Honour over Humanity
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Eager to recreate the lavish lifestyle they had gotten used to in India, the British started importing cheap Indian labour in the form of servants and ayahs in the 19th century. These servants proved to be especially helpful on strenuous sea travels and to get rid of the costs that came with employing English servants. While this allowed the British masters a life of luxury, for the servants this arrangement was a highly exploitative one. Not only were the servants mistreated greatly, they lacked any form of security or legal backing- their life and employment relied solely on the whims and fancies of their masters who could abandon them the second they wished. This lack of security often led to a situation of overcrowded lodgings where servants awaited re engagement and servants desperately begging on streets to be taken back home.
Any form of help these servants received from the English came, not from a place of humanity, but in hopes of upholding the image and honour of the British empire and protecting themselves. Colonel Hughes wished to respect the servants’ contracts not because it was the right thing to do, but because dishonouring it brought ‘discredit on the British name’ (Visram, 22). Attempts to revive the deposit system that would provide some security to the servants were quickly shut down for they would “cause great hardship to the British” (Visram, 23). Furthermore, the plight of Indian labourers became fuel to the white saviour complex of the British. The ‘petitioner class’ of small farmers that went to Britain to petition the Queen about their land claims were used to construct the narrative that the Queen was the ‘“‘fountain of justice’ for the simple villager from India” (Visram, 27). People like Mrs Warr who suggested bringing over women from India as servants, justified their actions as being for the greater good to shake off the accountability. Mrs Warr claimed that her suggestion would not just help her earn something but “create a good feeling as well” (Visram, 18) In essence, between the British’s lousy attempts at suggesting changes and the Indian Office’s refusal to take substantial steps towards helping them, the servants were stripped of their humanity and made into mere pawns in a selfish game of politics and the self interest of the English.