Speaking of Reproductive Justice in the Era of Population Control: Examples from Postcolonial India

In the wake of Indian independence in 1947, population control became an increasingly important part of state-led economic development.  Poor women were the primary targets of these efforts, and were subjected to state surveillance and medical intervention to regulate their fertility.  This paper asks how state- sponsored population control shaped women’s narratives about fertility, reproduction, and childbearing.  I draw from oral histories among women in rural Tamil Nadu, India.  These women relied on the state for access to reproductive healthcare, but at the same time spoke about their often tense and ambivalent relationships with these state institutions.  I consider how their histories both reflected some aspects of state population control ideologies, but at the same time challenged state assumptions about the importance of fertility, the costs of raising children, and the very meaning of a ‘good life.’  Building from this panel’s focus on oral histories and the state, I ask how women’s histories of their own reproductive lives can transform the questions historians might ask about state power and reproductive justice.