Colonial Caregivers offers a compelling cultural and social history of ayahs (nannies/maids), by exploring domestic intimacy and exploitation in colonial South Asia. Working for British imperial families from the mid-1700s to the mid-1900s, South Asian ayahs, as Chakraborty shows, not only provided domestic labor, but also provided important moral labor for the British Empire. The desexualized racialized ayah archetype upheld British imperial whiteness and sexual purity, and later Indian elite 'upper' caste domestic modernity. Chakraborty argues that the pervasive cultural sentimentalization of the ayah morally legitimized British colonialism, while obscuring the vulnerabilities of caregivers in real-life. Using an archive of petitions and letters from ayahs, fairytales they told to British children, court cases, and vernacular sources, Chakraborty foregrounds the precarious lives, voices, and perspectives of these women. By placing care labor at the center of colonial history, the book decolonizes the history of South Asia and the British Empire.

Winner, 2025 Edward Cameron Dimock, Jr. Prize in the Indian Humanities, American Institute of Indian Studies

‘A timely intervention in the growing scholarship on the politics and economics of care and the ethics of caregiving, Colonial Caregivers' rigorous recovery of the ubiquitous but occluded figure of the ayah is an exemplary demonstration of the power of decolonial and feminist historical labor and writing.'

Sumathi Ramaswamy - Duke University

‘The book is beautifully written, moving with confident elegance from narrative detail to analytical insight. The chapters uncover how colonialism was rooted in the intimate labor of brown women, provoking a critical rethinking of the foundation of elite power in a globalized capitalist political economy.'

Fae Dussart - University of Sussex

‘Shikha Chakraborty skilfully weaves together a rich diversity of sources in this impressive history of the ayahs. Her lucid and nuanced analysis of the cultural representation and voices of ayahs will appeal to scholars of empire, gender, and postcolonialism, as well as anybody who is interested in the history of domestic workers. Focusing on ayahs in both British and Indian families, Chakraborty provides a refreshing perspective on Indian domestic service, and her original perspective offers an extraordinary range of insights.'

Victoria K. Haskins - University of Newcastle

‘Colonial Caregivers is an exemplary exercise in subalternist historiography. With great scholarly rigor and imagination, it brings into view the history of the Indian ayahs who performed the most intimate care of the women and children in British colonial households. While capturing their experiences and perspectives, it shows that the domestic labor of these brown women was crucial not only for the reproduction of colonial families but also for the representation of imperial morality, respectability and racial purity. The book astutely advances our understanding of colonialism by placing the subaltern women's domestic labor at the center of its history.'

Gyan Prakash - Princeton University