Skip to Main Content
 

Global Search Box

 
 
 
 

Files

File List

Full text of this paper is not available in the ETD Center. Copies may be available for inter-library loan from University of Cincinnati or may be available for purchase from Proquest/UMI

ETD Abstract Container

Abstract Header

CONTROLLING BIRTHS, POLICING SEXUALITIES: A HISTORY OF BIRTH CONTROL IN COLONIAL INDIA, 1877-1946

Ahluwalia, Sanjam
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin980270900

Abstract Details

2001, PhD, University of Cincinnati, Arts and Sciences : History.
My dissertation examines the history of birth control in colonial India, locating this history at the nexus of a complex web of local, nationalist, and international initiatives. In tracing the intellectual, political and social genealogy of birth control in colonial India, my work allows for a more complex understanding of this issue, providing historical context to the existing scholarship and debates on birth control in India as well as in other parts of the world. Moreover, by analyzing the oppressive and ill-liberal historical trajectory of birth control in colonial India, this study has forced me to rethink and re-evaluate my own underlying liberal feminist assumptions, linking birth control unproblematically with expressions of individualism, progress and development. From the late nineteenth century onwards numerous intellectual traditions influenced the discussions on India's population and its health. The debates on population size and health of the people generated a demand for wider dissemination of contraceptive information. Important intellectual currents that framed the discourse on birth control in colonial India were Malthusianism, eugenics, demography, western bio-medical discourse and sexology. In mapping the trajectory of the birth control movement in India, this work interrogates the influence of these intellectual traditions on the work of Indian advocates. The historical specificities of colonialism, bourgeois nationalism and middle class feminist politics are important political impulses within which these debates are located. Although many advocates of birth control aimed to liberate women from their biological destiny, theoretically, a closer examination of the history of birth control in colonial India demonstrates that the concern with liberating women and ensuring better reproductive health facilities to Indian women were not guiding principles in these early debates on birth control. Politics of gender, class, caste, race, community and nation shaped the discourse of birth control in colonial India. This study investigates how these multiple variables intersected to produce a hegemonic and oppressive politics of birth control.
Barbara Ramusack (Advisor)
Reproductive Rights; Post Colonial Theory; Feminism; M. Gandhi (Mahatma Gandhi); Margaret Sanger

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Ahluwalia, S. (2001). CONTROLLING BIRTHS, POLICING SEXUALITIES: A HISTORY OF BIRTH CONTROL IN COLONIAL INDIA, 1877-1946 [Doctoral dissertation, University of Cincinnati]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin980270900

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Ahluwalia, Sanjam. CONTROLLING BIRTHS, POLICING SEXUALITIES: A HISTORY OF BIRTH CONTROL IN COLONIAL INDIA, 1877-1946. 2001. University of Cincinnati, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin980270900.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Ahluwalia, Sanjam. "CONTROLLING BIRTHS, POLICING SEXUALITIES: A HISTORY OF BIRTH CONTROL IN COLONIAL INDIA, 1877-1946." Doctoral dissertation, University of Cincinnati, 2001. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin980270900

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

ucin980270900
© 2001, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by University of Cincinnati and OhioLINK.
Release 3.2.12