Abstract
In the first phase of fieldwork for the research, in December 2009, I sought interviews with children in Kolkata between the ages of 10 to 12. The focus being on a specific social background, all the children interviewed were school-goers. In the middle of December when more children were contacted through tuitions, schools and other contacts, it was difficult to talk to a child for more than some minutes, than it was even two weeks ago, in November.
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Notes
- 1.
Thomas Babington Macaulay, who was the Secretary to the Board of Control for the British Raj, had, in his minute in835 put forth the agenda of the new educational system in India under colonial administration. ‘We must at present do om best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the million whom we govern-a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellecf (Barry 1966,p.49). The phrase ‘Macaulay’s children’ was later used on occasions to refer to sections of Indians who were Western in their institutional upbringing and lifestyles
- 2.
The novel Srikanta by the novelist Saratchandra Chattopadhyay portrays the wayward Indranath, who is high caste but not caste conservative and of an intellectual disposition against the timid philosophical Srikanta. In the novel, when Srikanta grows up, he is pitted against several female characters, the courtesan RajIaksbmi, the fearless Abhaya. who lives in a socially unconventional relationship with a man, and Dorgadidi, the woman who gave up a life of comfort and respectability to live with her husband who had converted to Islam. All these characters were projected in the narrative styled novel as courageous, if not physically, then in their rejection of social conventions and unlettered or semi lettered
- 3.
The historian Joya Chatterji in her book Bengal Divided explains this construction of the stereotype of the effeminacy of the Bengali man as part of the colonial scheme of dividing the labour force.
- 4.
See John Rosselli on the physical culture in colonial Bengal in The Self-Image of Effeteness: Physical Education and Nationalism in nineteenth century Bengal.
- 5.
See ChatteIji’s (2002) discussion of the fictitious charaeter Sabyasachi created by Saratchandra Chattopadhyay in his novel.
- 6.
See Sumit Sarkar. ‘Writing Social History’ and Tithi Bhattacharya ‘The Sentinels of Culture: Class, education aod the colonial intellectual in Bengal (1848-1885).
- 7.
The Permanent Settlement Act was an agreement made between the East India Company and the landlords in Bengal in 1793, by which landlords were made the intermediaries between the tenants and peasants and the East India Company for tax collection. The system changed the political and economic landscape ofrural Bengal.
- 8.
Bhattacbarya says, ‘The Hindu College was formally declared open to non-Hindu students, when it was re-established as the Presidency College in 1855. The fee was raised from 5 to 10 rupees as the price of this open policy’ (Ibid:175).
- 9.
Vidyasagar in a letter to the Secretary to the Council of Education, F.J.Mouat, argued in favour of limiting admission of students from the lower castes using arguments upholding the need to ensure ‘respectability’.„The reason, why I recommend the exclusion of the other orders of Shudras at present, is that they, as a body, are wanting in respectability and stand lower in the scale of social consideration. Their admission, therefore, would, I fear, prejudice the interests of the institutioo‟. [Letter No.702, from Vidyasagar to F.J. Moua!cited in Bhattacharya 2005, p.179]
- 10.
See Sumit Sarkar’s account of the nature of the religious cult around Ramakrishna Paramhansa, Sarkar in Writing Social History.
- 11.
See Joya Chatteiji in Bengal Divided: Hindu communalism and partition, 1932-1947 for a detailed discussion about the unfolding discourse on the ‘modern Bengali’ man
- 12.
A collection of children’s stories, from the nineteenth and twentieth century, published by the Bengali Children’s Literature Society, the Shishu Shahitya Shangshad under the heading ‘School Stories’ bears a strong resemblance to some of these narratives. The theme of denoting children by their class performance – the ‘first’, ‘second’ and ‘third’ boys, as also the storyline of poor but meritorious students helped by teachers are recurrent in the stories, most of them written by the ‘classical’ Bengali children’s authors such as Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay and Sukumar Ray. One story, ‘Shinghashanchyuta’, literally meaning ‘dethroned’, ba Mohanlal Gangopadhyay, written in 1941, is about the humiliation and psychological pressure felt by a schoolboy when someone else comes first in class, thus taking away his position of honour (Sen & Dasmunshi 2005).
- 13.
It is not unusual that the most dominant images of the childhood of Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar one of the most prominent educational reformers of the nineteenth century and the author of the children’s alphabet book in Bengali – are those of the hardships he endured for academic success. One of the most widely circulated stories about Vidyasagar’s diligence which captured the imagination of the educated Bengalis, and attained mythical status among them, is about how, when he moved to Calcutta as a boy, Vidyasagar would tie his cowlick to a lamppost in the streetlamps
- 14.
This is less common among the generation of parents where accounts involving a conflict with sentiments of the older generation regarding certain aspects are found (the sections on clothing and friendship). However the generation which grew up in the 1960s and 1970s perceive and articulate the changes in childhood in ways other than a shift in sentiments.
- 15.
Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay is one of the authors of fiction who is regarded as one of the classics in twentieth century Bengali fiction. His works were not specifically for children, except for Chander Pahar (translated into ‘Mountam of the Moon’) an adventure novel based in Africa, a novel mentioned by some of the respondents from the two younger generations. His novel Pather Panchali (translated as ‘Song of the Little Road’) plays a significant role in the discourse of childhood, or more specifically, of boyhood in Bengal owing to the characterof ‘Apu’, the innocent wide eyed boy of Bengal’s crnmtryside, who captured the Bengali imagination, and whose is often evoked in public discourse referring to childhood or the loss of innocence. The respoodeot Parima!Das, incideota1ly referred to this work by Bibhutibhushan and the character, saying be ideotified with the boy and described his childhood as being ‘Apu-like’
- 16.
The autobiography of Rabindranath Tagore, the most celebrated figure in Bengali literature, Chhelebela literally translates as ‘Boyhood’.
- 17.
Jogendraoath Sarkar can1riboted to Bengali children’s literature in the nineteenth century. Notable among his works are poems for children, the children’s magazine Mukul (translated as ‘blossom’) which he edited and his contributions in other children’s magazines like Sakha and Sandesh. The book Hashikhushi (a compound of two Bengali words laughter and happiness) was published in 1897. (Source: Banglapedia)
- 18.
See the chapter on leisure practices of children. More than one respondent talks about reading storybooks in secret as parents saw an excess of the practice as undermining their school work.
- 19.
The word ‘porashuna’ which literally means reading and bearing, refers to studying or research and is separately used from the word ‘shikkha’ or education.
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Sen, H. (2014). ‘Being Good at Studies’: The Bhadralok Culture and the Ethos of Education in Bengal. In: ‘Time-Out’ in the Land of Apu. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-02223-5_5
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