SPECIAL ARTICLE
Figure of the Halalkhore
Caste and Stigmatised Labour in Colonial Bombay
Shireen Mirza
Cow protection groups have been reported to engage in
acts of public violence against Dalit and Muslim caste
labourers. In the context of these occurrences, this article
explores the relationship between caste identity and
performing “stigmatised” labour—sanitation, removing
refuse, and collecting urban waste—in colonial
Bombay. The idea of dirt as a cultural category is not
new; it is part of a hereditary system that imprints
physical and moral impurity on its actors. The attacks on
select castes today are part of a Hindutva ideal to purify
India and remake it as a caste Hindu nation.
Shireen Mirza (shireen@aud.ac.in) is a visiting associate fellow at the
Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi.
Economic & Political Weekly EPW AUGUST 4, 2018 vol lIiI no 31
T
here have been recurrent incidents of public violence by
members of the Hindu Gau Raksha Dal (Hindu Cow
Protection Party) and cow protection vigilantes targe-
ting Dalit and Muslim caste labourers. For instance, on
31 March 2016, a Muslim trader of animals from Chhoti Sadri,
Rajasthan, was stripped naked, beaten, and photographed
lying on the ground with cow protection activists stamping his
face with their feet. Photographs of their “great achievement”
were taken using their phones and circulated (Agwan 2016).
Cow vigilante activists later chased a truck carrying 50 cows—
allegedly being transported from Jaipur and Ajmer to be sold
for slaughter in Gujarat and Maharashtra—and set it on fire in
the presence of the state police and Bajrang Dal members.
Earlier that month, on 27 March, cow vigilantes killed
Mustain Abbas, a farmer who left his village in Gangoh tehsil,
Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh (UP), to buy cattle from Kurukshetra.
According to his wife, Abbas had set out with his companions
to buy buffaloes, but he had instead ended up buying two bulls
for farming (Latief 2016). After ploughing the field, the bulls
were to be sold for a small profit to other farmers, and their
household expenses were to be met with the small profit thus
earned (Latief 2016). Abbas failed to return that evening, and
he was reported missing for a month. Almost a month later, his
family received a call from Shahbad Police Station, asking
them to identify a tortured, mutilated body that had been
recovered from a drain near Kurukshetra.
These killings occurred in the wake of the 2015 Dadri lynch-
ing, where 50-year-old Mohammed Akhlaq from Dadri, UP,
was killed by a mob for allegedly slaughtering a calf and sur-
reptitiously storing its meat in his refrigerator. While Dadri
has a thriving agricultural economy, its location within Delhi’s
National Capital Region has led to its recategorisation as part
of the Greater Noida administrative zone, and the existing
panchayat was to be dissolved. This has led to speculation that
the killing may have been planned for electoral gains, as part
of an organised strategy to mobilise the dominant agrarian
Rajput caste against landless Muslims (Sanhati 2015).
When considered together, these incidents can be seen as
part of an electoral strategy aimed at breaking inter-group uni-
ties and consolidating caste-based votes. More importantly,
these acts, committed by politically affiliated social groups
like the Hindu Gau Raksha Dal, can be considered a form of
political assertion for a Hindu nation. The atrocities are calcu-
lated to assert cow protection as a state-held value of a Hindu
nation, the violation of which provokes public forms of censuring,
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punishment, and torture in retaliation. This may be considered a
part of the agenda to remake India as a Hindu nation. Pursuing
this agenda is, therefore, crucial to the mandate of not just
Hindutva ideologues such as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak
Sangh (RSS), but also to the Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP) government at the centre (Sarkar and Sarkar 2016).
Connecting Atrocities to Stigmatised Labour
Mainstream reports on the atrocities portray the victims as
having a deterritorialised, disembodied Muslim identity,
which is then positioned as conflicting with the Hindu belief
system and the cause of the subsequent violence. This positi-
oning, however, reiterates the communal agenda of the Hindu
right. Instead, these atrocities could be described as the asser-
tions of a religious Hindu majority against the “other,” that is,
Dalit and Muslim caste labourers. This oversight is significant
as some Muslim castes are involved in certain kinds of stigma-
tised labour, and their association with this work is defined
through community and kinship; for example, Muslim subgroups
such as the Mochi and Chamaar leather workers and Qureshi
butchers (Harriss-White 2002; Bellwinkel-Schempp 1998).
Reports on atrocities committed by cow vigilantes fail to link
Muslim caste identities and the traditional labour these groups
were engaged in, and how this connects to the atrocities tar-
geting them. While many Muslim castes have reconfigured their
intra-group alliances by rethinking traditional boundaries and
forging political blocs such as the Muslim Other Backward
Classes (OBCs) or, in contrast, by Islamicising their identity by
aligning with global Islamic networks (Benson 1983; Fanselow
1996), the factor of traditional caste labour continues to function
as the basis for these newer configurations (Robinson 1983).
The Muslim Qureshi butchers, for instance, adopted the new
name Qureshi, the name of Prophet Mohammad’s tribe, to
redraw their affiliation to differentiated castes such as the
Kasai, Palledar, and Qassab (Tatsumi 2009).
In contrast, media reports on the Una atrocities, where a
group of Shiv Sena cow vigilantes attacked a Dalit family
who were seen skinning the carcass of a cow in Una taluka,
Gir Somnath district, correctly foregrounded the relation
between caste and traditional labour involving cattle in a way
that was precisely lacking in reports on Muslim atrocities.1
The incident is uncannily similar to earlier episodes of
violence by cow protection groups, including one in which
four Dalit men were stripped, tied to the back of a vehicle,
and thrashed with iron pipes and rods. A video of the atrocity
went viral on social media and protests erupted across the
state of Gujarat. In protest, seven members of the community
attempted suicide, which sparked suicide attempts by Dalit
protestors in different parts of the state, resulting in the
death of one such protestor, Hemant Solanki from Bhesan
(Johari 2016).
This led to further protests that drew attention to the stig-
matised labour performed by Dalits and dragged invisible labour
practices into the limelight. For instance, in Surendranagar
district, Dalits refused to dispose of cow carcasses, a task that
they usually performed as part of their traditional role in the
80
village. Maheshbhai Rathod, who runs the Dalit rights organi-
sation, Samta Sainik Dal, is reported to have said,
People have been torturing Dalits who pick up cow carcasses for a long
time, so we decided to stop doing it to teach them a lesson. The gau
rakshaks beat us because they think the cow is their mother. Well,
then, they should take care of her and pick up her carcass when she
dies (tumhari mata tum antem sanskar karo). (Daniyal 2016)
The stigma borne by the Chamaar identity for performing
the labour of skinning dead cattle was no longer to be tolerated
silently or be quietly despised; instead, it was to be resisted by
adopting a naming and shaming strategy, and by challenging
Hindu caste notions of certain kinds of labour being impure or
polluting. “They knew we are Chamaars and [that] skinning
dead cattle is our job. Yet they assaulted us ... We do all the
society’s dirty work. And then we get beaten up for it. So, we
have now decided not to take up this job anymore. Why should
we?” reported Hasmukh Karsanbhai Charviah, the cousin of
one of the victims, Balubhai (Menon 2016).
Their protests multiplied, and animal carcasses were trans-
ported to cities and district collectors’ offices. Officials, includ-
ing the Surendranagar deputy collector, tried to negotiate with
the protesters; the authorities offered Dalits `200 to dispose
the dead cow. The Dalit interlocutors instead made a counter
offer: `500 for each official who got rid of one dead cow
(Bhasin 2016). Emphasising the link between stigmatised
labour and caste, the protestors declared, “There is 100% res-
ervation in leather for Chamaars and in safai cleaning, for
Bhangis, isn’t there?” (Daniyal 2016)
Dirt as a Cultural Category
In the context of the above incidents, this article seeks to
explore the relationship between caste and stigmatised labour
such as sanitising cities, removing refuse, and collecting urban
waste. Stigmatised labour involves workers coming into contact
with bodily fluids that are viscous, that is, neither solid nor
liquid, but liminal in texture, and miasmatic or strong smell-
ing, including saliva, blood, semen, pus, and other fluids that
humans and animals excrete. Contact with bodily fluids is con-
sidered ontologically polluting, in that the state of impurity is
permanently transposed onto the bodies and beings of those
performing the labour (Sarukkai 2009). No act of propitiation
can get rid of the “impure” state that is encoded into the
community-self of the castes performing such labour. Castes
that perform stigmatised labour are seen as occupying a moral
state, transmitted through birth, and not merely performing an
economic transaction where wages are paid in exchange for
abstract labour. Therefore, by engaging in cleaning work that
involves contact with bodily fluids, the community-self of Dalit
and Muslim caste labourers is rendered ontologically impure.
This is different from the temporal untouchability available to the
“pure” castes such as Brahmins; the state of impurity is tempo-
rary and can be reversed by ritual purification (Guru 2012).
The link between caste and stigmatised labour has rem-
ained stable through periods of economic change and urbani-
sation. Why is this so? Why are most municipal waste workers
still Dalits from the Bhangi, Valmiki, Mehtar, and Chuhra
AUGUST 4, 2018 vol lIiI no 31 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

castes (Gatade 2015)? Why are the butchers working in slaughter-
houses and those trading meat still predominantly Qureshi
Muslims (Harriss-White 2002)? According to Sudharak Olwe,
of the 30,000 conservancy workers and sweepers employed
by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, “all of them
are Dalits, belonging to the lowest rung of the caste system”
(Olwe 2013). This article seeks to understand why and how
this link between caste identity and stigmatised labour has
been perpetuated. In doing so, it investigates how dirt and
swachhata (cleanliness) are understood within the context of
urban waste labour and their relation to caste identity.
I argue that dirt and swachhata are not objective categories
but cultural ones, where the boundary between what is “wanted”
and “unwanted” is constantly redrawn. This article draws the
idea that dirt should be considered a cultural category and not
merely a scientific one from the work of British sociologist
Mary Douglas (1966), who argues that there is little difference
between ritual pollution and scientific ideas of dirt and hygiene.
Douglas argues against the sociological approach, which
differentiates dirt, which is considered a matter of hygiene
and aesthetics, from pollution, which derives from religious
traditions and ideas of the sacred. In contrast, she argues that
the notions of dirt and pollution have more in common than
we would like to admit. They are both symbolic systems that
differentiate between wanted and unwanted substances, trades,
and people. Therefore, polluting substances, manual labour,
offensive trades, and the communities involved in these trades
are intricately linked. Boundaries drawn through avoidance
and rejection, on the one hand, and acceptance of these boun-
daries by the majority on the other, determine who is included
in the idea of the contemporary Indian citizen. Defined this
way, dirt is seen as a residual category:
As rejected from our normal scheme of classifications … In a chaos
of shifting impressions, each of us constructs a stable world in which
objects have recognisable shapes, are located in depth, and have per-
manence … The most acceptable cues are those which fit most eas-
ily into the pattern that is being built up. Ambiguous ones tend to be
treated as if they harmonised with the rest of the pattern. Discordant
ones tend to be rejected. If they are accepted, the structure of assump-
tions has to be modified. (Douglas 1966: 37)
Urban Sanitation in Colonial Bombay
Following this, one could argue that like dirt and swachhata,
urban sanitation is also a cultural construct. I make this argument
with regard to the colonial Bombay municipality and show that
practices of urban sanitation are rooted in cultural notions of dirt
as a native problem requiring native solutions. For instance, the
colonial Bombay municipality used the vernacular term kutchra
(Arnold 2013) to refer to urban waste; this indicates that this cat-
egory—kutchra—was linked to the cultural “other” as opposed
to the clean “self.”2 In the case of the colonial Bombay munici-
pality, kutchra was seen as emerging from tropical local condi-
tions and native slum areas and as requiring native solutions.
Therefore, Arthur Crawford, the first municipal commissioner
of Bombay city, appointed in 1865, instituted a sanitary depart-
ment and recruited labourers from castes traditionally involved
in cleaning, sweeping, and removing night soil and refuse.
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While the sanitary department espoused the idea of sanita-
tion as a civic virtue related to cleanliness and hygiene on the
one hand, the labour for urban sanitation was recruited on the
basis of existing caste structures, where cleaning was a tradi-
tionally hereditary occupation performed by castes such as
Dheds, Mahars, Mangs, and Bhangis. Therefore, the colonial
Bombay municipality absorbed existing caste practices and
established a colonial sanitary state in a way that did not
merely reinforce and normalise existing social practice, as is
often argued (Dirks 1992; Cohn 1996); instead, the munici-
pality derived from existing practices that combined with the
colonial state’s own perception of dirt and filth.
Similarly, the colonial Bombay municipality considered
waste work not as value-producing labour, but as a cultural
category for which traditional caste practices had to be mobi-
lised and recruited; filth and dirt were seen as produced by the
“other.” This conception of refuse or dirt as a moral and a
residual category contrasts the mainstream narrative of colo-
nial urban sanitation, where expert knowledge and techno-
logical developments are seen as having been deployed as part
of the mission to “civilise” other cultures (Hosagrahar 2006).3
The next section describes the technological developments
instituted by the colonial Bombay municipality as part of its
claims to make civic spaces hygienic, orderly, and at odds with
the popular practices of the local. Yet, when it came to the
labour of disposing waste, dirt was seen as a cultural and moral
category, thus revealing that the so-called modern ideas of
sanitary science were based on traditional beliefs. The follow-
ing section explains the continuity and stability of the relation-
ship between certain castes and stigmatised labour by analy-
sing the functioning of dirt/kutchra and purity/swachh as
culturally constituted categories.
History of Waste Labour in Bombay City
The colonial Bombay municipality adopted the Persianate term
halalkhore,4 which signified Dalit Muslim castes for whom all
food, including pork, was lawful. It came to refer to municipal
sweepers and scavengers who worked in neighbourhoods and
mohallas. Halalkhore could also simply mean a person who
labours (mehnat) to fill their stomach and therefore whose
earnings are righteous and legal (halal). When officially adopted,
these connotations were lost in the face of contractual relation-
ships forged between the cleansing staff, governing colonial
officers, and citizens with rights to a sanitised city (Prashad
2000: 21). The Halalkhore branch set up by the colonial Bombay
Municipality through the Bombay Municipal Corporation Act
of 1888 extended prevailing halalkhore practices where the
“traditional” occupations of sweeping, carrying night soil, and
disposing animal carcasses were done by the same castes and
often the same people.
The official term “halalkhore” carried both caste and gendered
labour connotations. The Halalkhore department recruited
members of the Bhangi caste for scavenging and carrying
night soil. Bhangi men were recruited to clean public privies
and to drive waste trucks, while Bhangi women cleaned night
soil from private latrines and were paid less than the men. In
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contrast, only male members of the Mahar and Dhed castes
were employed as sweepers and cleaners.
The Halalkhore branch was seen as an extension of prevail-
ing halalkhore practices; the same castes—and often the same
people—continued to sweep and remove refuse and animal
carcasses. The colonial Bombay Municipality now taxed the
natives for these services, who opposed this tax (Bombay
Municipal Corporation Act, 1888). Native English newspapers and
reports in the vernacular newspapers of Bombay Presidency con-
tested colonial sanitary measures by arguing that the Halalkhore
branch under the municipal commissioner was not very different
from what previously existed, except that the taxes that each
house paid had increased. Instead of the earlier practice of paying
two annas to the halalkhore for clearing the entire household’s
night soil, a new 3% tax was levied for the same labour and
was paid to the particular halalkhore for the same service.
The (Halalkhore) Branch used to be adduced as one of the great
improvements effected by the Municipal Commissioner. But now it is ad-
mitted that even this branch is not as satisfactory … the public is told that
formerly, people were obliged to depend simply on the pleasures of the Hala-
lkhores for the cleaning of their privies, but now if the Halalkhores neglect
their work, a complaint can be made against them, and they can be com-
pelled to do their duties. But in the former times … only two annas were
paid to the Halalkhore for the whole family. Now, instead of that trifle,
every house is required to pay a heavy tax of three percent, as the Halalk-
hore cess, and still are the privies and the lanes of the town much im-
proved in cleanliness? No. Many parts of the town are as reeking with filth
as ever, and people from the house are raising a cry against the careless-
ness of the Halalkhores. It is true that a man can now make a complaint
against the Halalkhore, and can compel him to clean his privy. But for ten
or twelve days the complainant must put up with the inconvenience and
misery of a filthy privy. And again, soon after this redress has been obtained,
the Halalkhore falls into carelessness … This is the return … which
people get for the Halalkhore cess. Thus this department, instead of be-
ing an illustration of the effectiveness of the Municipality, is in reality an
instance of its uselessness. (Rast Goftar 1886; emphasis added)
Description of Services
Elaborate description of halalkhore services as recorded by
colonial health officers are available in the Bombay municipal
records. They emphasise the work of the halalkhore in the
native areas of colonial Bombay. For instance, according to a
report by T G Hewlett, the health officer in 1886, each house in
the native town had a privy that consisted of a slab of lime-
washed brick with a central hole, since water closets had not
yet been installed in the native areas of colonial Bombay. The
ablution water, faeces, and urine fell into a cow dung–lined
bamboo basket—the urine and water ran through the basket
into a paved channel that connected to an existing drain. The
solid matter was retained in the basket and was removed by
the halalkhores (Hewlett 1869: 10).
A separate approach to the privy was built—the halalkhore
gully or sweeper’s passage—since the presence of the halalkhore
within the house or privy was considered defiling. Bet ween
two houses standing back to back, there was a passage that ran
along the back of the privies; the halalkhore would advance
through this passage and empty the contents of each house’s
basket into a larger basket that they carried. The halalkhore
then carried his basket to a depot, or walled enclosure, where
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night soil carts stood; after emptying the contents of his
basket, he returned to his work.
Till as late as 1924, chawls or working class housing were
fitted with basket privies. There were narrow passages or
gullies—one to five feet wide—along which open drains were laid
for carrying away sullage (Burnett-Hurst 1925: 21). The gullies
ran along the sides, or more often, along the backs of houses;
not infrequently, they separated rows of houses on one street
from another, or adjoining buildings from each other. In some
cases, the halalkhore gully was designed to run along the rear of
two rows of houses placed back to back, forming one block—
the gully was common to houses on both rows (Burnett-Hurst
1925). In another kind of layout, gullies running directly from
the street to the rear of each house were shared only by the
two houses that they separated (Burnett-Hurst 1925).
The halalkhore baskets were plastered with cow dung on
the outside, while ash, earth, or even paper was spread inside
to prevent the contents from leaking (Municipal Commissioner
1907–08). The liquid night soil invariably mixed with the ash
and became semi-solid before it was carried on the heads or
waists of workers. The scavenger usually heaped the collected
waste on the ground and carried it to the depot at a time con-
venient to him or her.
Up until 1964, night soil was carried in small, handy, open
bamboo baskets and was deposited in bigger baskets that
could hold about 12 to 18 litres. Most depots had large, open
drums (150–200 litres) kept within an enclosure. These drums
were emptied using ordinary buckets—dipped, lifted, and
poured into a bullock cart.
The bifurcation of sanitation from solid waste, as areas began
to be drained by water carrying systems, reduced the everyday
contact with liquid sullage. However, descriptions of halalkhore
labour in colonial municipality reports show that the bodily
labour of collecting refuse from door to door and conveying it
to collection points remained the same. According to the
health officer J A Turner, refuse was thrown out of the windows
of individual houses into the passages between houses, where
it was collected by the municipal biggaries and conveyed to
the dustbin cart some distance away (Turner 1914: 223). The
health department, according to Turner, issued notices asking
every household to convey its refuse by private servants to the
carts, but the attempt was unsuccessful. The municipality was
tasked with hiring halalkhore labourers to collect refuse from
individual houses by visiting each of them separately. This
refuse was conveyed to dustbin carts, which were removed twice
and thrice daily and replaced by empty carts (Turner 1914).
Sometimes, there was a big cesspool at the depot, which had
to be bucketed out as before. The night soil of the neighbour-
hood would sometimes be heaped in a common place on the
ground, before being transferred to a bullock cart and thence
to the main depot. At the main depot, originally at Mahala-
kshmi and later at Chinchbunder, the carts were brought to
an underground reservoir built of masonry and which was
sufficiently large to hold the entire town’s night soil. At the
depot, the night soil would again be heaped on the ground.
The reservoir was connected to the sea by a 12-inch cast iron
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pipe. A man armed with a long broom worked at the night soil
and forced it through a grate and into the pipe until nothing
but a few stones and pieces of brick, wood, or other refuse,
were left. When the tide was out, the mouth of the pipe was
opened, and the contents of the reservoir escaped into the sea
(Municipal Commissioner 1907–08: 222).
Waste Management Technology
The waste management technology adopted by the colonial
municipality only aimed to mitigate the sight and smell of
sanitary waste and refuse, as it is carted across the city. Waste
technology then became synonymous with mitigating the
aesthetic “nuisance” experienced by the producers and regula-
tors of waste, although these technologies barely altered the
bodily labour of collecting and transporting refuse into carts,
trucks, or trains. While the colonial municipality did adopt
measures such as replacing bamboo baskets with buckets
made of (tasla) galvanised iron that did not leak, the emphasis
was largely on developing and adopting waste and sanitary
technology that did not limit manual bodily labour, but
enhanced the transportation of refuse. The bullock carts were
replaced with wheelbarrows and later motor wagons and
waste trucks; however, door-to-door collection of night soil
and solid waste was possible only by humans.
Colonial Bombay municipal records document efforts to
develop waste management technology, such as vehicles to carry
kutchra across the city. Bullock carts, for instance were re-
placed by wheelbarrows, which were succeeded by motor
wagons and waste trucks that transported refuse through a
railway siding into a train known as the kutchra gadi that
removed refuse from areas that were deemed as civic and san-
itary spaces. Colonial health officials recommended the dis-
continuance of bullock carts as “primitive, ponderous and
expensive” (Municipal Commissioner 1907–08: 224), because
these carts were a nuisance; they hindered traffic and required
much supervision. Further, the bullocks used to pull the carts
were considered uneconomical and inefficient, difficult to pro-
cure, and expensive in terms of maintenance and stabling. The
“nuisance” caused in the streets by kutchra carts carrying “ob-
noxious contents” was considered better abolished (Conybeare
1852). The system of using bullock carts to haul waste within
the city was seen as one of the greatest “eye-sores” in the city
and “primitive” to a degree (Health Officer 1914–15: 45).
The municipality also wanted to introduce better dustbins.
The dustbin carts in use were “too cheaply constructed” and
constantly broke down (Health Officer 1914–15). A stronger
and more reliable cart, made of wooden covers hinged on to
the central ridge plank, was awarded a prize and subsequently
adopted by the Bombay Municipality in 1902 (Health Officer
1914–15). Further, wire cages were introduced in 1907 and
were placed in suitable locations on streets, so that paper and
dry unpolluted refuse could be disposed.
In native areas and gullies where mechanical transport was
possible, there was a perceived need to upgrade the tin carts
that were noisy and too heavy for bullocks. The first step
towards improving bullock carts was taken in 1932, when
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all-metal semi-circular carts with sliding shutters and tipping
arrangements were created. In October 1933, Dunlop Tyres Co
(India) approached the Halalkhore branch suggesting that
their wheels be used for the kutchra carts. Dunlop made pneu-
matic tyres with steel artillery wheels and roller bearings that
promised less wear and tear on the road surface as well as less
strain on the animals, allowing them to haul a greater load
without any perceptible strain. The cart thus made was hand-
ed over to the branch for trial with the understanding that if it
proved inefficient, the firm would take the cart back. This trial
cart proved a success; the vehicle was protected from vibra-
tions, afforded easier loading, and the sliding shutters were
more hygienic in practice.
Bullock carts soon gave way to motor wagons. According to
the municipal health officer, motor wagons from Leyland
Motors were preferred over the steam lorry (Turner 1934–35).
The steam lorry had two disadvantages: the first was that it
emitted a great deal of smoke, and the second was that the
haul was too short to justify the use of steam, and this was
considered uneconomical. In 1929, tractors and trailers were
used instead of lorries; this system was soon discarded, and
the municipality reverted to lorries in 1931 (Turner 1934–35:
40). The lorries purchased up to 1929 had high-sided bodies
with open tops and hand-operated tipping gears (Turner
1934–35). To load the vehicles, loaders, who were higher-caste
supervisors, had to be stationed in the body and lift the
baskets that the halalkhores brought and empty it. The bodies
of the lorries were fitted with loose canvas covers that were to
be drawn over the load to prevent its dispersal during transit.
In practice, however, the covers were often ineffective and
served very little purpose.
With the elimination of tractors, low-loaders were intro-
duced in 1932 (Turner 1934–35). These vehicles had a lower
loading line height, which made it easy for loaders to work
without undue strain on their arms. The large diameter wheels
were replaced with steering lock for “increased and greater
flexibility of operation” (Turner 1934–35: 40). This was a par-
ticularly valuable improvement as the vehicles could now be
operated on carriageways and on heavily trafficked roads and
streets. For unloading purposes, the vehicle was fitted with a
hydraulic tipping gear, mechanically operated to tip the body
of the vehicle to such an angle that the load was discharged
almost immediately (Turner 1934–35). Since canvas covers
proved less than suitable, a further modification was made to
the design of the body in the form of a permanent cover for the
vehicle and sliding doors.
Even today, urban sanitation relies on mechanised transport
such as waste trucks to transport refuse and iron receptacles.
While technological development has reduced human contact
with discarded substances and bodily substances seen as “dirt”
and, in turn, has accorded dignity to the labour of sanitation,
the work itself has not been disassociated from cultural notions
of discarded substances as dirty, polluting, or stigmatising.
The development of waste infrastructure did not alter the
nature of the bodily labour performed by caste groups who col-
lect refuse door to door and transport it to receptacles within the
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city. Technological development, therefore, does not replace
caste labour, it only enhances the proficiency of the work. The
adoption of new technologies is driven by the interests of regu-
lators and producers of waste, while bodily waste labour
continues to be defined through caste identities increasingly
constructed in terms of contact with substances classified as
scientifically unhygienic or dirty and ritually polluting.
The next section explores this idea further, looking at why
only certain castes were involved in waste work in the context
of colonial Bombay.
Caste and Bodily Labour
The municipality adopted the term “halalkhore” to refer to
scavengers and sweepers who came from castes that tradition-
ally performed these roles. Municipal sweepers were usually
Dheds and Mahars from Ratnagiri, Poona, and Satara who had
been employed as village menials and who continued to prac-
tise their hereditary occupation in Bombay (Enthoven 1922:
14). Further, Bhangis from Gujarat (Ahmedabad and Kathia-
war), who were traditionally scavengers, were recruited to
remove night soil as part of the halalkhore service. Casteist
views, such as the characterisation of Bhangis as the “dregs of
Indian society,” were imported into the new colonial system
(Turner 1914: 854). Caste practices also informed rules of
employment under the colonial regime, such as the contract-
ing of both sexes as night soil carriers. Their payment was
routed through higher caste supervisors or halalkhore mukk-
adams, since the halalkhore labourers themselves were avid
consumers of alcohol (Pradhan 1938). Further, due to their
proximity to waste, they were seen as a group that ate cow,
buffalo, goat, sheep and the “leavings of other castes” (Turner
1914). Caste hierarchies, which located the Bhangis as lower
and more unclean than the Dheds in Gujarat, and as equal to
the Mahars and Mangs in the Deccan, informed their recruit-
ment as scavengers by the colonial sanitary state, and they were
retained in the lowest ranks of municipal labour. Traditional
systems of labour, where Dheds and Mahars worked as sweep-
ers and Bhangis as night soil removers, therefore, formed the
basis of the conservancy department and its sanitary practices.
Private and public hand-cleaned latrines were sanitised
through a sort of traditional but not fully monetised jajmani
system of employment called gharaki. In this system, the em-
ployer paid employees according to the work to be completed,
and not the number of people needed to do it; in turn, employ-
ees held the right to ask for leftover food in the evening and
fixed wages at the end of the month. In some places, employ-
ees were paid in a combination of cash and kind (leftover food
and gifts). The gharaki system is a long-term employment sys-
tem, and in many places, employment is passed from one gen-
eration to the next. Those employed under this system were
called gharakiwallas, and they held hereditary rights to clean-
ing privies in certain localities.
The colonial Bombay municipality contracted the job of
cleaning public latrines to the gharaki Bhangis. The private
latrines, on the other hand, were cleaned by Bhangi women
who were paid for piecework, that is, at the rate of one anna
84
per month per family. Other Bhangis were employed as municipal
workers to clean public latrines and drive bullock carts.
By 1927, the Bombay Municipality had resolved to remove
public privies altogether and encouraged the provision of water
closets in various premises by their respective owners. With
the rapid expansion of underground drainage, most sullage
found its way to underground drainage pipes, and the munici-
pality reduced the staff required for its removal. However, the
conversion of private and public latrines to water closets was
stalled for want of adequate water pressure in the mains. Night
soil and sullage water disposal, therefore, proved difficult. For
areas that were drained, sullage was removed through under-
ground drainage pipes. In areas that were not drained, like
suburban areas, sullage was collected in private repositories
(kundis), from where it was removed partly by bullock carts
and partly with barrels sent by tramway to the pail depots.
The development of a water closet system and the move
away from dry latrines was an incomplete, although necessary,
development; it reduced human contact with night soil and
urine. However, like the vehicles carrying waste, the develop-
ment of underground drainage and the shift to water closets
did not diminish the idea that contact with “dirt” is amoral
and degrading.
The demarcation between “dirt”/kutchra and “clean”/swachh
as cultural and symbolic categories extends from unwanted
substances to the labour of those involved. Since traditional
caste hierarchies were adopted intact into the colonial sanita-
tion regime and hence to capitalist work processes (selling
labour for wages), certain castes continue to be associated
with unwanted substances perceived as dirt. Therefore, chan-
ges in technology and wage conditions do not alter the
association of dirt with morality, nor do they affect the castes
involved in the labour. This is perhaps why the labour of
waste collection becomes attached to caste identities and
eludes historical change.
Conclusions
In 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a campaign
called Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. The campaign, which aimed
to promote cleanliness, depicted ministers, bureaucrats, and
celebrities holding jhadoos (brooms) to reinforce the message
of physical and moral cleanliness. Since the launch of the cam-
paign, the Modi government has reiterated its intention of run-
ning a clean (swachh) government that is free of corruption. It
is clear that the government’s idea of swachhata is both scien-
tific and moral. It emphasises the removal of not just physical
objects classified as “dirt” (kutchra), but also that of particular
moral states, where avoiding contact with “dirt” is equated
with purity and a lack of corruption.
This idea of dirt being equated to a cultural category is not
new. The colonial Bombay municipality used vernacular terms
like kutchra for dirt and halalkhore for caste labour. The halalk-
hores were recruited by the Bombay municipality to carry out
their hereditary and traditional work of scavenging, sweeping,
and disposing animal carcasses. The colonial Bombay munici-
pality employed castes within rank structures in ways that
AUGUST 4, 2018 vol lIiI no 31 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
 SPECIAL ARTICLE

replicated traditional caste hierarchies. Further, caste rules and
perceived group traits were incorporated into the employment
structure. Technological developments introduced by the colo-
nial Bombay municipality, which resulted in bullock carts being
replaced by motor trucks or dry latrines by water closet sys-
tems, also did not affect the nature of halalkhore labour. Tech-
nology does not alter the bodily labour attributed to a caste
identity; it instead enhances the association of some castes with
refuse by classifying certain substances as waste, unhygienic,
and polluted and which need to be removed in the most
efficient manner from sight.
If the idea of dirt is cultural, then labour that deals with dirt
must be eliminated. Atrocities by the Hindu Gau Raksha Dal
activists or cow protection activists must be considered within
this framework as bids to remake the nation as a caste Hindu
one. The violence against those engaged in stigmatised caste
labour is part of the swachhata campaign, because it eliminates
the unwanted, dirty, and undesirable. By publicly displaying
their links with stigmatised labour, the Dalits of Una taluka in
Gir Somnath have exposed cleanliness as part of the strategy
to remake a “pure” nation, or a Hindu nation that is deeply
entrenched in the caste system.

Notes
1 Here, I want to stress that media reports did
not make a connection between the atrocities
committed by cow protection groups on Mus-
lim castes and the stigmatised labour of deal-
ing with animals and hides. In subsequent pro-
tests in Gujarat, including a massive rally in
Ahmedabad on 1 August 2016, Muslim leaders
were present and expressed common cause
with the atrocities committed on Dalits. Jamiat-
Ulema-Hind leaders, for instance, were part of
this rally and spoke of Dalit–Muslim unity
against fascism.
2 The idea of the “native” halalkhore gets extended
to the slum dweller, who is “naturally” tasked
with the labour of urban sanitation in the post-
colonial city. The presence of rural migrants,
like the “native” halalkhore, is thought to in-
troduce traditional systems into the anony-
mous city, disturbing its orderliness and aspira-
tional modernity (Nandy 2001). Slums, there-
fore, take the place of native areas in the dis-
course on sanitation, and discussions on their
reform, improvement, and transformation
borrow from the discourse of colonial urban
municipal bodies on native areas in colonial
Indian cities (Sharan 2014; Sundaram 2010).
3 The development of colonial sanitary science is
considered a part of global imperial designs.
Scholars argue that a clear hierarchy was main-
tained between the metropole and the colony
when establishing governance structures for
urban sanitation—sanitary policies were devel-
oped in the metropole and applied to the colony
(McFarlane 2008). Here, I argue that the native
culture strongly influenced the development of
colonial sanitary science, especially when it
came to sanitary labour. Further, the sanitary
solutions that were established were not at
odds with popular practices in the city, but in
continuity with popular and dominant voices.
4 In the text I use the spelling “halalkhore” as
per its usage in Bombay municipal records,
which differs from the “halalkhor” spelling
that is in common usage.
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