LANGUAGE IN INDIA

FLOWERS AND FRAGRANCE
Some Considerations About Children's Literature in India
V.V.B.Rama Rao, Ph.D.

Each Child is a Unique Flower

All children are lovable and each child is a unique flower. The best gift for a child is a storybook. Child heroes and heroines leave lasting impressions on children and adults alike. Children's Literature is a literary genre in no way inferior or less worthy of the attention of scholars and critics. Panchatantra, Hitopadesha, etc were basically fable-cloaked for moral edification and unveiling the ways of the world. They are food for children's thought and entertainment. Down the ages, this literature has come down but never had the status of a discipline of study. It is time it received adequate scholarly and critical attention. Its methods, techniques and devices are unique creative stimuli. Every language in our country has a treasure of this genre. Eminent intellectuals have been exercising their minds on Children's Literature.

Here is K.S.Karanth's seminal statement:

We in India have seldom bothered to delve deep into the inexhaustible treasures of nature. How many of our poets and literary men are bird watchers, wild life enthusiasts and lovers of nature in all aspects? There is no dearth of material for writing for the young, but when we elders lack experience and appreciation of the above-said repository, very little will come through our pens. … This basic drawback has come from our lack of proper education. We have made childhood a sort of vessel, which has to be filled up, by elders and teachers with material that the consider useful, or worthwhile…. (1)

The Role of Children's Literature

Children's literature plays a vital role in shaping the individual's personality in the formative years. With an impressionable, plastic mind, a child looks around the world and goes on slowly acquiring understanding and insight. Children grow anyway but aiding them to grow in a happy and enlightening way needs proper tending. While education has a big part to play, reading is one of the most important inputs for the mind to mature into ever-widening vistas of thought and action. The ability to respond positively depends on a child's exposure to rational and well-considered choice of action with right attitudes in pursuing and achieving goals worthwhile.

This form of literature is drawn from the native ethos, from the family, the nation and basic human nature. To begin with, the elders around, most importantly the parents and elders in the family and the incidents, make the child imbibe habits and values.

Children's Literature in Indian Languages

Each of our bhashas is a product of a constituent culture within the diverse yet unified grand, national culture. The role that literature the child reads or introduced to being vitally mind shaping, writing for children needs to be a carefully designed, purpose-oriented activity. This genre with many forms has not received significant attention from critics and literary historiographers.

Comparative studies of the writing for children rooted in national ethos and culture in our bhashas would be a valuable exercise what with the erosion of values that our intellectuals find all around. With so much of Children's Literature extant, no systematic or sustained effort has gone in to analyze it comparatively with a view to understand the achievements in our various bhashas. A project designed for this could well be a beginning.

Story for a Child

Story for a child came into being from its mother, granny or grandpa right from the times of the cave man. Children's Literature is a unique component of a nation's cultural blossoming. A nation's uniqueness rests squarely on its culture and its nobility and pervasiveness. The children's literature produced in a country like ours has multiplicity not merely in its various languages but also in the way the forms of that branch of literature, which flourished down the ages. The languages and genres may vary but the cultural ethos remains the same with small regional variations. The variety and vibrancy of literature in a particular age in a particular age varies.

Writing for Children - A Unique Component of a Nation's Literature

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