Note 6 — Dhobi

In Chhattīsgarh the Dhobis appear to have partly abandoned their hereditary profession and taken to agriculture and other callings. Sir Benjamin Robertson writes of them:6 “The caste largely preponderates in Chhattīsgarh, a part of the country where, at least to the superficial observer, it would hardly seem as if its services were much availed of; the number of Dhobis in Raipur and Bilāspur is nearly 40,000. In both Districts the washerman is one of the recognised village servants, but as a rule he gets no fixed payment, and the great body of cultivators dispense with his services altogether. According to the Raipur Settlement Report (Mr. Hewett), he is employed by the ryots only to wash the clothes of the dead, and he is never found among a population of Satnāmis. It may therefore be assumed that in Chhattīsgarh the Bareth caste has largely taken to cultivation.” In Bengal Sir H. Risley states7 that “the Dhobi often gives up his caste trade and follows the profession of a writer, messenger or collector of rent (tahsīldār), and it is an old native tradition that a Bengali Dhobi was the first interpreter the English factory at Calcutta had, while it is further stated that our early commercial transactions were carried on solely through the agency of low-caste natives. The Dhobi, however, will never engage himself as an indoor servant in the house of a European.”