Remembering Malan: reading representations of domestic servants in colonial Bihar

ABSTRACT This paper will discuss the construction of the ashraf identity through the representation of servants by a nineteenth-century Urdu poet of Bihar, Shad Azimabadi (1846–1927). Shad considered exclusivity of language and the distinctiveness of the master–servant relationship as a part of the adab culture (code of conduct) and the exclusivity of the ashraf. This exclusivity, however, underwent significant change amidst the economic decline that set in motion in the late nineteenth century within ashraf families. One of the significant changes was the redefinition of the master–servant relationship along the lines of caste. The transition from adab to caste will be traced through the memoir of Shad written by his grandson, Naqi Ahmad Irshad, and texts published in an Urdu newspaper, Al Punch, that contested the very claim of exclusivity of the ashraf.