Restoring identity with our stories

Books for children

In political TV dramas, I like Westwing about a US president but love Maharani about a Bihar chief minister. In books about strong women, I love Catherine the Great by Robert Massie but love Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee about Draupadi. In life advice, I like Tolkien’s Not all who wander are lost but I love Ghalib’s Gumrah to woh hain jo ghar se nikley hi nahin.

As I age, I realise my preferences of ‘like’ and ‘love’ have more to do with who I am - my identity as an Indian - than the content. In the last few decades, too many Indian children have constructed confused identities by reading more about Western Civilisations than their own. The wonderful revolution in Indian Children’s literature has the power to change this. But it must accelerate.

African American Educator Rudine Sims Bishop characterises great children’s literature as Mirrors, Windows, and Doors.

Mirrors reflect a child’s own life experiences; they become Windows by offering a view into the lives and experiences of others, and Doors that allow children to trust their imagination and enter a different world. She says, “When children cannot find themselves in the books they read, or the images that they find are distorted or negative, they learn powerful lessons on how they are valued in society.”

Globally, children’s reading has been homogenised; google searches for ‘best children’s writers’ only turn up white writers. But the world is changing; revolutions in African-American and Hispanic literature are replacing caricaturist cultural stereotypes with stories and characters that capture the complexity and context of rich civilisations.

India need not replace the global but to balance it, acknowledging the impact of incomplete perspectives on identities, role models, and confidence. India has a deep civilisation, yet too many of our children’s stories lazily adopt a Western context. Indian children’s writing, starting with Ruskin Bond’s wonderful stories about the idyllic romance of our Himalayas, is rejuvenated by books like Queen of Ice by Devika Rangachiri (whose historical fiction about Kashmiri Queen Didda’s ruthlessness would put Chingez khan to shame) and Weed by Paro Anand (whose realistic fiction about a Kashmiri child Umer, whose father became a militant, told the story of many Kashmiris).

Authors, storytellers and filmmakers are calling on publishers to introduce more diverse books with themes and characters that truly reflect our diverse country, unlock the treasures of our civilisation, and offer our youth a balanced intellectual diet with a vision of India@100 that need not be muscular but is representative, inspiring and inclusive.

India’s multicultural and multilingual existence that sits so lightly on our shoulders -- its effortlessness is stark as the rest of the world wilts under differences -- owes its strength to plurality of beliefs and culture, carried in richly textured stories. You can’t know what you don’t know’ said my Grandfather, who was the family story teller.

Atomising families and a digital invasion are taking away stories that were, as A K Ramanujan said, ‘just a grandmother away’. Children’s books give kids that opportunity today, to see outside themselves, to grow into adults who connect in meaningful ways to other people, and build knowledge that bridges contexts. As author, and storyteller Kwame Alexander said ‘The mind of an adult begins in the imagination of a child’.

To construct a truly Indian imagination, children’s book creators must capture the rich diversity of historical and contemporary India, publishers must provide the vast fields of hope for them to do their work, and teachers and parents must transfer these stories through curriculum and conversation. The caravan is gathering momentum.

Deepak Dalal’s adventure stories in mystical Ladakh and magnificent Ranthambore are literature seated in geography. Bijal Vacchranjani’s realistic fiction and information books on saving the planet, build knowledge on climate change and inspiring Indian environmentalists, besides mentoring genre writing. Natasha Sharma’s historical fiction brings alive Mughal India and her literary personifications convey language concepts that are relatable. Art advocate Ritu Khoda’s foundation funds children’s books on Indian artist lives. Rohini Nilekani’s dual legacy with her own stories for her grandson and Pratham Books whose innovative Storyweaver platform is a #CreativeCommons treasure just waiting to be used as levelled readers, with activities, topics, and names, the vast diversity of India’s children can relate to, to build critical reading skills and recover Covid learning loss.

Our children’s writing must continue to move beyond personal chronology, mythology and folk tales -- these are important but inadequate to convey the Ideas of India@75 or the hopes of India@100 - because our children will read more if the stories have characters they identify with, issues they confront at home and school, and places they relate to for the importance they hold in our past and present. Ending the gap in stories of 18% of the world’s population is needed not just to complete the global narrative of a multicultural world, but to change India’s future.

Making the profession of children’s writing more financially sustainable needs more books to be sold. Our market for children’s books is insignificant and dominated by Western titles. Changing this not only needs more compelling storytelling, but also better production, better editing, better illustrations, better covers, and thicker paper.

America recently lost a wonderful chronicler with the death of David McCullough who made the case for American history because it was “our greatest natural resource”. All healthy civilisations think about a shared identity but the case for vibrant children’s literature also includes cultivating the reading habit. Is there any tool as powerful as reading for lifelong learning? Is thinking about identity in reading really parochial? What can be done to increase the demand for Indian books? What can be done to increase the supply of high quality Indian books? Whatever else we do for India@100, we must create new shelves of children’s books that capture our past and present because books are an endlessly renewable source of energy and inspiration for our children.

(The writer is Founder of Neev Schools and Co-Founder of Neev Literature Festival)