Reproductive restraints : birth control in India, 1877-1947 / Sanjam Ahluwalia.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ahluwalia, Sanjam, 1968-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Birth control--India--History.

Birth control.

History.

India.

Physical Description:

xii, 251 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Urbana : University of Illinois Press, [2008]

Summary:

Reproductive Restraints traces the history of contraception use and population management in colonial India, while illuminating its connection to contemporary debates in India and birth control movements in Great Britain and the United States. Sanjam Ahluwalia draws attention to the history of Indian birth control by including Western activists such as Margaret Sanger and Marie Stopes alongside important Indian campaigners. In revealing the elitist politics of middle-class feminists, Indian nationalists, Western activists, colonial authorities, and the medical establishment, Ahluwalia finds that they all sought to rationalize procreation and regulate women while invoking competing notions of freedom, femininity, and family.

Ahluwalia's remarkable interviews with practicing midwives in rural northern India fills a gaping void in the documentary history of birth control and shows that the movement has had little appeal to nonelite groups in India. She argues that elitist birth control efforts failed to account for Indian women's values and needs and have worked to restrict reproductive rights rather than liberate subaltern Indian women since colonial times.

Contents:

Demographic rhetoric and sexual surveillance : Indian middle-class advocates of birth control, 1877-1947

Global agenda and local politics : western advocates and discourse of birth control in colonial India, 1920s-40s

Polyvocality, ambivalence, and negotiations : Indian middle-class feminism and debates on birth control in nationalist India, 1920s-40s

A fractured discourse : colonial attitudes on birth control in the twentieth century

Untrained "professionals" : medical practitioners and the politics of birth control in colonial India, 1920-47.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [219]-240) and index.

ISBN:

9780252032400

0252032403

9780252074806

0252074807

OCLC:

141386499