A clerk or official in Indian administrative service during British colonial rule; a government messenger or official.
From Hindustani harcī or harkārah, derived from Persian harkārah meaning 'messenger.' This word preserved the original role—someone who carried messages and performed administrative duties in the British Indian bureaucracy.
Words like 'harkee' are linguistic fossils of colonialism—they perfectly captured roles that existed nowhere else, so English had to borrow them directly from the languages of the regions being colonized.
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