Famine Orphan “Rescue” Missions: Childhood, Colonialism and Nationalism in Colonial India, 1860s–1920s
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Date
2020
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Doctoral Thesis
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Abstract
This dissertation examines the “rescue” missions of indigenous famine orphans by mostly nonstate actors in colonial north and west India from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth
century. By the late nineteenth century, indigenous famine orphans, like “native” women, had
become a site of social, political, religious, and economic contestation among various state and
non-state actors. This rising importance of famine orphans is at the centre of a multidimensional analysis in this dissertation. I study the underlying socio-political, economic, and
sentimental reasons that drove the indigenous famine orphan “rescue” missions. In doing so,
the thesis seeks to answer two central questions. Firstly, what does the study of the “rescue” of
famine orphans tell us about notions of childhood? Secondly, what does the policy-making,
management of, and contestation over famine orphans tell us about British colonialism and
Indian nationalism?
The four main chapters in this dissertation speak to the two central questions raised
above. The first chapter provides the historical context to the famine orphan story, and is also
a study of the administrative response to the growing famine orphan “problem”. At the centre
of analysis in the chapter are the shifting trends in the administrations’ distribution patterns of
famine orphans under its custody to the non-state actors such as the Arya samaj, Christian
missionaries, and individual petitioners. The chapter demonstrates that the administration was
highly reluctant in getting itself enmeshed in the famine orphan “problem” for primarily two
reasons. The first reason was its perennial concern over financial parsimony. The second reason
was Queen Victoria’s proclamation of “religious neutralism” that held back the administration
from getting actively involved in the issue. The chapter contends that non-state actors
collaborated, contested and negotiated with the colonial administration in matters of upkeep,
custody, and funding of indigenous famine orphans. Thus, by underlining the limits of colonial
state power, the chapter expands and nuances our understanding of British colonialism.
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The second chapter examines the role of Christian missionaries in the indigenous famine
orphan “rescue” missions. The chapter is a case study of two of the most famous Church
Missionary Society (CMS) orphanages in Secundra, North Western Provinces (NWP) and
Sharanpur, Bombay Presidency. It shows that by the turn of the twentieth century, there was a
gradual decline in the popularity of orphanage work among CMS missionaries. The chapter
further argues that the decline in popularity of orphanage work among CMS missionaries was
a result of primarily three interrelated factors: the first factor was the gradual withdrawal of
state support to the CMS orphanage work. The second reason was the burgeoning competition
and opposition to Christian missionary work among orphans from non-state indigenous actors.
Finally, by the turn of the twentieth century, the global trend of sentimentalization of childhood
became increasingly influential. As a result, concerns were raised about the impact of
institutional and orphanage life on children. The chapter thus highlights that along with the
sentimentalization of childhood, social, political and economic factors equally contributed to
the decline of orphanage work amongst CMS missionaries.
The third chapter brings to the forefront the motives that drove the active participation
of indigenous non-state actors in the famine orphan “rescue” missions. The chapter argues that
indigenous orphan “rescue” missions were not driven by a singular motive but rather were a
product of a number of multi-faceted anxieties and factors. The effects of anti-colonial
nationalist activism, and religious and caste community formation – both of which were largely
unrelated to a sentimentalized understanding of childhood – along with factors that do point to
a rising consciousness around childhood, drove the indigenous non-state orphan “rescue”
missions. In a similar vein, the fourth chapter argues that education provided to orphans in
orphanages was shaped by varied economic, political and ideological agendas. The final chapter
thus reiterates the larger argument of the dissertation, namely that there was no single notion of
childhood that defined the famine orphan “rescue” missions.
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The dissertation thus makes two main arguments. First, it asserts that there was no one
uniform, standard notion of childhood in the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century
colonial India. It underlines the significance of taking into account wider social, political, and
economic factors, as much as sentimental aspects in inter-personal relationships, to understand
the construction and actual experience of childhood in the subcontinent. Second, in line with
recent scholarship, the thesis contends that the colonial administration was not a monolithic,
omnipotent, or an all-pervasive institution. In this way, the thesis contributes to our
understanding of childhood, British colonialism and Indian nationalism in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth-century colonial India.
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Examiner : Fischer-Tiné, Harald
Examiner : Hauser, Julia
Examiner : Ghosh, Durba
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ETH Zurich
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childhood, nationalism, labour, gender, colonial state
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03814 - Fischer-Tiné, Harald / Fischer-Tiné, Harald