The babu, or educated Bengali bureaucrat, could be said to have held the Raj in the twirl of an umbrella. Babus were a new species that blossomed during colonial rule, hybrids of Western needs and Indian traditions.
Hobson-Jobson's, the famous dictionary of Anglo-Indian terms, defines Chuprassy as "the bearer of a chapras, i.e. a badge-plate inscribed with the name of the office to which the bearer is attached.
This image by the Indian painter M.V. Dhurandhar celebrates the rise of a new type of worker in early Mumbai - the peon who worked for a business owner or manager and would ultimately gather some authority by controlling access to his boss.
