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Family portrait provide useful insights as to how the entire family dressed. Many JBC images are of a single noy. It is interesting to see how boys of different ages, sisters, and parents dressed so we know what fashions were worn at the same time and how trends fluctuated over time. . It is interesting to see in India how Western abnd traditional clothing was mixed. Here we will include images of the entire family as well as just the children of the family. In our small sampeling we notice quite a few large families.
This Cabinet Card is an image of an Indian family posing for their portrait. Unfortunately we do not know where it was taken. The photo is also undated. We would guess thsat it was taken in the 1890s, but as the family wears traditional clothing, this is very difficiult to assess. Perhaps our Indian reader will have a better insight as to the date. The family looks like an affluent one. We can see many differences between the children in the photo. A boy wear jacket and long trousers (and he is also the only shod in the photo). We would guess that he attends an English school, probably the only child in the family to do so. Another boy wears only the lungi.
This pprtrait was taken in Tamil Nadu State (southern India) in 1941 (figure 1). It shows a middle class family. The children wear western style clothing, but they are barefoot. There parents wear traditional clothes. This was very common at the time. I am not sure why this was. Perhaps the Western clothing was more practical. Or perhaps the children worn Western style school uniforms. The older daughter, however, wears traditional dress.
The result of the free market economic reforms begun in the 1990s has been an enormous expansion of the Indian economy and growth of a prosperous middle class. India's economy today is probably the most diverse in the world. There is traditional village farming almost untouched by the modern world. The photo shows an Indian peasant family in 1987. It was taken in Kudle, a village in Karnataka. At the time the village had no contacts with the western culture. The image shows the priblenn India faces. The family farmsxa small polt of land. But if the father divides it among his sons, it could not support families. Thus the younger children are forced into the cities to seek jobs.
A disussionn of Indian families would be incomplete without mentioning the millions of street children forced to exist without families. Along with all the striking economic successes of modern India, the country continues to have an enormous problem--street children. This is not a problem created by the free vmarket economy. It was problem that has developed as a result of urbanization, especially the vey rapid growth of urbzanization since independence. The driving vforce has been rural poverty. India has the largest population of street children in the world. UNICEF estimates the number at over 11 million and this may be a conservative estimate. Large cities like Mumbai, Calcutta and Delhi are believed to have populations of street children exceeding 0.1 miilion. These children have either run away from their families are been ejectedcby them. Many fathers refuse to restrict the number of children they create even though they do not have the ability to care for them. There are also orphans or children living on the street with their families. There tend to be twice as many boys on the streets as girls because even poor families are reluctant to eject girls. And girls can be placed as servants with more affluent families.
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