‘In Relief’: Individual Children in Relief and Rehabilitation Records of Late Colonial India

The 1940s were a troubled decade in colonial Bengal which was ravaged by one calamity after another. While the Bengal famine of 1943 claimed lives and rendered many destitute, the relief and rescue of children in Bengal were not solely concentrated on those affected by famine, even if famine relief was an important agenda of diverse religious and secular organisations. Exploring two collections related to the rehabilitation and relief of children primarily in the 1940s in undivided Bengal, the article focuses on the presence of individual children in these records. Deploying a comparative framework, it discusses the methodological implications which arise from pursuing traces of historical children, particularly in such region-centric collections and from reflecting on the processes which make children visible in the archives.