LOST TRADITIONS, SILENCED CHILDHOODS: COLONIAL LEGACIES AND THE RECONSTRUCTION OF CHILD RIGHTS IN INDIA

Faraaz Subla; Javaid Rashid

doi:10.53806/ijcss.v6i4.1179

Authors

Faraaz Subla Department of Social Work, University of Kashmir, India
Javaid Rashid Department of Social Work, University of Kashmir, India

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.53806/ijcss.v6i4.1179

Keywords:

Colonial Childhood, Indigenous Knowledge, Postcolonial India, Child Rights, Decolonization, Education Policy, Kinship Systems

Abstract

This study investigates the legacy of colonization on indigenous child-rearing practices and notions relating to childhood in India, conceptualizing this historical rupture as a driver for the erasure of culturally located modes of care, education, and protection. This study focuses specifically on colonial interventions that displaced family settings, alienated community caregiving, and imposed Eurocentric disciplinary and morally sanctioned practices; the British legal and educational legacy entrenched vernacular forms of childhood as pathological. This theoretical paper draws from postcolonial and decolonial childhood studies to examine how popular representations of children were located within pre-existing constructs of the child through a Victorian lens, missionary schooling, the deferral of the English legal system, and juvenile reformatories that made singular the plurality of parenting and knowing in terms of some wage-earning regions of the subcontinent. By analyzing legislative texts, educational policy records, and cultural artifacts, the study assumes a child shifting between a collective and a juridical subject of state power. In narrating such changes, I demonstrate that the contemporary child rights agenda in India, situated in a response to an international human rights framework, contains a legacy of colonial constructions of the child, the family, and development. While the Right to Education (RTE) Act and the Juvenile Justice (JJ) Act are formalized, they frequently occur in an epistemic fracture with local culture and knowledge. Through this research, it advocates for a renegotiation of the child rights discourse that aims not only to rectify structural injustices but also to reimagine care, kinship, and learning spaces, which have been irreparably silenced by epistemic colonization. By reclaiming the subaltern accounts of childhood, it reconstitutes a rights-based framework in cultural legitimacy and historical continuities. The erased traditions are not just remnants of past practice, but they are also sites of ethical relations and resilient communities, representing signposts for envisioning decolonized, inclusive, child-centred futures.

References

[1] Abebe, T., Dar, A., & Wells, K. (Eds.). (2025). Routledge handbook of childhood studies and global development. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.

[2] Ariès, P. (1965). Centuries of childhood: A social history of family life.

[3] Banerjee, P. (2025). Critical Perspectives on Urban Planning in India: From Colonial Legacies to Inclusive Futures. In Cities: Inclusive, Liveable, and Sustainable (pp. 21-36). Routledge.

[4] Bhabha, H. K. (1994). The postcolonial and the postmodern: The question of agency. The location of culture, 171-197.

[5] Bourdieu, Pierre. 1986. “The Forms of Capital.” Pp. 241-258 in Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, edited by J. G. Richardson. New York: Greenwood Press.

[6] Boyden, J. (2015). Childhood and the policy makers: A comparative perspective on the globalization of childhood. In Constructing and reconstructing childhood (pp. 167-201). Routledge.

[7] Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative research in psychology, 3(2), 77-101.

[8] Burra, N. (1995). Born to work: Child labour in India.

[9] Cannella, G. S., & Viruru, R. (2003). Childhood and postcolonization: Power, education, and contemporary practice. Routledge.

[10] Chakrabarty, D. (2009). Provincializing Europe: postcolonial thought and historical difference-New edition.

[11] Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (Eds.). (2011). The Sage handbook of qualitative research. sage.

[12] Deshpande, S. (2012). Social justice and higher education in India today: markets, states, ideologies and inequalities in a fluid context. Equalizing Access: Affirmative Action in Higher Education in India, US and South Africa, 212-238.

[13] Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and social change. (No Title).

[14] Fanon, F., Sartre, J. P., & Farrington, C. (1963). The wretched of the earth (Vol. 36, pp. 3-317). New York: Grove press.

[15] Hart, J. (2008). Children's participation and international development: Attending to the political. The International Journal of Children's Rights, 16(3), 407-418.

[16] Hussain, S. (2019). Contemporary Muslim girlhoods in India: A study of social justice, identity and agency in Assam. Routledge.

[17] Kannan, D., & Maithreyi, R. (Eds.). (2023). Modern Schooling and Trajectories of Exclusion: Childhoods in India. Taylor & Francis.

[18] Kisku, A. (2024). Tribal students in higher education: exploring their pedagogical, social, and cognitive challenges and supports.

[19] Kjørholt, A. T. (2016). Children’s Rights to Participation: ‘Out of Place’or ‘In Context’?. In ‘Children Out of Place’and Human Rights: In Memory of Judith Ennew (pp. 157-170). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

[20] Lekha, N. B., & Kumar, P. (Eds.). (2024). Routledge handbook of gender, culture, and development in India. Routledge.

[21] Liebel, M. (2016). Children without childhood? Against the postcolonial capture of childhoods in the global south. In ‘Children Out of Place’and Human Rights: In Memory of Judith Ennew (pp. 79-97). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

[22] Manjrekar, N. (Ed.). (2021). Gender and education in India: A reader. London: Routledge.

[23] Manojan, K. P. (2019). Cultural democracy and schooling in India: A subaltern perspective. Journal of Pedagogy, 10(2), 101-121.

[24] Mignolo, W. D. (2007). Delinking: The rhetoric of modernity, the logic of coloniality and the grammar of de-coloniality. Cultural studies, 21(2-3), 449-514.

[25] Mizala, A., Christensen, S., Verger, A., Bray, M., Zhang, W., Sarangapani, P. M., ... & Ogunniran, M. O. (2022). Political economy of education: implications for efficiency, equity and social justice. Oladosu, A. A., Ojebode, A., & Afolayan, A. (Eds.). (2024). The Human and Humanities in the Age of Globalization. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

[26] Nieuwenhuys, O. (1998). Global childhood and the politics of contempt. Alternatives, 23(3), 267-289.

[27] Nieuwenhuys, O. (2009). Is there an Indian childhood?. Childhood, 16(2), 147-153.

[28] Pattnaik, J. (1996). Early childhood education in India: History, trends, issues, and achievements. Early Childhood Education Journal, 24(1), 11-16.

[29] Prasad, B. D., Juvva, S., & Nayar, M. The Contemporary Indian Family.

[30] Said, E. (1978). Orientalism pantheon books. New York.

[31] Scott, J. C. (1990). Domination and the arts of resistance: Hidden transcripts. Yale university press.

[32] Seymour, S. (1975). Child Rearing in India: A Case Study in Change and. Socialization and communication in primary groups, 9, 41.

[33] Shanor, A., & Light, S. E. (2023). Anti-Woke Capitalism, the First Amendment, and the Decline of Libertarianism. Nw. UL Rev., 118, 347.

[34] Sharma, R. (2020). Reading UNCRC and children’s rights sociologically: A paradigm shift from ‘protection to rights’. International Journal of Multidisciplinary Education Research, 11(9), 188-198.

[35] Singh, A. K. (2025). Multilingual Education and NEP 2020: Challenges and Opportunities. Jindal Journal of Public Policy, 8, 1-23.

[36] Spivak, G. C. (2023). Can the subaltern speak? In Imperialism (pp. 171-219). Routledge.

[37] Tuhiwai Smith, L. (2012). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples.

[38] Visvanathan, S. (2022). Work, Word and the World: Essays on Habitat, Culture and Environment. Bloomsbury Academic India.

[39] White, S. C. (2002). From the politics of poverty to the politics of identity? Child rights and working children in Bangladesh. Journal of International Development, 14(6), 725-735.

[40] Yousaf, N., & Anwar, W. Transcultural Humanities in South Asia: Critical Essays on Literature and Culture.