Halwai.--The occupational caste of confectioners, numbering about
3000 persons in the Central Provinces and Berar in 1911. The Halwai
takes his name from halwa, a sweet made of flour, clarified butter
and sugar, coloured with saffron and flavoured with almonds,
raisins and pistachio-nuts. [148] The caste gives no account of
its origin in northern India, but it is clearly a functional group
composed of members of respectable middle-class castes who adopted the
profession of sweetmeat-making. The Halwais are also called Mithaihas,
or preparers of sweets, and in the Uriya country are known as Guria
from gur or unrefined sugar. The caste has several subdivisions with
territorial names, generally derived from places in northern India,
as Kanaujia from Kanauj, and Jaunpuria from Jaunpur; others are Kandu,
a grain-parcher, and Dobisya, meaning two score. One of the Guria
subdivisions is named Haldia from haldi, turmeric, and members of
this subcaste are employed to prepare the mahaprasad or cooked rice
which is served at the temple of Jagannath and which is eaten by all
castes together without scruple. The Gurias have exogamous divisions
or bargas, the names of which are generally functional, as Darban,
door-keeper; Saraf, treasurer; Bhitarya, one who looks to household
affairs, and others. Marriage within the barga is forbidden, but the
union of first cousins is not prohibited. Marriage may be infant or
adult. A girl who has a liaison with a man of the caste may be wedded
to him by the form used for the remarriage of a widow, but if she
goes wrong with an outsider she is finally expelled. Widow-marriage
is allowed, and divorce may be effected for misconduct on the part
of the wife.
The social standing of the Halwai is respectable. "His art," says
Mr. Nesfield, [149] "implies rather an advanced state of culture, and
hence his rank in the social scale is a high one. There is no caste
in India which considers itself too pure to eat what a confectioner
has made. In marriage banquets it is he who supplies a large part of
the feast, and at all times and seasons the sweetmeat is a favourite
food to a Hindu requiring a temporary refreshment. There is a kind
of bread called puri, consisting of wheaten dough fried in melted
butter, which is taken as a substitute for the chapati or wheaten
pancake by travellers and others who happen to be unable to have
their bread cooked at their own fire, and is made by the Halwais."
The real reason why the Halwai occupies a good position perhaps
simply results from the necessity that other castes should be able
to take cakes from him. Among the higher castes food cooked with
water should not be eaten except at the hearth after this has been
specially cleansed and spread with cowdung, and those who are to
eat have bathed and otherwise purified themselves. But as the need
continuously arises for travellers and others to take a meal abroad
where they cannot cook it for themselves, sweetmeats and cakes made
without water are permitted to be eaten in this way, and the Halwai,
as the purveyor of these, has been given the position of a pure caste
from whose hands a Brahman can take water. In a similar manner, water
may be taken from the hands of the Dhimar who is a household servant,
the Kahar or palanquin-bearer, the Barai or betel-leaf seller, and
the Bharbhunja or rice-parcher, although some of these castes have
a very low origin and occupy the humble position of menial servants.
The Halwai's shop is one of the most familiar in an Indian bazar,
and in towns a whole row of them may be seen together, this
arrangement being doubtless adopted for the social convenience
of the caste-fellows, though it might be expected to decrease the
custom that they receive. His wares consist of trays full of white
and yellow-coloured sweetmeats and cakes of flour and sugar, very
unappetising to a European eye, though Hindu boys show no lack of
appreciation of them. The Hindus are very fond of sweet things, which
is perhaps a common trait of an uneducated palate. Hindu children
will say that such sweets as chocolate almonds are too bitter, and
their favourite drink, sherbet, is simply a mixture of sugar and
water with some flavouring, and seems scarcely calculated to quench
the thirst produced by an Indian hot weather. Similarly their tea is
so sweetened with sugar and spices as to be distasteful to a European.
The ingredients of a Halwai's sweets are wheat and gram-flour,
milk and country sugar. Those called batashas consist merely of
syrup of sugar boiled with a little flour, which is taken out in
spoonfuls and allowed to cool. They are very easy to make and are
commonly distributed to schoolboys on any occasion of importance,
and are something like a meringue in composition. The kind called
barafi or ice is made from thick boiled milk mixed with sugar, and is
more expensive and considered more of a treat than batashas. Laddus
are made from gram-flour which is mixed with water and dropped into
boiling butter, when it hardens into lumps. These are taken out
and dipped in syrup of sugar and allowed to cool. Pheni is a thin
strip of dough of fine wheat-flour fried in butter and then dipped
in syrup of sugar. Other sweets are made from the flour of singara
or water-nut and from chironji, the kernel of the achar [150] nut,
coated with sugar. Of ordinary sweets the cheaper kinds cost 8 annas
a seer of 2 lb. and the more expensive ones 10 or 12 annas. Sweets
prepared by Bengali confectioners are considered the best of all. The
Halwai sits on a board in his shop surrounded by wooden trays of the
different kinds of sweets. These are often covered with crowds of flies
and in some places with a variety of formidable-looking hornets. The
latter do not appear to be vicious, however, and when he wishes to
take sweets off a tray the Halwai whisks them off with a palm-leaf
brush. Only if one of them gets into his cloth, or he unguardedly
pushes his hand down into a heap of sweets and encounters a hornet,
he may receive a sting of which the mark remains for some time. The
better-class confectioners now imitate English sweets, and at fairs
when they retail boiled grain and ghi they provide spoons and little
basins for their customers.