The importance of the child in Hinduism cannot be emphasized enough and must be addressed at several levels. First, Hinduism recognizes, from as far back as the Vedas, that birth and childhood somehow best exemplify the philosophical conundrum that is life. Reproduction is power, and a child is power. Second, in the mundane world, the child is an essential connecting link between human generations, one that can guarantee continuity, reproduction, and purity if so desired. This link is the male child, and the desire for purity belongs to the upper classes, whose fears relate to miscegenation, leading to control of the child’s sexuality and frequently to early marriage. The resulting patterns of kinship and location in Hindu communities include relationships that figuratively reproduce childhood, where one member of a dyad is seen as childlike, that is, weaker. Several beliefs and practices bear witness to the importance of the child. While infants and toddlers of both sexes are adored as close to gods, the male child has importance at every phase of childhood, particularly after the yagnopavita (sacred thread) ceremony when a crucial phase of learning and formation begins. A male child is necessary to complete rituals that would close the circle for a dead ancestor, permitting them to finally leave their departed bodies. The female child is loved and cherished in a different way; however, in a scale of importance, she ranks lower than the male. Both genders stand, in different ways, for the name, status, and stability of the family and the larger kin group or community. When gods are worshiped as children, it is typically the male gods. Goddesses are spoken of as daughters, too, but more often as mothers, with worshipers assuming the role of child accordingly, though sometimes the worshiper assumes the role of mother vis-à-vis the god-child. While all this gives discursive importance to the child, individual children in history have been treated as community property and not necessarily nurtured for themselves. At the same time, the constructed nature of Hinduism—until the colonial period, Hindus did not use the singular term for the wide array of beliefs and practices that they practiced—makes it impossible to discuss one perspective on the child. In a similar way, “childhood” and “the child” are themselves historical constructs, datable from modernity. However, some scholars point out that even without a common name, a recognizable unity can be discerned in the beliefs and practices of those now labeled “Hindus.” Similarly, even if people did not talk of childhood or the child as separate, distinguishable entities before a certain time, the experience of the phase of life, and the relations of that particular age to others, did, of course, exist. In treating the attitudes of the religion presently called Hinduism toward the stage of life presently understood as childhood, this article addresses Hindu theogony and mythology, history, sociology, and literature.
Family Law Clinic at UCC