Boxwallah

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Boxwallahs were small-scale travelling merchant peddlers in India. They were known as boxwallahs because of the large boxes in which they carried their merchandise (usually clothes and costume jewelry), though the term has been known to be applied to any traveling peddler and also to people involved in business and commercial activities (as opposed to 'babus' or civil servants).[citation needed] Boxwallahs, the peddlers with boxes, were a common sight in the streets of Delhi and other north Indian cities from about 1865 to 1948.[1] Boxwallah English is a term used to describe the commercial and trade English that Englishmen used when interacting with Indians (traders) during the British Raj.[2]

The Boxwallah is also the title of an ITV Playhouse TV film that aired on 31 July 1982 and starred Leo McKern and Rachel Kempson.[3]

[edit] Boxwallah in fiction

Kipling was particularly attracted by the idea of a boxwallah and the idea of a boxwallah is present in several of his short stories. In From Sea to Sea, Kipling talks of a mistreated Burmese girl as if she were a Delhi Boxwallah, presumably because the protagonist bargained too hard with her.[4] (Boxwallahs', like all Indian peddlers, were known to drive a hard bargain."[5] In The Sending of Dana Da, Dana Da, a fortune traveler and itinerant traveling peddler makes a reference to his life as a boxwallah at his cryptic recitation of his autobiography on his deathbed.[6] But, most famously, Kipling used 'Boxwallah' as a pen name for his skewer on British Indian life in 'An Eastern Backwater'.[7]

[edit] References

  1. ^ The Hindu : Delhi's good old Boxwallah
  2. ^ The Hindu : Linguistic incursions
  3. ^ "ITV Playhouse" The Boxwallah (1982)
  4. ^ http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/K/KiplingRudyard/prose/FromSeaToSea/seatosea_III.html
  5. ^ The Hindu : Delhi's good old Boxwallah
  6. ^ http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/K/KiplingRudyard/prose/BlackWhite/danada.html
  7. ^ An Eastern Backwater by Boxwallah, Andrew Melrose, London, 1912(?)
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