Ashwini Tambe
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780252042720
- eISBN:
- 9780252051586
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042720.003.0006
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
Chapter 5 examines how the age of marriage in India was finally raised in the 1970s to 18 years for girls. It describes how worries about population control drove the change, and it traces the ...
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Chapter 5 examines how the age of marriage in India was finally raised in the 1970s to 18 years for girls. It describes how worries about population control drove the change, and it traces the prominent role that India and Indian experts played in demographic writing in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. It demonstrates how closely aligned Indian population control policies were with the intellectual positions of the international population control establishment: Indian demographers treated the age of marriage as a technocratic measure aimed at reducing population growth rather than a measure focused on expanding life chances and preventing forced sex for girls. A shift occurred from an overwhelming focus on potentially vulnerable girls to potentially overfertile girls who could be threats to the future of the nation. This chapter explains why Indian feminists were not at the forefront of the 1978 measure raising the age of marriage. It is one more reminder of how the seemingly well-meaning focus on early marriage among girls is tethered to interests that have very little to do with girls themselves.Less
Chapter 5 examines how the age of marriage in India was finally raised in the 1970s to 18 years for girls. It describes how worries about population control drove the change, and it traces the prominent role that India and Indian experts played in demographic writing in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. It demonstrates how closely aligned Indian population control policies were with the intellectual positions of the international population control establishment: Indian demographers treated the age of marriage as a technocratic measure aimed at reducing population growth rather than a measure focused on expanding life chances and preventing forced sex for girls. A shift occurred from an overwhelming focus on potentially vulnerable girls to potentially overfertile girls who could be threats to the future of the nation. This chapter explains why Indian feminists were not at the forefront of the 1978 measure raising the age of marriage. It is one more reminder of how the seemingly well-meaning focus on early marriage among girls is tethered to interests that have very little to do with girls themselves.
Asha Nadkarni
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816689903
- eISBN:
- 9781452949284
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816689903.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
Asha Nadkarni contends that whenever feminists lay claim to citizenship based on women’s biological ability to “reproduce the nation,” they are participating in a eugenic project—sanctioning ...
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Asha Nadkarni contends that whenever feminists lay claim to citizenship based on women’s biological ability to “reproduce the nation,” they are participating in a eugenic project—sanctioning reproduction by some and prohibiting it by others. Employing a wide range of sources from the United States and India, this book shows how the exclusionary impulse of eugenics is embedded within the terms of nationalist feminism. This book reveals connections between U.S. and Indian nationalist feminisms from the late nineteenth century through the 1970s, demonstrating that both call for feminist citizenship centered on the reproductive body as the origin of the nation. It juxtaposes U.S. and Indian feminists (and antifeminists) in provocative and productive ways: Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s utopian novels regard eugenic reproduction as a vital form of national production; Sarojini Naidu’s political speeches and poetry posit liberated Indian women as active agents of a nationalist and feminist modernity predating that of the West; and Katherine Mayo’s Mother India from 1927 warns white U.S. women that Indian reproduction is a “world menace.” In addition, the book traces the refashioning of the icon Mother India, first in Mehboob Khan’s 1957 film Mother India and Kamala Markandaya’s 1954 novel Nectar in a Sieve, and later in Indira Gandhi’s self-fashioning as Mother India during the Emergency from 1975 to 1977.Less
Asha Nadkarni contends that whenever feminists lay claim to citizenship based on women’s biological ability to “reproduce the nation,” they are participating in a eugenic project—sanctioning reproduction by some and prohibiting it by others. Employing a wide range of sources from the United States and India, this book shows how the exclusionary impulse of eugenics is embedded within the terms of nationalist feminism. This book reveals connections between U.S. and Indian nationalist feminisms from the late nineteenth century through the 1970s, demonstrating that both call for feminist citizenship centered on the reproductive body as the origin of the nation. It juxtaposes U.S. and Indian feminists (and antifeminists) in provocative and productive ways: Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s utopian novels regard eugenic reproduction as a vital form of national production; Sarojini Naidu’s political speeches and poetry posit liberated Indian women as active agents of a nationalist and feminist modernity predating that of the West; and Katherine Mayo’s Mother India from 1927 warns white U.S. women that Indian reproduction is a “world menace.” In addition, the book traces the refashioning of the icon Mother India, first in Mehboob Khan’s 1957 film Mother India and Kamala Markandaya’s 1954 novel Nectar in a Sieve, and later in Indira Gandhi’s self-fashioning as Mother India during the Emergency from 1975 to 1977.
Durba Mitra
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780691196350
- eISBN:
- 9780691197029
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691196350.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, Indian History
This concluding chapter examines the idealized Indian society through a feminist lens. It first begins with a summary of the major themes introduced in the previous chapters. Afterward, the chapter ...
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This concluding chapter examines the idealized Indian society through a feminist lens. It first begins with a summary of the major themes introduced in the previous chapters. Afterward, the chapter analyzes a work by a now well-known woman writer from Calcutta, Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, an early feminist thinker in India. Her short story “Sultana's Dream” (1905), is celebrated for its radical world-making of a society where women rule the outside world and seclude men in the home. From there, the chapter turns to another dreamscape concerned with the condition of Indian womanhood—S. C. Mookerjee's book, The Decline and Fall of the Hindus (1919), his study on the evolution of modern Indian society based in the ideals of Aryan society.Less
This concluding chapter examines the idealized Indian society through a feminist lens. It first begins with a summary of the major themes introduced in the previous chapters. Afterward, the chapter analyzes a work by a now well-known woman writer from Calcutta, Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, an early feminist thinker in India. Her short story “Sultana's Dream” (1905), is celebrated for its radical world-making of a society where women rule the outside world and seclude men in the home. From there, the chapter turns to another dreamscape concerned with the condition of Indian womanhood—S. C. Mookerjee's book, The Decline and Fall of the Hindus (1919), his study on the evolution of modern Indian society based in the ideals of Aryan society.
