Within the scholarly fields of demography, development studies, medica anthropology and public policy, the history of reproduction has been dominated by preconceived and often a historical ideas about India's supposed long-term trend towards "over-population." When these scholarly fields have invoked histories of fertility and contraception, these histories have largely been made to serve as the "pre-modern" antithesis to a fully "modern" future.

In contrast, Reproductive Health in India brings together historians to tackle the complex questions of reproduction in modern India. Taken together, the essays interrogate the very idea that reproduction is simply a clinch-pin for effecting other social and economic transformations. Instead, these histories map out and ask questions of the institutions, discourses and practices by which women's reproductive health came to hold meaning and play strategic roles in the multiple and at times competing agendas such as social reform, the medical sciences, cultural nationalism, and colonial public health.

About the Author:

Sarah Hodges, Lecturer, Department of History, University of Warwick. UK.

Contributors:

DAVID ARNOLD is Professor of South Asian History in the History Department, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

ANNA ARYEE is in her final year of clinical medical studies at Imperial College, University of London.

SUPRIYA GUHA is an independent scholar based in Switzerland

CHARU GUPTA is Reader in History, University of Delhi

SARAH HODGES is Lecturer in the Department of History, University of Warwick

MANEESHA LAL is Assistant Professor of History and Asian and Asian American Studies at Binghamton University (State University of New York)

ANSHU MALHOTRA is Reader in the History Department, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Delhi.

BARBARA N. RAMUSACK is Charles Phelps Taft Professor of History at the University of Cincinnati