We initiated a study into the historic context of Children´s Literature in colonial Bengal, to research how this native tradition grew in opposition to the British education system and recovered a displaced swadeshi tradition that helped build a national identity through its indigenous traditions.

The Apeejay Trust gave a grant to Gargi Gangopadhyay, a scholar and an expert in the field of indigenous Children´s Literature of 19th century Bengal.

Her research being conducted under the aegis of India Foundation for the Arts (IFA ), traced and established the clash for cultural supremacy in colonial Bengal – how British colonial policy sought to dismiss and displace the native culture of childhood in order to sanctify British moral supremacy and in the second half of the 19th century, a niche print genre evolved that rejected the colonizer´s ´alien´ literary culture and reinstated lost traditions of oral and written storytelling for children.

The findings of this research project were documented in an encyclopedia and on an archival website that now showcases the lost texts of that time – those innumerable writings for children – books, booklets, pamphlets and serialised fiction that had helped build an indigenous tradition of children´s book culture in Bengal are now available to a wider audience.