Family planning as 'liberation': The Ambiguities of 'emancipation from biology' in Keralam

In the early debates on the desirability of artificial birth controlin Malayalee society, artificial birth control was often opposed on thegrounds that it undercut some of the crucial conditions for the usheringin of full-fledged modernity, which was frequently conceived of inentirely Developmentalist terms. The concern expressed was mainlythat it was incompatible with the project of modern self-building, tiedas it was to the attainment of a high degree of sexual self- control.However, by the 1960s, such fears had vanished or become marginal,and now the reverse appeared true, i.e., Family Planning appeared to bepart and parcel of disciplined, abstemious and prudent domesticity. Thepaper tries to explore some aspects of this transformation of associations.Some of the conditions that made this transformation possible had beenalready taking shape before the full-scale arrival of the Family PlanningProgramme into Keralam. These included changes in key notions like the nature and social function of sexual desire and activity, modernconjugal marriage and the forces sustaining it, and so on. The FamilyPlanning propaganda of mid 20 th century was bolstered, directly orindirectly, by these ongoing elaborations. Also important was the FamilyPlanning propaganda's active furthering of the emergent forms of powerin modern Malayalee society that were already defining and guiding itsmodernisation, such as the newer form of patriarchy in which (moderneducated) men design and oversee the process of `Women's Liberation',the new elitism of modern knowledge that marginalises all other waysof knowing and sharply differentiates `mental' work and `physical' labour,the passivising power of reformism which authorises non- reciprocalrelations between the reformers and the objects of reform. The overalleffort of the paper is to highlight the ambiguities of `liberation' in 20 thcentury Keralam and to problematise the tradition/modernity binarythat too often organises the writing of the history of 20 th century Malayalee society.