Birth of a cause: The national and international discourse on birth control in India, 1920--1960s

This thesis examines the discussions and debates surrounding birth control in India from the early twentieth century to the end of the Nehruvian period. It traces the interaction between the individual and national and transnational interests that sought to shape reproductive practices during this period, and the discourse linking reproduction with state-building and national and transnational development projects. Throughout this period, a variety of actors considered India's burgeoning population as an impediment to development---economic development, the development of a strong social body, and the development of a modern civilization and modern citizenry. The discourse linking population and development should not then be viewed as a recent Western discourse, but rather as an ideology formed in the early twentieth century on the world stage, with Indian elites as its central players.; The discussions and debates about birth control in India reveal a general consensus among such elites that control over the body and sexuality, one's own or another's, was necessary to political, social and economic transformation. The discourse on birth control can thus be seen as an aspect of what Michel Foucault terms biopower, or the calculated power over human life involving the "subjugation of bodies and the control of populations." Individual bodies and populations were central to the encounter between native elites and subaltern populations. The elites, already perceiving themselves as modern, made birth control part of a project of control over what they considered the overly sexual and excessively reproductive subaltern and marginal populations, with the goal of making their bodies more useful and economically productive. While controlling reproduction was viewed as central to a program of achieving modernity, however, modernity in itself was not a uniform concept. Differing conceptions of an appropriate Indian modernity led to reliance on and promotion of different methods of controlling reproduction (and sexuality). The conflict over different methods illuminates the way that the body and sexual and reproductive practices are tied to the imagination of communities and nations. This thesis will examine these various conflicting sub-agendas of control, and explore the ways in which international and national discourses on birth control in India overlapped and evolved, while remaining remarkably stable throughout the first half of the twentieth century.