Remembered Childhoods

Description

Retold childhood may seem, to many, an unusual theme for a book in honour of André Béteille, India’s leading social anthropologist. But perhaps not many are aware that Béteille started writing about his early life some years ago—about his two grandmothers, childhood in Chandannagore, and then schooling in Calcutta (now Kolkata); some of these pieces have been published. Few academics of his stature have written about their early lives— and yet there are many stories and anecdotes waiting to be told. In Remembered Childhood, some of Béteille’s close friends, students, colleagues, and admirers revisit their childhood and school days. From Delhi to undivided Punjab and Bengal and from England to the Netherlands, the twelve essays recount childhoods of plenty, of deprivation, of neglect—and of fear. Through these twelve lives we gain entrée into not only different homes, but schools, relationships with parents, siblings, and teachers. These very different childhoods, narrated in varied styles and registers, can be read at many levels: entertaining, pleasing, and even amusing, they provide insights into the childhoods of men and women whose ages today range from mid-fifties to early eighties. Situated at the intersection of the national movement and the coming of age of the Indian republic, these remembrances describe colonial and postcolonial childhoods that do not belong to the era of globalization, contested nationhood, or of terrorism and its aftermath. Contributors • Alan Macfarlane • Aparna Basu • Gopalkrishna Gandhi • Gurcharan Das • Jan Breman • Malavika Karlekar • Pradip Kumar Bose • Rudrangshu Mukherjee • Susan Visvanathan • Tapan Ray Chaudhuri • T.N. Madan • Veena Das