The Polemics of Real and Imagined Childhood(s) in India

Abstract

This essay attempts to map historical, literary and social constructions of childhood in India and to explore ways in which these differ from Western-dominated, globalised attitudes to childhood. Evidence about Indian childhood is drawn from across a narrative spectrum including children's books and films and some adult writing and media. Notions of childhood are different within and across the cultures of the world; while there is no ‘correct’ version of childhood, many have common features and sometimes the influences of one culture can be strongly felt in another. In India, for example, a dominant construction of childhood was imported through Western education.1 After Independence (1947), Indian children's literature in English became caught up in the mass postcolonial project of nation-building. As part of becoming emancipated from colonial rule, a dominant image of the child in fiction based on Western childhood had to be replaced by one that is hybrid and multicultural. This construction of Indian childhood is now itself being buffeted by forces of cultural homogenisation.2