Space, Nation and Colonial Childhood: A Critical Study of Bengali Juvenile Periodicals

Abstract

This paper studies the depiction of geography within juvenile periodicals in colonial Bengal, an important aspect of constructive leisure reading in the history of Bengali juvenile literature. The Bengali literati were gradually recognizing the need to raise the awareness of native children about their own nation and its spatial markers, an important requisite within nationalist visions. Factual articles on physical geographies and inspiring accounts of brave men traversing uncharted territories or surviving extreme oddities were included in these periodicals. At the same time, the natural treasures of the country were elaborately portrayed, allegorically linking them to the trope of the ‘motherland’ and invoking strong patriotic sentiments. Equal importance was given to local or regional cultural geographies that unearthed alternative territorial discourses, thereby challenging imperialist hegemony. In light of Said’s concept of ‘imaginative geographies’, this paper thus seeks to understand this creation of important alternate discourses on colonial geography and modernity within Bengali juvenile periodicals. While championing the cause of a scientific geographical epistemology in lieu of archaic ones, these periodicals simultaneously engaged in selectively appropriating a domain to serve nationalist ends by promoting indigeneity and forging notions of nationhood.

Keywords

• juvenile periodicals
• physical geographies
• ‘motherland’
• hegemony
• ‘imaginative geographies’
• indigeneity