Juti-Walah

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This article is an extract from

THE TRIBES and CASTES of BENGAL. By H.H. RISLEY, INDIAN CIVIL SERVICE, OFFICIER D'ACADÉMIE FRANÇAISE. Ethnographic Glossary. CALCUTTA: Printed at the Bengal Secretariat Press. 1891. .

NOTE 1: Indpaedia neither agrees nor disagrees with the contents of this article. Readers who wish to add fresh information can create a Part II of this article. The general rule is that if we have nothing nice to say about communities other than our own it is best to say nothing at all.

NOTE 2: While reading please keep in mind that all articles in this series have been scanned from a very old book. Therefore, footnotes have got inserted into the main text of the article, interrupting the flow. Readers who spot scanning errors are requested to report the correct spelling to the Facebook page, Indpaedia.com. All information used will be duly acknowledged. =Juti-Wala Shoes are made by the Chamar and Rishi, but are sold by all Sudras, and even by degraded Brahmans. The real shoe-seller, however, is the Muhammadan, and the traders who supply the country at large with shoes belong to this creed. Juti-walas follow a respectable trade, being regarded as the equals of the best families. They are very strict Farazis, never opening their shops, or selling a pair of shoes, on a Friday. Shoe-selling is a modern business, and a pair of shoes is nowadays considered by the thrifty peasant as indispensable as a cheap and fragile cotton umbrella. It is supposed that, owing to its recent development, the Farazi Maulavis have had sufficient influence to stop the sale of shoes on the Muhammadan Sunday, although their admonitions have failed to close other shops on that day.

In describing the Hindus of Bengal, in 1770, Stavorinus mentions that they "wear a kind of shoes which are put on slipshod, and are turned up before like the Turkish slippers (papost)." About thirty years ago the "Nagaurah" was the fashionable style, but at the present day both kinds have given place to shoes of English design. During the Muhammadan rule shoes were generally named after the city where they were made, as Dihlawi and Peshauri.