Colonial India in Children's Literature by Supriya Goswami (review)

Colonial India in Children's Literature lies at the intersection of historical research and literary analysis. It investigates the ways in which some key moments of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Indian colonial history are negotiated within contemporaneous British, Anglo-Indian, and Bengali children's literature of empire. One of Goswami's central arguments is that nineteenth-century British and Anglo-Indian children's literature showcases children (both real and fictional) as active colonial agents, while early twentieth-century Bengali children's literature presents them as anti-colonial agents. The child protagonists in these texts "exhibit tremendous agency and transformative power over the politically volatile environment of colonial India" (4). They are endowed with the responsibility and capability of intervening in traumatic historical moments, and effecting the change needed—whether in the service of empire or against it.

Goswami interprets the importance of the child figure allegorically—"just as the little one has the power to redeem misguided adults (especially if they are natives), a geographically diminutive (but morally superior) England has the power to rescue a big (but morally deficient) India" (5). One wonders, though, how this reading engages with the well-documented representation of England as the "adult" and India as the "child" in much colonial discourse. It seems that the centrality of the child figure in nineteenth-century British and Anglo-Indian children's literature is linked to its conservative ideological agenda. Goswami asserts that these texts have the "important mission of preparing children to do their duty and become ideal imperial citizens who work tirelessly for the greater good of an Indian empire" (5). On the other hand, she demonstrates that Bengali children's literature subverts colonial authority, and "makes an important ideological contribution towards dismantling the colonial project" (12).

In her first chapter, "(En)countering Conversion: Missionary Debates and Colonial Policy in Mary Sherwood's The History of Little Henry and His Bearer," Goswami outlines in detail the debates that took place among East India Company servants, members of parliament, and powerful pro-missionary factions in India and England over the right to proselytize in India and whether "religious and moral conversions were ideal ways to effect change" there (17). Goswami demonstrates how Little Henry, written by the highly influential and prolific evangelical author Mary Sherwood in 1810 and published in 1814, addresses all aspects of the missionary question in much detail. She suggests that the child protagonist is fashioned as the instrument of conversion and "civilization," and implicitly, colonization. The text, however, is "covertly doubt-ridden, since the figure of the English child is deployed on a potentially impossible and dangerous mission to combat both native resistance and the hostility of the East India Company servants towards missionary activity" (17). Despite the propagandist tone of the novel, the conversion of Boosy (the bearer) "is fraught with contradictions and introduces elements of irony that the text unevenly attempts to transcend" (32). Goswami claims that Sherwood uses the written word—specifically the Bible—to subdue Boosy, replicating the British rulers' use of textual hegemony to establish control over their subjects (39). The sequel to the novel, The Last Days of Boosy, traces the tragic consequences of Boosy's conversion, since it propels him into a life of isolation. It would have been interesting had Goswami discussed whether Sherwood's own views on proselytization undergo a shift in the sequel.

In chapter two, "Resisting Tipu: Taming the Tiger and Coming of Age in Barbara Hofland's The Captives in India," Goswami discusses the historical circumstances that led to the cult status of Tipu Sultan in the British public imagination as an evil tyrant who symbolized "all that is . . . lascivious, defiant, and monstrous about India" (53), and his massive impact as a cultural icon. She claims that Hofland, a popular nineteenth-century British children's writer whose works engaged with troubling moments in the colonies, perpetuates the stereotypical image of Tipu in Captives in India (1835) and reinforces the British need to "tame" him. The...