Fourteenth Global Studies Conference

Abstract

For a long time the history of birth control in India was dominated by discussions of the emergency. The history of family planning was considered synonymous with the politics of population control of the 1970s. However in recent years historians developed a more nuanced understanding of the subject. Scholars such as Matthew Connelly and Sanjam Ahluwalia brought persuading critiques of the global birth control movement that enabled national and international elites to monitor the sexual behavior of peoples seen as a threat to the development of newly independent nations. Yet there was a studied silence on the birth control market itself, namely, the manufacture and sale of “family hygiene” or sexual health products that emerged in India from the 1930s onwards. New technologies such as chemical contraceptives, tonics, condoms, diaphragms, birth control pills, and jellies flooded the markets. Simultaneously, a new language emerged regarding scientific innovation, sexual health, motherhood, and family in Bombay. In this paper I argue that the beginnings of modern medicine and its imperial promotion through advertisements established the foundations of a new and internally ambivalent patriarchy. Using diverse vernacular primary materials, this essay interrogates the beginnings of the birth control industry in Bombay – including but beyond manufacture and sale. The essay examines the markets of motherhood and banal language of the intimate that emerged with the modern birth control industry. It engages with the birth control market/ products of sexual health as both disruptors and conformists at the same moment.