NCERT Solutions - Memories of Childhood

Reading with Insight

Q1: The two accounts that you read above are based in two distant cultures. What is the commonality of theme found in both of them?
Ans: The two autobiographical accounts are written by women from socially marginalised communities in very different cultural settings. One records the racial prejudice faced by a Native American girl at a missionary boarding school, while the other describes caste-based untouchability experienced by a young Dalit girl in India. Despite these cultural differences, both accounts share the central theme of social discrimination and the injustice produced by rigid social hierarchies. Each narrator describes personal humiliation and dehumanising treatment imposed by a dominant group - Zitkala-Sa's long hair is forcibly cut because European attendants consider her "other", and Bama encounters open practices that mark her as impure and inferior. Both girls notice this unfairness early in life and respond with protest in their own ways: Zitkala-Sa resists openly and later criticises racial oppression through her writings, while Bama channels her anger into education to challenge caste prejudice and to achieve social respect.

Q2: It may take a long time for oppression to be resisted, but the seeds of rebellion are sowed early in life. Do you agree that injustice in any form cannot escape being noticed even by children?
Ans: Yes. Children may lack the language or power to change social systems immediately, but they are observant and emotionally responsive to unfair treatment. Their innocence makes injustice striking rather than normalised. In these accounts, both girls register and react to discrimination from a very young age. Zitkala-Sa describes her first day at school as "bitter-cold", using weather imagery to capture the unfriendly, hostile atmosphere created by the European staff; she feels humiliation when her hair is shingled and resists fiercely. Bama, seeing untouchability practiced openly, refuses to accept the imposed inferiority; guided by her elder brother, she resolves to study hard so that education will weaken caste boundaries and earn respect. Thus, children both notice injustice and often nurture early impulses to protest or to seek change, even if their methods are simple or gradual.

Q3: Bama's experience is that of a victim of the caste system. What kind of discrimination does Zitkala-Sa's experience depict? What are their responses to their respective situations? 
Ans: Zitkala-Sa is a victim of racial discrimination, while Bama faces caste discrimination and untouchability. Zitkala-Sa, sent to a European missionary school, is treated as inferior because she is Native American; her pride in her long hair is violated when staff force her head to be shingled. She resists strongly at the moment but is compelled to submit; later she expresses rebellion through her writing and by criticising racial prejudice. Bama, exposed to clear signs of untouchability, chooses a different path: she responds by pursuing education under her brother's guidance and uses academic success as a means to challenge social stigma. In short, Zitkala-Sa's immediate resistance is direct and personal, while Bama's long-term resistance is strategic and collective - both, however, demonstrate early awareness and refusal to accept unjust social orders.