PURAN PATRIKA

Anti–South Asian racism in the West has followed a common theme. There is an association of South Asian people being inherently dirty, lacking in hygiene, and having poor sanitary habits. These tropes shape the pop-cultural perception of South Asian people and are so widespread that these generalizations become ingrained in people’s psyche. The irony is that the sanitary and hygiene practices the Anglosphere prides itself on have foundations built by the same South Asian people who are mocked for supposedly lacking them [6].

Shampoo is an item present in nearly every household as a staple sanitary product to keep one’s hair clean. The root of the word shampoo derives from the Hindi/Urdu word chāmpo (चाँपो / چمپو), meaning “to press, knead, or massage,” pointing directly to its origins in the Indian subcontinent [9]. In Ayurvedic and Unani traditions, shampooing involved herbal oils, scalp treatments, and therapeutic massage. The practice existed in coastal Bengal, Gujarat, and Mughal courts as a form of health care long before it appeared in Europe [9].

The Anglosphere did not encounter shampooing until the 18th century, when Sheikh Din Muhammad (Dean Mahomed) introduced it in Britain. Mahomed was born in Patna in the Bengal Presidency and served as a trainee surgeon in the Bengal Army under Captain Godfrey Evan Baker, an Anglo-Irish officer [1], [2]. After traveling to Ireland in 1784 to improve his English, Mahomed later moved to England, where he pursued several ventures, including authoring the first English-language book by an Indian writer, The Travels of Dean Mahomet (1794) [1]. In 1810 he also opened Britain’s first Indian restaurant, the Hindostanee Coffee House [4].

Mahomed is most famous, however, for introducing Indian shampooing traditions to Britain by establishing his “shampooing baths.” In 1814, he opened his first bathhouse in Brighton, drawing directly on Indian champi traditions with herbal oils and therapeutic vapor treatments [4]. He promoted these as “Indian Medicated Vapour Baths,” claiming benefits for ailments such as rheumatism, paralysis, and asthma, and later published these accounts in his 1826 book Shampooing; or, Benefits Resulting from the Use of the Indian Medicated Vapour Bath [5]. Though some British audiences were skeptical, Mahomed gained significant popularity among aristocrats and eventually received Royal Warrants from both King George IV and William IV [4], [5].

Mahomed’s influence directly shaped the European understanding of shampooing, contributing to its globalization and later commercialization. By the early 20th century, shampoo was widely known in Europe, inspiring figures such as Hans Schwarzkopf to create the first powdered and subsequently liquid shampoo, products that shaped modern hygiene [10].

Yet in 2025, South Asians still suffer from colonial narratives portraying them as unclean and inferior. As scholars like Edward Said and Frantz Fanon argue, colonial regimes constructed ideas of “civilized cleanliness” as a racial boundary between the British and the “dirty native” [7], [8]. Hygiene became racialized, and the South Asian body, in particular, was marked as impure, even as its practices were quietly borrowed and commercialized. This is the paradox: South Asian innovations were adopted, normalized, and profited from, while South Asian people themselves were pushed outside the frame and burdened with stereotypes of being unhygienic.

Today, in 2025, there remains a form of colonial selective amnesia. South Asians continue to face jokes and stereotypes rooted in the same colonial imagination, one that embraced the shampoo but forgot the hands that created it [6].

References

Baynes, T. M. Sake Deen Mahomed. Coloured lithograph by T. M. Baynes after Wellcome V0003787, ca. 1820s, Wellcome Library, London. Available: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sake_Deen_Mahomed._Coloured_lithograph_by_T._M._Baynes_after_Wellcome_V0003787.jpg (accessed Nov. 30, 2025).

Colville, S. The Life and Adventures of Dean Mahomet: An Eighteenth-Century Journey in India. Berkeley, CA, USA: University of California Press, 1997.

Datta, A. “The Shampooing Surgeon: How an Indian Entrepreneur Brought Therapeutic Bathing to Regency Britain,” History Today, vol. 70, no. 3, pp. 40–47, Mar. 2020.

Fanon, F. Black Skin, White Masks. New York, NY, USA: Grove Press, 1967.

Fisher, M. H. “Dean Mahomet: An Indian in Eighteenth-Century Ireland,” Immigrants & Minorities, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 5–26, 1987.

Gupta, J. K. “Ayurvedic Hair-Care Traditions and Early Shampoo Practices in the Indian Subcontinent,” Indian Journal of Traditional Knowledge, vol. 12, no. 3, pp. 453–460, July 2013.

Mahomed, D. Shampooing; or, Benefits Resulting from the Use of the Indian Medicated Vapour Bath. London, U.K.: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1826.

Metcalf, T. R. Ideologies of the Raj. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Said, E. W. Orientalism. New York, NY, USA: Vintage Books, 1979.

Schwarzkopf, H. G. 100 Years of Schwarzkopf: The Story of Modern Hair Care. Hamburg, Germany: Schwarzkopf Archives, 1998.

Trautmann, R. C. S. Languages and Nations: The Dravidian Proof in Colonial Madras. Berkeley, CA, USA: University of California Press, 2006.

[1] S. Colville, The Life and Adventures of Dean Mahomet: An Eighteenth-Century Journey in India. Berkeley, CA, USA: University of California Press, 1997.

[2] M. H. Fisher, “Dean Mahomet: An Indian in Eighteenth-Century Ireland,” Immigrants & Minorities, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 5–26, 1987.

[3] R. C. S. Trautmann, Languages and Nations: The Dravidian Proof in Colonial Madras. Berkeley, CA, USA: University of California Press, 2006.
(Used for contextual information on colonial constructions of hygiene and racialization.)

[4] A. Datta, “The Shampooing Surgeon: How an Indian Entrepreneur Brought Therapeutic Bathing to Regency Britain,” History Today, vol. 70, no. 3, pp. 40–47, Mar. 2020.

[5] D. Mahomed, Shampooing; or, Benefits Resulting from the Use of the Indian Medicated Vapour Bath. London, U.K.: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1826.

[6] T. R. Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
(For analysis of British colonial narratives of “cleanliness” and the racialization of hygiene.)

[7] E. W. Said, Orientalism. New York, NY, USA: Vintage Books, 1979.

[8] F. Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks. New York, NY, USA: Grove Press, 1967.

[9] J. K. Gupta, “Ayurvedic Hair-Care Traditions and Early Shampoo Practices in the Indian Subcontinent,” Indian Journal of Traditional Knowledge, vol. 12, no. 3, pp. 453–460, July 2013.

[10] H. G. Schwarzkopf, 100 Years of Schwarzkopf: The Story of Modern Hair Care. Hamburg, Germany: Schwarzkopf Archives, 1998.

[11] T. M. Baynes, Sake Deen Mahomed. Coloured lithograph by T. M. Baynes after Wellcome V0003787, ca. 1820s, Wellcome Library, London. Available: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sake_Deen_Mahomed._Coloured_lithograph_by_T._M._Baynes_after_Wellcome_V0003787.jpg (accessed Nov. 30, 2025).