To this day, the history of indigenous orphans in colonial India remains surprisingly understudied. Unlike the orphans of Britain or European and Eurasian orphans in the colony, who have been widely documented, Indian orphans are largely absent in the existing historiography. This article argues that a study of “native” orphans in India helps us transcend the binary of state power and poor children that has hitherto structured the limited extant research on child “rescue” in colonial India. The essay further argues that by shifting the gaze away from the state, we can vividly see how non-state actors juxtaposed labour and education. I assert that the deployment of child labour by these actors, in their endeavour to educate and make orphans self-sufficient, did not always follow the profitable trajectory of the state-led formal labour regime (seen in the Indian indenture system or early nineteenth-century prison labour). It was often couched in terms of charity and philanthropy and exhibited a convergence of moral and economic concerns.

中文翻译：

---

学习劳动：1840 年代至 1920 年代印度殖民地的“本地”孤儿

时至今日，印度殖民地土著孤儿的历史仍然令人惊讶地没有得到充分研究。与被广泛记载的英国孤儿或殖民地中的欧洲和欧亚孤儿不同，印度孤儿在现有的历史编纂中基本不存在。本文认为，对印度“本土”孤儿的研究有助于我们超越国家权力和贫困儿童的二元对立关系，迄今为止，这种二元论构成了殖民时期印度对儿童“拯救”的有限现存研究。文章进一步认为，通过将目光从国家身上移开，我们可以生动地看到非国家行为者如何将劳动和教育并置。我断言，这些行为者在努力教育孤儿并使孤儿自给自足的过程中使用童工，并不总是遵循国家主导的正式劳动制度的盈利轨迹（见于印度契约制度或 19 世纪早期的监狱劳动）。它经常以慈善和慈善事业的形式出现，并表现出道德和经济关注的融合。