Reproductive Politics and the Making of Modern India

REPRODUCTIVE POLITICS AND THE MAKING OF MODERN INDIA REPRODUCTIVE POLITICS AND THE MAKING OF MODERN INDIA MYTHELI SREENIVAS university of washington press Seattle Reproductive Politics and the Making of Modern India is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem)—a collaboration of the Association of American Universities, the Association of University Presses, and the Association of Research Libraries— and the generous support of The Ohio State University Libraries. Learn more at the TOME website, available at: openmonographs.org. Copyright © 2021 by Mytheli Sreenivas Composed in Minion Pro, typeface designed by Robert Slimbach 25 24 23 22 21 5 4 3 2 1 Printed and bound in the United States of Amer i ca The digital edition of this book may be downloaded and shared under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 4.0 international license (CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0). For information about this license, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0. This license applies only to content created by the author, not to separately copyrighted material. To use this book, or parts of this book, in any way not covered by the license, please contact University of Washington Press. university of washington press uwapress . uw . edu In South Asia, print copies of this book are available from Women Unlimited, 7/10, First Floor, Sarvapriya Vihar, New Delhi 110016. library of congress cataloging- in- publication data Names: Sreenivas, Mytheli, author. Title: Reproductive politics and the making of modern India / Mytheli Sreenivas. Description: Seattle : University of Washington Press, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020053120 (print) | LCCN 2020053121 (ebook) | ISBN 9780295748832 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780295748849 (paperback) | ISBN 9780295748856 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Reproductive rights—India—History—19th century. | Families— India—History—19th century. | Marriage—India—History—19th century. | Birth control—India—History. | Economic development—India—History—19th century. Classification: LCC HQ766.5.I4 S74 2021 (print) | LCC HQ766.5.I4 (ebook) | DDC 363.9/60954—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020053120 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020053121 The paper used in this publication is acid free and meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences— Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48–1984.∞ Contents Acknowl edgments vii Introduction 3 1. Economies of Reproduction in an Age of Empire 29 2. Fertility, Sovereignty, and the Global Color Line 62 3. Feminism, National Development, and Transnational Family Planning 91 4. Regulating Reproduction in the Era of the Planetary “Population Bomb” 124 5. Heterosexuality and the Happy Family 166 Epilogue 202 Notes 213 Bibliography 247 Index 261 Acknowl edgments During the years I spent writing this book, I have accrued many debts. Grants from the American Institute of Indian Studies, the National Endow- ment for the Humanities, and the Rocke fel ler Archive Center funded the research for this book. Support from Ohio State University, including in the form of research leaves and funding from the Departments of History and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies helped to make research and writing pos si ble. I have relied on the generosity of librarians and archivists in India, the US, and the UK. I especially want to thank G. Sundar at the Roja Muthiah Research Library for enabling me to work with material I never expected to find, and Bethany Antos at the Rocke fel ler Archive Center for her patience and diligence in securing images. I am grateful, as well, to all those who shared their oral histories as part of this proj ect, and I thank Archana Venkatesh for conducting these interviews with such care and commitment. Research assistance from Adriane Brown and Haley Swen- son was invaluable in the early stages of this proj ect. My research in India would have been impossible without the kindness and support of friends. I especially thank Jyoti Thottam for so generously welcoming our family to Delhi. I am grateful to Padmini and S. P. Venkate- shan, and to Sharada and M. Ganeshan, for, as always, making Chennai home. Support from Naazneen (Munni) and Vishal helped to make work pos si ble. To write this book, I relied upon the intellectual generosity of many colleagues. As I began my research in Delhi, advice and support from Janaki Abraham, Charu Gupta, Janaki Nair, and Mohan Rao proved to be invaluable. I am also grateful to every one who was willing to listen to me talk about the proj ect, who commented on rough drafts and conference pre sen ta- tions, and who encouraged me to believe that this was, indeed, a book. My gratitude goes to Sanjam Ahluwalia, Srimati Basu, Indrani Chatterjee, Geraldine Forbes, Douglas Haynes, Pranav Jani, Robin Judd, Guisela Latorre, Thomas (Dodie) McDow, Durba Mitra, Rahul Nair, Shailaja Paik, Sumathi Ramaswamy, Barbara Ramusack, Haimanti Roy, Jennifer Siegel, Mrinalini Sinha, Birgitte Soland, Renae Sullivan, Ashwini Tambe, Mary vii viii Acknowl edgments Thomas, Archana Venkatesh, and Judy Tzu- Chun Wu. I am grateful to the participants in the seminar “Women, Nation- Building, and Feminism in India,” whose comments on my work helped me think through the 1950s, and postin de pen dence historiography more generally. I especially thank Anjali Bhardwaj Datta and Uditi Sen for their insightful feedback. Susan Hartmann and Katherine Marino were kind enough to read the entire manuscript and provide their detailed feedback. I thank you so much for your insights, support, and generosity. Sarah Grey gave careful attention to my writing, for which I am deeply grateful. And fi nally, what a plea sure it has been to complete this book alongside my writing group friends and colleagues: Elizabeth Bond, Theodora Dragostinova, Tina Sessa, and Ying Zhang. Your work and commitments inspire my own. In preparing the manuscript, I appreciate the support I have received from every one at the University of Washington Press. Special thanks to Hanni Jalil for her patience in working through my questions, to Elizabeth Mathews for the careful copyediting, to Eileen Allen for the index, and to Larin McLaughlin for her editorial acumen and enduring interest in this book. I also thank the two anonymous readers of the manuscript for their generous and helpful advice. And closer to home, I thank Savita Jani and Meenakshi Jani for their invaluable bibliographic assistance. This book would have looked dif er ent without my students at Ohio State. During the years I spent writing, my students, especially in courses on reproductive justice, South Asian history, and transnational feminisms, have pushed me to think in new directions, and to bring my research into dialogue with the here and now. I am truly grateful to each of them. My colleagues at OSU have fostered the spaces where this kind of thinking can happen. For creating such an energizing and hopeful workplace, my gratitude goes to current and former WGSS colleagues, especially Jill Bysty- dzienski, Lynaya Elliott, Elysse Jones, Jackson Stotlar, and Shannon Winnubst. My work has been sustained, as well, by the fierce feminist board and staf of Women Have Options. Thank you for pushing me to keep asking questions, even when they are not comfortable, and for con- tinuing to expand the bound aries of reproductive justice in our community. This book is, ultimately, about life— how it is mea sured and valued, and how this calculus shapes our society and politics. I write these acknowl- edgments in the midst of a global pandemic that has made these calcula- tions even more explicit, in a push to reopen “the economy” regardless of its human cost. At this moment, when the lives of those most marginalized Acknowl edgments ix and vulnerable are made expendable in the pursuit of profit, the brave insis- tence that Black Lives Matter, both in the US and globally, is all the more inspiring in its call for a dif er ent world. In closing, I wish to thank all those friends and family who remind me of the joy, hope, and possibility of life outside of a grim economic calculus. In the last stages of writing the book, I am full of gratitude for the friends who shared walks and socially distanced chats in parks and yards, for all those on the cousins Zoom calls, the support and solidarity chats, and the virtual family get- togethers that enlivened the days of quarantine. I thank family near and far, especially Vandana and Mahendra Jani, for their afec- tion and support these many years. My parents, Nagarathna and Ven- katachala Sreenivas, make all things pos si ble, and I am deeply grateful for all they have given me. I am not sure that Meenakshi and Savita remember a time when I was not working on this book, and in the many years it has taken me to write it, they have grown into the kind of inquisitive and thoughtful readers I would be grateful to have. Your optimism, kindness, and commitments to justice give me hope even in the darkest of times, because they remind me to turn on the light. Fi nally, my enduring gratitude to Pranav, whose companionship and love has sustained this book, as it has my life. REPRODUCTIVE POLITICS AND THE MAKING OF MODERN INDIA INTRODUCTION On November 24, 1952, hundreds of delegates and observ- ers gathered at the Sir Cowasji Jehangir Hall in Bombay to inaugurate a conference of the International Committee for Planned Parenthood (ICPP). The crowd exceeded the expectations of the organizers, who had been unsure of the interest that the event— the first of its kind in in de pen dent India— might generate.

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