Remembering pre-independence childhoods in South India: interrogating autobiographies and identities

Abstract

This article discusses the potential of autobiography for understanding histories of childhood, the effects of late-colonial social policy and the experience of change in India in the decades immediately preceding independence in 1947. This was an era characterised by both increased state intervention in the lives of poor Indian children and the growing influence of universalising notions about modern childhood. Based on a detailed study of 55 autobiographies produced by those born between 1910 and 1940, the article analyses the ways in which childhood was imagined, defined and discussed by South Indians through memories that coalesce around the themes of innocence, play, education, work, family and social identity. It demonstrates that these narrations of memory also convey aspirations for contemporary Indian children through comparative reference to the binary of 'today' and 'those days'. The article reveals the complexity of ideas and experiences at a local level which, despite the commonality of age, were refracted through the distinctions of gender, religion, race and class.

History of Colonial Education: Key Reflections

“…For many educators training the physical body contributed to disciplining the mind, promoting approved forms of masculine behavior through games and sport, whether in support of Christian, colonial, or nationalist ideals (Topdar 2010;Mills and Sen 2004;Fischer-Tiné 2019). Once again, it is important not to overemphasize the impact for the majority, and recent work on autobiographies and memories of schooling suggests that these new technologies were particularly associated with secondary schooling but that elementary schooling was much more associated with large classes, lack of equipment, and very informal control (Ellis 2019;Kumar 2019). For many provincial children, the physical discomfort and inadequate teaching meant that no new skills were obtained and the experience was still predominantly characterized by "pain" (Kumar 2007).…”

“…This was a particularly gendered terrain, and girl children often learned about their place in the world and in their wider environment through poetry, literature, and play, while playfulness with peers and between generations was a useful way to convey knowledge about housework, reproduction, and domesticity as well as worldview (Lal 2013). Likewise South Indian autobiographies reveal the wider family, particularly grandparents, had an important role in educating children about their place in the family as well as conveying cultural knowledge, for example, in the recitation of the Mahabharata and providing children with a sense of self in community (Ellis 2019). Non-family actors often played significant roles, and Vallgårda (2015) highlights the "cultural labor" of Danish missionaries as they attempted to educate and raise children in proper behaviors but also encourage affective relationships on the mission station.…”

“…Children need to be seen in the context of existing social hierarchies of gender, caste, class, and religion and their varied and changing roles as accepting, promoting, and subverting these, negotiating and contributing a wide variety of authority structures on a daily basis (Sarangapani 2003;Bowen and Hinchy 2015). The archival difficulties are also considerable, with evidence at best "fragmentary" or mediated through the adult memory of the child (Ellis 2019) or partially traced in adult-authored sources, at best "fitfully reconstructed" (Kumar 2007, p. 20;Ellis 2009). But with a special issue on Indian childhoods in Childhood (2011) and in South Asian History and Culture (2015), as well as a wide variety of research approaches (Topdar 2010;Balagopalan 2014;Ellis 2019;Bowen and Hinchy 2015;Lal 2013;Chandra 2007;Sen 2013;Vallgårda 2015), we can be confident that historians are embracing this challenge in new and innovative ways and that this will enrich our understanding not only of children but also of education itself.…”