Aarushi Annapragada Week 7

In ‘Of Rasoi ka Kaam/Bathroom ka Kaam’, Sonal Sharma talks about the effects of the practices of purity and pollution on domestic work in Indian society. Segregating the ‘dirty’ from the ‘clean’ contributes to the social construction of space. It creates a social boundary between the ‘home’ and the ‘outside’. Employers’ segregation of tasks according to their ideas of ‘pure’ and ‘polluted’, reproduces caste relations. Employers want to know a domestic workers’ caste before hiring them to make sure that the sociocultural ‘others’ do not enter the space of home. However, it is not always the employers but also workers who perpetuate and reinforce these practices, as well. For instance, it is not always the case where the employer is the one who occupies a higher caste or social position, and in this way workers’ agency in selecting employers has been ignored. Additionally, these hierarchies not just exist between employers and workers but also among workers. Sharma also talks about how workers deploy strategies such as excluding other social groups to make small gains at the cost of other groups. However, it should not be concluded that workers’ practices of untouchability can be equated with those of employers because of power inequalities with serious economic consequences.