Contraception, Colonialism and Commerce

Birth control holds a slightly unusual place in the history of medicine. This is because birth control histories, by and large, are not filled with doctors or hospitals, and only relatively recently have included tales of laboratory-based therapeutic innovation. Instead birth control histories elucidate the peculiar slippages between individual body and body politic occasioned by the promotion of techniques to manipulate human reproduction. The history of birth control in India brings these as well as additional complications to the field.Contrary to popular belief, India has one of the most long-lasting, institutionalized, far-reaching, state sponsored family planning programs in the world. During the inter-war period the country witnessed the formation of groups dedicated to promoting the cause of birth control, and the press was full of stories of the newly-inter-linked terms of birth control, eugenics, maternal and infant welfare and national progress.This book outlines the early history of birth control in India, particularly the Tamil south, and illuminates India's role in a global birth control network. Across Europe, birth control movements gained prominence largely by attempting to assuage their nations' relational population anxieties with pro-natalist policies and eugenic language. From these movements' very inception, an internationalist impulse spread from countries like Britain and the United States through the work of birth control advocates like Margaret Sanger and Marie Stopes. For Sanger, Stopes and others, the object of birth control was never solely the poor at home, but also embraced the poor across the globe.