"Children's Work for Children": Caste, Childhood, and Missionary Philanthropy in Colonial India

Abstract

Missionary literature for young British readers in the nineteenth century drew upon on a hierarchy of colonial childhoods premised on racial differentiation in India. But in the colonial field, these colluded with existing dominant caste biases perpetuated through violent means. This article argues that the interplay of caste and philanthropy in juvenile missionary periodicals highlights the complicated nature of missionary reform for poor children in India. The multiple Otherings of low-caste children destabilized missionary notions of sentimentalized childhood even as periodical literature represented them as objects of pity. These children were not "voiceless victims," but their lived realities impinged on missionary practices and literary representations. This article explores these entangled colonial encounters, which reshaped ideas of colonial childhoods and philanthropy through the periodical literature and the work of the Coral Fund-supported schools.