JasonBeckfieldPolitical Sociology and The People's HealthNew York: Oxford University Press, 2018. 173 p. $29.95 (hardcover)

Desai, Sonalde

doi:10.1111/padr.12238

Cited by 1 publication

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“…By increasingly becoming a part of the population establishment, activists like Lady Rama Rau adopted an ‘instrumental’ (Smyth, 1996, p. 73) approach to the question of improving health of mothers. Thus, women were seen merely as reproducers where the major objective was to reduce high birth rates by disproportionately targeting their bodies for intensive fertility control campaigns (Desai, 1998).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Population Control and Eugenics: Dhanvanthi Rama Rau and Margaret Sanger in the Making of India’s Family Planning Programme, 1930s–1960s

Parmar,

Rao

2023

Indian Journal of Gender Studies

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This article explores the contribution of two pioneering women, Dhanvanthi Rama Rau and Margaret Sanger in shaping the official Family Planning Programme (FPP) of India. Rau, popularly known as the ‘Mother of India’s Family Planning’, was at the forefront of the debates on birth control. From the early twentieth century, Rau was in correspondence with Margaret Sanger—eugenist and the messiah of medicalised birth control from the United States of America (USA). Based on archival collections from various libraries in India and the USA, this article attempts to explore the concerns of Rau and Sanger in raising questions about population control 1 and family planning in India. The concern of improving the health of mothers and children was, for them, a scaffolding on which to build the agenda of population control. As their advocacy of contraception was shaped by eugenic 2 and neo-Malthusian ideas, they were successful in institutionalising a programme of family planning that called for an immediate reduction in the birth rate. This was to be achieved through gendered population control policies and practices.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%