Contested Childhoods traces a complex history of caste, race, education, and Christian missions in colonial south India. It draws upon the vast Protestant Christian missionary archives of the London Missionary Society, the Church Missionary Society, and the Basel German Evangelical Missionary Society to showcase the processes of negotiation, tensions, and underlying violence in the encounters between European 'outsiders' and local populations on the question of education. It examines the interplay of caste and education in reshaping ideas and norms of modern childhood and lower-caste community building in the regions of Travancore, Cochin, and Malabar. Set against a comparative historical perspective, the book argues for a greater focus on subaltern histories, especially the meanings and practices associated with educating poor, lower-caste children within the confines of formal schooling and beyond.
