Remembering pre-independence childhoods in South India

Interrogating Autobiographies and Identities

Bibliographic Data

ID5804437
AuthorsCatriona Ellis (0000-0001-7423-8335, University of Strathclyde, corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume44
Issue2
Pages202-228
Publication date2019-04-03
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0307-1022 • E-ISSN: 1470-1200
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/03071022.2019.1579978
OpenAlexW2944718464
LanguageEN
References cited19

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 characterized by both increased state intervention in the lives of poor Indian children and the growing influence of universalizing 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

Independence · Innocence · Educator Training and Historical Pedagogy · Religious Education and Schools

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