Enslaved childhoods in eighteenth-century Awadh

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Childhood in South Asia prior to the nineteenth century is still an under-researched topic. This article aims to shed some light on the experiences of a specific group of eighteenth-century children, slave children, through an analysis of khwajasarai boys in Awadh. The khwajasarais were eunuch slaves who in their adulthood became guards and attendants of the zanana (or female quarters), as well as courtiers, administrators, military leaders, and intelligencers. This article analyses two khwajasarais, Jawahir Ali and Darab Ali, whose child and adult lives were narrated in the tarikh (history) of Muhammad Faiz Bakhsh. Historically contingent concepts of childhood, literary genre, the politics of patronage, and the historical context of British colonialism shaped Faiz Bakhsh’s account of enslaved childhood. Nevertheless, his tarikh provides evidence for the cultural construction of enslaved childhood in eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century north India, as well as fragments of the experiences of child slaves. Faiz Bakhsh’s account provides little evidence of children’s ‘resistance’ to their enslavement. Reflecting broader processes of enslavement and acculturation in South Asia, most khwajasarai children sought to adapt to their new social context by forming interpersonal relationships and acquiring new forms of cultural knowledge. However, the lack of evidence for khwajasarai children’s subversion of adult authority and expectations is also a function of the way the concept of adab works within Faiz Bakhsh’s text. Adab encompassed the cultivation of intellect, spiritual piety, proper action and character, and marked the boundary between boyhood and adulthood for eunuch boys in early-modern Awadh.