Abstract
The idea for a symposium on the theme of Indian childhoods was first conceived by the lead editor of this volume, Professor T.S. Saraswathi when she was a visiting fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study (IAAS) in Shimla in 2014, although it finally came to fruition only in November 2015 at the Azim Premji University in Bangalore. The symposium entitled ‘Childhoods in India: Traditions, Trends and Transformations’ brought together a large number of scholars from a variety of disciplines to reflect on the idea of childhood, the variety of disciplines that informs it, and policy and practice associated with it. The present volume is the final product of the proceedings of the symposium.
It is not a coincidence that Professor Saraswathi chanced upon the theme of multiple childhoods in India. It is in fact a logical outcome of her long and distinguished career of teaching, research, mentoring and publishing while located in a field that in many senses reveals the shifting terrain of the study of children. She spent her entire teaching career in what is now called the Department of Human Development and Family Studies and is in fact associated with studies of childhood, although primarily from the perspective of psychology. The changes in nomenclature from child psychology to child development and finally human development are a reflection of how conceptualisations about children and childhood have shifted in important ways even within the domain of psychology. It is also interesting that departments of child development (in India, the most distinguished ones were located in home science settings), although strongly grounded in psychology, have traditionally incorporated an interdisciplinary approach and have from time to time reflected on some of the troubling issues that were raised at the symposium and that the volume attempts to address.
The focus on children within the social sciences therefore is not new, and the child has been an important if not central figure in psychology, in education and in law and all three viewpoints are substantively represented in the volume. The focus on children, and the child as precursor to understanding the human mind, has been central to the discipline of psychology. Child psychology as a sub-discipline developed almost concurrently with the parent discipline and has had a major influence across the social sciences. In education where the child is central, psychology has been the dominant discipline for understanding children and for its theory and practice. Although this is a field that had ample scope for initiating more complex and broader understandings of children and childhood, it has by and large confined itself to a narrower agenda. Children have also figured extensively, although often contentiously, in legal discourse and the changing definitions of the child and debates around this are important sources for examining prevailing social and political tensions.
These disciplines have been integral to the consolidated idea of childhood that is now central to ‘Childhood Studies’ but this consolidation has a long genealogy and needs to be understood differently. As Balagopalan notes in her chapter as a process that got consolidated over several centuries, research on the rise of childhood in the modern West includes detailed historiographical research on children and also forms part of a wider interrogation of political economy, moral philosophy, imperialism and new imaginations of the poor, work and self-discipline. (p. 25)
The history is long and complex, but there are critical landmarks: the industrial revolution and the rise of capitalism before the 19th century, the experience of colonisation (especially for the countries of the South), the revolutionary transformation in social and economic structures from the 19th century onwards and the modernist agenda and the introduction of a mass and near compulsory system of formal education.
In particular, a significant and important shift is documented by the sociologist Viviana Zelizer in her 1985 study and thought-provoking analysis of the changing social value of children. She traces how the 20th century ‘economically useless’ but ‘emotionally priceless’ child displaced the 19th century ‘useful child’, and how this new sacred child occupied a special and separate world, regulated by affection and education, not by work or profit. ‘The emergence of the economically “worthless” but emotionally “priceless” child’, she notes, ‘has created an essential condition for contemporary childhood’ (1985, p. 3). She is referring to the 1980s when the current changes were just setting in. This condition is far more serious today where the new world order, the withdrawal of the welfare state and the neoliberal economic agenda, while maintaining the rhetoric of the emotionally priceless child, is unable to support the economically useless child and in the process of withdrawing from social sectors, is pushing vulnerable childhoods into overwhelmingly precarious conditions.
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted in 1989 and subsequently ratified almost universally, has been a major factor in the renewed interest in the lives of children in a global context and closely linked to international politics and global economic and development concerns. It has very important impact on local policy and the many complex ways in which all this gets worked out, especially in the nations of the South, make it imperative for the debates initiated in this volume to be carefully considered.
Since a more inclusive perspective on childhood and the discipline of childhood studies is only beginning to take shape in the Indian setting, the significance of this volume and its contribution lies in bringing together disparate strands and disciplines, to initiate an exchange and a dialogue and to examine ‘…issues related to children and childhoods fairly exhaustively, with nuance and rigour’ (Menon and Saraswathi, p. 1). The symposium and the subsequent volume that includes additionally invited papers, grew, according to the editors, ‘out of a commitment to invest in knowledge building about childhoods in India and an acknowledgement that such knowledge building would require crossing disciplinary boundaries’. With these objectives, the symposium brought together scholars, thinkers and practitioners from a range of disciplinary perspectives such as sociology, psychology, history, mythology, medicine, law, literature and the arts.
In addition to a foreword by the eminent child rights activist and scholar, who was also chairperson of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, Professor Shanta Sinha and an introduction by two of its editors, the book consists of 16 chapters divided into 4 sections, each organised around a major theme. The four themes are categorised as follows: (a) ‘Recovering Histories, Deconstructing Childhoods’, (b) Narratives of Power and Representation in Childhood, (c) The Normative Child: Institutionalization through Education and Schooling and (d) Law, Practice and Policy. A summary of the themes with reference to every chapter, given in the introduction by Saraswathi and Menon, does an excellent job of presenting the gist and the main arguments of each author. It is difficult for a review to do justice to every chapter in a volume of this magnitude, with its variety of topics and perspectives. I will therefore restrict myself to commenting on some of the major issues and debates that have been addressed, the tensions that are highlighted and the important questions that the volume raises.
The three chapters that address the construction of ‘childhood’ and set a context for understanding the tensions in the idea of multiplicity are those by Sarada Balagopalan on Colonial Modernity’ and the ‘Child Figure’, Vasanthi Raman on ‘India’s Children and the Brave New World’ and Asha Bajpai on ‘Right to Childhood and Equitable Access to Justice’.
In arguing that the distinctions between a singular, normative childhood and ‘multiple childhoods’ are fraught with relations of power, Sarada Balagopalan puts forth the argument that the ‘project of liberal tolerance that underlies the (concept of multiple childhoods) has inadvertently set up a ‘separate but equal’ comparative register for understanding the lives of marginal children in the global South’ (p. 24). Her paper then describes a prior moment within India’s colonial history that constructed children’s lives as multiple, and therefore deserving of ‘different’ and lesser obligations from the State. She uses four child figures—the juvenile delinquent, the coolie child, children of peasants and factory children—to demonstrate how the modern apparatus of schooling was deliberately distorted to naturalise the learning of labour for the marginal child. She uses this moment of Indian colonial modernity in the early 19th century to make an argument for reanalysing the extent to which ‘the current framework of multiple childhoods condones larger structural exclusions that continue to affect the lives of marginal children’ (p. 40). ‘This historicising’ she hopes ‘might move us away from the naturalizing of these children’s everyday lives that both ‘multiple childhoods and policy-making around children’, ironically appear to share’ and allow ‘researchers to critically reread the current 21st century landscape of efforts to “educate” and “improve” the lives of marginal children through a more deliberate focus on postcolonial capitalism, the informal economy and the reconfiguration of the state’ (p. 40).
Vasanthi Raman traces developments in the West that have had long lasting consequences for understanding the phenomena of childhood, along with the development of childhood studies, during the period of late capitalism. Referring to the UNCRC, she draws links between the discourse on child rights and globalisation and the dominance of the neo-liberal paradigm in the field of international political economy. The chapter focuses on the children of the periphery in the Indian content, the jettisoning of the idea of welfare and the withdrawal of the state in significant ways, especially in the social sector with serious consequences for the marginalised and the poor. She very pertinently notes that if the plight of children were to be seriously addressed, many stages of history would have to be traversed, many layers of structures negotiated and many histories and world views accommodated in an effort to arrive at a democratic consensus among the peoples of the South. (p. 67)
Lending support to the arguments in Sarada Balagopalan’s chapter, she highlights the importance of contextualising childhoods within both the international framework of neoliberal politics and its interface with the national sociopolitical structures and priorities.
The third paper that helps to frame the context and to understand how childhoods get constructed is Asha Bajpai’s piece entitled ‘Right to Childhood and Equitable Access to Justice’ that presents a thought provoking and important analysis of childhood in the Indian legal system and the inherent contradictions in its evolution. Examining a broad gamut of spaces that bring the child face to face with the law and legal systems ranging from the juvenile justice system; children as victims of sexual and physical abuse; children as parties in civil proceedings and custody battles to child labour laws; and with the support of historical evidence, the author establishes the complex legal implications of the concept of childhood. She refers to the UNDP practice note which recommends that, ‘access to justice is not only a procedural matter but also a matter of substantively just, equitable outcomes, with strong links to democratic governance and poverty reduction’ (p. 315) and to the Indian National Policy for Children 2013, that ‘commits to promote child-friendly jurisprudence, enact progressive legislation, build a preventive and responsive child protection system including outreach emergency services and promote effective enforcement of punitive legislative and administrative measures against all forms of child abuse and neglect’ (p. 316).
Although the constitution of India provides special status and protection to children and guarantees the fundamental rights to all children in the country, the contradictions of the legal system and jurisdiction under different laws causes its own complications. There is no one definition of the child in law and varies (sometimes for good reason) for different domains—thus it is 14 years under child labour law and 18 for marriage laws while juvenile justice laws are silent on minimal age of criminal responsibility which remains at 7 years as per the IPC.
The second section of the volume around the theme of ‘Narratives of Power and Representation’ includes five chapters that elaborate social and cultural factors, and focus on representations of the child and its implications.
The research perspective of the first two chapters is broadly within the paradigm of psychology with a focus on the child as a unit and cultural factors as variables that impact outcomes. Parent–child relations are analysed in the chapter by Ankur Madan, Rajashree Srinivasan and Kinnari Pandya and ‘the central objective’ as the authors state, is to ‘examine the criticality of this contextual and cultural structuring of the parent–child relationship over a period of time in the multiple socio-cultural contexts of India’ (p. 112). The attempt is to trace the changing contours of this relationship through manifestations of care, control and autonomy. The chapter sets the context for Nandita Chaudhary’s article that also analyses the changing contours of Indian families and children’s lives. Chaudhary explores the multiplicity of experiences that the local cultures provide and comments on how these get ignored when a single Western model of childhood is taken for granted. She selects examples of ‘patterns of care of children that at are seen among Indian families which are valued and frequently encountered’ (p. 93).
Jane Sahi, in her analysis of the life of Bala Krishna, explores alternate understandings of the child within the Indian cultural context and its Hindu mythology, as a counter to the singular Western model of childhood. The attempt is to retrieve within this mythology, the idea of a child as creative, as a source of wisdom and one who is ready to challenge adult authority. The author has been involved for decades with the education of the marginalised in India and this is her attempt to find indigenous models for a more progressive agenda as a counter to the common experience of children in schools where hierarchies are entrenched and where pedagogy allows little scope for playfulness or creativity, especially for the marginalised. Unfortunately, the tradition that she uses is so fraught and forms the source of so much oppression that it is hardly likely to offer a potential for change.
The chapters by Nidhi Gulati and Devika Mehra look at representations of marginalised children, in Hindi cinema and in children’s literature. Gulati concludes on the basis of her analysis that the attempt is to normalise the marginalised child (in this instance, the orphan) and restore them to an idealised vision of childhood. Her attempt is to uncover how a ‘normal’ child and a ‘normal’ childhood is needed as a reference point since marginality is seen as threatening to social order. Mehra analyses some recent works of children’s literature that ‘re-evaluate normative constructions of childhood and reclaim childhood for marginalized children’ (p. 199). She documents a welcome, and what she describes as, a ‘burgeoning trend of visualizing alternative and marginalized childhoods, especially Dalit and tribal’ and recommends these as educational tools for unsettling those who ignore these discriminations and for empowering those who suffer them.
The theme of institutionalisation through schooling and education is examined through four papers that deal with four different aspects of children in the school system. The chapter by Menon and Banerjee traces the representation of the child, of learning and of knowledge through an analysis of official educational documents in post-independence India. The analysis has few surprises, given that the modern formal educational system was instituted on the Western model. The disciplines of child psychology and child development have been at the core of the enterprise of schooling and of educational processes and advances in these fields in the English-speaking world have strongly influenced educational thinking in India and have shaped our understandings of children and thus influenced policy formulations. Although this perspective is somewhat limiting, it nevertheless provides progressive strategies within the confines of the classroom and for the purposes of teaching and learning. Although they are reflected in the policies, their influence in schools and classrooms is not always evident, and some of the other chapters in this section itself testify to the strength and resistance of traditional belief and practice.
R. Maithreyi’s excellent analysis and reflections on life skill education examine the social implications of a psycho-educational programme that has become ubiquitous in the educational context and is projected as the ‘caring’ aspect of education in a world that is become increasingly technologised and impersonal. While there is much literature on the developmental and educational aspects of these programmes, the author attempts to ‘identify the social, political and economic conditions under which these programs have emerged’ (p. 253). With theoretical backing, meticulous data and a keen understanding of social hierarchies, the study examines how a seemingly progressive shift in education, of preparing children for ‘all of life’ in fact ‘“discipline” them according to particular socio-economic ends’ and how these skills ‘emphasise personal responsibility against a context of structural disadvantage’ (p. 269). It is a fair warning of how, like much of what is unthinkingly offered as education, life skills education is in fact disempowering and disadvantaging the poor and the marginalised child.
Rahul Mukhopadhyay and Kamala Mukundan also focus on what is usually considered a psychosocial issue—namely the experience of fear in the context of schooling—but go beyond the psychological to analyse its sociological underpinnings. The chapter is a comprehensive analysis of how power, social identities of caste, class and religion, and institutional spaces are implicated in this creation of fear. All of this is done with the hope that other kinds of spaces for children can be created and this ‘glimmer of possibility’ is envisioned in ‘alternative’ school settings that could ‘provide counter-narratives to more mainstream school environments’ (p. 278). They provide wonderful examples of schools and learning spaces that have been able to provide less fearful environments. Although the chapter stops short of a more complex interpretation of the structures and institutions that create fear, it does open up this psychosocial space for critical questioning of a broader nature.
Jyotsna Jha’s chapter on gender inequality, through a critical analysis of policy and programmes with particular focus on two specific initiatives—the Mahila Samakhya, a women’s empowerment programme and selected conditional transfer schemes that are meant to incentivise girls’ education—that have met with reasonable success. Although not focused specifically on childhood, the chapter examines the powerful hold of patriarchy within educational structures and the enormous efforts needed to counter them.
The other chapter that examines gender is by Uma Chakravarti, an outstanding scholar and a pioneer of feminist historiography in India. She represents a discipline that has not had much interest in children and bringing in this perspective is a welcome move that enriches the volume. She explores the status of the girl child in ancient Indian texts through the lens of mythologies, ideologies and histories and how invisible the girl child is in all of these, to appear only at the time of marriage or in preparation for it. In contrast to the liberatory potential that Jane Sahi finds in Hindu mythologies and the life of Krishna, Uma Chakravarti documents the ideological bias of the same sources of early Indian history. She describes the early texts as ‘compositions of a very small group of men, the religious literati, obsesses with rituals and with maintenance of a caste based social order which presumes the man/boy of the upper caste, mainly Brahmins, as the proper subject of their attention’. She points to early Buddhist literature for a glimpse of ‘the child as the future moral and ethical being, concerned about the world in which suffering can be minimized’ (p. 46) although even in these texts the girl child is ‘a mute person as far as historical records go; she is not the subject of anyone’s attention’ (p. 47). She reminds us that the speaking voice of the girl child in Indian history comes only in the 19th century following the print revolution and uses these stories of women to illustrate the enormous burden of being a woman. Although the texts are mostly from upper caste women (who were more likely to have access to literacy at the time), she also uses the account of a Dasi, from a poor, stigmatised lower class family, to remind us that although the accounts speak of extremely difficult childhoods of women as a whole, they were always also shaped by the imperatives of class and caste that transform the workings of gender and marginalisation in important ways.
The theme of law, practice and policy includes the chapter on childhood through the lens of law and the justice system by Asha Bajpai that has already been discussed. The chapter by Venita Kaul and Meenakshi Dogra on challenges and prospects for social policy and research interface is an excellent review of policies related to children and childhood in India. The chapter presents a rich overview of research on children and evaluates the impact of the policies to explore the gaps in the interface between the two and highlights the need for more effective and comprehensive assessment.
The two last chapters relate to practice and focus on children’s physical well-being. Pratibha Singhi and Arushi Saini’s chapter documents practices of childrearing and child care from Vedic to the present times with detailed instances of Ayurvedic practices. They also catalogue current maternal and child health practices and the sociocultural factors that influence these. Shreelata Rao Seshadri investigates food and nutrition in childhood, and the serious concerns associated with it in the Indian context. She analyses the high incidence of malnutrition in India in the context of food policies and health programmes and explores the links between health, nutrition and education and how this affects the millions of poor children in India. The chapter raises questions on the persisting levels of poverty and the social and economic hierarchies that provide or withhold access.
The epilogue to the volume has an unusual and interesting format and is an effort to bring in the dialogic aspect that the symposium initially set out to do. Accepting the tensions that underlie the framing of childhood and childhood studies, the epilogue presents a dialogue that was initiated with participants and discussants after the symposium and focuses on a critical and current theme—that of child rights.
The significance of the volume is in bringing together academics, researchers and practitioners from a wide variety of disciplines, perspectives and vantage points to reflect upon and to interrogate the idea of ‘childhood’ and the child. It is from a psychological perspective and understanding that these categories have traditionally and primarily been understood and although the social and sociological aspects have often been referred to, they have not been meaningfully integrated into this understanding with the consequence of rendering both as decontextualised and ahistorical. Reading the child through sociology, the law, mythology, literature, through schools and classrooms but most of all through relations of power, hierarchy and marginalisation reveals a host of unresolved contradictions that readers will be forced to confront. Several chapters in the volume offer perspectives for understanding these tensions and suggest ways for researching them. Others furnish rich material that needs to be subjected to scrutiny in arriving at a more nuanced and sensitive understanding. The volume will form a valuable and important resource for academics, researchers, activists and policymakers and comes at a time when it is much needed.