 68–69, 88, 90–91, 95, 123, 130, 146, 152; social history of 1; and subalternity 15–18; and writer 3; see also clerk, and kerani Kerani-Darpan 85, 150–151, 157, 166, 171 Kerani Puran 54, 61, 150, 154–157, 171 Khan, Iqtidar Alam 22, 24 Khan, Nawab Murshidquli 21–22 Kincaid, D. 105 Kinra, Rajiv 6 Kipling, Rudyard 57–58 Klingender, F.D. 76–77 Lamb, Charles 137–141, 143–145; The Essays of Elia 138; Last Essays of Elia 138–139 Latour, Bruno 84, 151 Lewis, Jane 160 Lockwood, David 65–67, 74–76, 80–81, 83, 131, 143 London 1, 17–72, 64, 67, 69–71, 73, 75, 81–82, 84–86, 92, 97, 103, 106, 112, 113–114, 118, 120, 125, 128,

130, 132, 138, 141–144, 153, 157, 160, 162, 167–169; nineteenthcentury 3, 71, 96, 145, 159, 168 Long, Rev. James: Five Hundred Questions 94; Selections from Unpublished Records 91, 95, 98, 100 Long & Stocqueler 89, 92 Loosed Interval: A Holiday Handbook and Out-of-Harness Annual, The 136 Lord Cornwallis 101, 103, 106, 107, 111 Lord Wellesley 99, 112 Mackay, Alberigh 59 Mackenzie, Holt 45 Madras 2, 8–9, 171 Majumdar, R.C. 42 Mallet, Philip 121 matribhumi 164 middle-class (also “middle classness”) 2, 34–36, 46–47, 51, 54–55, 57–59; see also kerani, and middle class Mill, John Stuart 77 mimicry 38, 46 Misra, B.B. 27–29 Mitra, Deenabandhu 12–13 modernity 1, 3, 7–9, 11, 15–17, 24, 29, 40, 52–53, 62, 63–64, 78–79, 84, 130–131, 143–144, 151, 155, 157, 160, 163–165, 167, 168–169; clerical 1, 3; colonial 1–2, 11, 19–21, 23, 28–29, 35, 39, 40–41, 44, 53, 62, 64, 79, 84–87, 113, 117, 123–124, 144, 147, 149–151, 157, 163–165, 167–169, 171; derivative 38; empiricist 65, 85; enlightenment 96, 113, 163; European 64, 123; managerial 2, 7–8, 94–95, 100, 106, 110, 113, 169; philosophy of 92; Western 165 mohiyoshi 165 Monsman, G. 137, 140 muharrir (also muhari and muharir) 5, 10, 19, 22, 27 Mukharji, Projit Bihari 155 Mukherjee, A. 45–46 Mukherjee, S.N. 25 mukti 167 munshi 4–7, 9–10, 19–20, 22, 27, 44, 95, 97, 101, 102, 108–109, 112 Murshidabad 2, 20–24, 26, 38, 41 Nandy, Ashis 123–124

181

INDEX

Story of A London Clerk: A Faithful Narrative Faithfully Told, The 136, 142 subaltern (also subalternity) 15–18, 169 Subrahmanyam, Sanjay 4, 6–7 Sur, Nikhil 103

“Off the Track” 69 Parsons, Charles Edwards 67–69, 71 Peacock, Thomas Love 137 Pickard, O.G. 122 Pitman’s Books for Business Girls 162 Pitt’s India Act, The 103, 106, 111 Portuguese 9, 10, 41, 91–95 public sphere 40, 41, 43 Punch 59, 137

Tagore, Rabindranath 35, 71, 164, 166 Tickell, A. 147 Toole, Joseph 135 Vidyasagar, Iswarchandra 33, 36, 46 Viswanathan, Gauri 43

Railway Clerk, The 126–127 Raman, Bhavani 2, 7–8, 171 Ray, Biswajit 13 Raygunakar, Bharatchandra 22 Regulating Act, The 103, 106, 111 Report of the Salaries Commission 1885–1886 49–55 Rose, Jonathan 132–135 Saha, Mahadevprasad 100 Sarkar, Dineshchandra 12 Sarkar, Nikhil (also Sreepantho) 57–59, 88, 97, 101–103 Sarkar, Sumit 19, 61, 73 Sarkar, Tanika 163, 164, 165 scribes 4, 6–7, 13–14 Sen, Ram Comul 10 Sen, Simonti 165 Shaw, George Bernard 126–128 Shipton, W. Edwyn 71 Sil, Narasingha 35, 57 Singha, Kaliprasanna 37, 84 Sinha, Narendra Krishna 22–23, 34 Sinha, Pradip 40–41 Smiles, Samuel 121–122 Smith, George 42 Spear, Percival 92–93, 97–98, 101, 103–104, 106–107 Sreemani, Soumitra 23, 25 Sri Ramakrishna 61, 164, 167

wholesome community 16, 17, 24–30, 38, 41, 53, 60, 78, 151 Wild, Jonathan 131–134, 136 woman 17, 82, 105, 117, 120, 141, 161–166; Bengali 166; English 166; in nationalist discourse 164; new 82, 164; non-modern 164; professional 162; question 159; Victorian 167; working 167 Woman Clerk, The 126, 162 Woolf, Virginia 132, 134 work ethic 74, 100, 122, 124, 132, 144; Victorian 79, 115, 123 Wright, Eric Olin 46–47 writer 3, 5, 9–11, 22, 49, 62, 88, 90–92, 96–119, 166, 168; assistant 110; and banian 97–99, 101; British 88, 96; census 103; and clerk 96; definition 88–89; English 90, 94; junior 90; and kerani 89, 106, 112; location 100; nabob 99, 102–106; native 89; Portuguese 91, 94–95; private trade 103; professionalisation 107; routine 100–101; senior 90; training 97, 99, 108; Writers’ Buildings 100–102 Young Clerk’s Manual, The 115

182