ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 ‘Content and Context of Textbooks in Bengal’ looks at some of the Primers and Readers recommended by the colonial government in Bengal. As some of the Bengali upper class educated intelligentsia was roped in to write textbooks for natives, there was an interesting refashioning of existing study materials to suit local and nationalistic interests. Some of the earliest English and Bangla textbooks that came from the Baptist Mission Press in Serampore and the publications of the Calcutta School Book Society, and later by the Sanskrit Press and the presses at Battala in Calcutta can be seen as an experimental space for locating the tensions and disjunctures of ideas and identity in Bengali society.
