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Dhopa an occupational group, who launder and iron clothes.
Dhopas, also known as rajaks, traditionally belonged to a lower
caste of the Hindu community in the past. In olden times, dhopas
used to wash the clothes of rich people like zamindars.
Later, the necessities of the society gave rise to a very steady demand
for their services. Formerly, washermen used potash produced by burning
banana stalks for clearing clothes. At present, they use soda or bleaching
powder. Some dhopas, however, add urine of the cow to soda or bleaching
powder as the mix of washing reagents. The mode of washing begins with
the cloths made wet with soda or bleaching powder and then amassed and
heated with vapour into a vessel on an oven. The clothes are then rubbed
with soap and threshed on a wooden board and finally rinsed in cold water.
In some cases, the gruel or starch of arrowroot, or indigo, soaked in
water is used. Indigo is generally used for removing the yellowish tinge
and whitening the material.
The process terminates with the ironing of the clothes. The Portuguese
introduced the ironing of clothes and the Bengali word for
ironing, istri is derived from the Portuguese.
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Dhopa washing
clothes |
The dhopa caste claims to have descended from Neta
Muni or Neta Dhopani, who washed the clothes of Brahma. Owing
to universal custom, which forbade a Hindu to wash, the dhopa caste was
very widely distributed and had been broken into an unusually large number
of sub-castes in Bengal. Two of the prominent subdivisions in Bengal were
the Ramer dhopa, and Sitar dhopa, the former claiming to
descend from the washerman of Ram, and the later from that of Sita. Members
of these two groups eat and drink together, but never intermarry. The
religion of dhopa caste exhibits no points of special interest. Like most
lower castes, they follow the Vaishnava sect, and only a few are
Saktas.
Although there was hardly any Muslims in the profession
of dhopas in the past, the profession is no longer a Hindu domain in Bangladesh.
The main reason is the gradual thinning out of the Hindu population in
this part of Bengal after 1947. Change in washing technology and the general
attitude to laundry work as an economic activity also have encouraged
Muslims to come to the profession. In fact, the introduction of dry cleaning
and the invention of automatic washing machines caused extinction of traditional
dhopas in many areas of the country. The modern washermen, equipped with
automatic and semi-automatic machines, now operate laundry-shops as business
entrepreneurs. Traditional dhopas continue to work in urban areas, but
in most cases, as subcontractors of this new class of entrepreneurs. Nevertheless,
they perform their functions independently with their indigenous mode
of washing, cleaning, and ironing, mostly in rural and semi-urban areas.
[Gofran Faroqi]
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