I began the PhD program at McGill University in 2016 in History. I grew up in India and completed my BA at the University of Mumbai. Post the completion of my Bachelors, I worked at the Economic and Political Weekly (EPW), which deeply influenced my thoughts and ideas, giving me the opportunity of working alongside some of the sharpest minds in the field of history, economics, and gender – truly one of the greatest learning and formative experiences of my life. I went on to complete my MA in international history at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID) in Geneva, Switzerland – where I benefitted from stimulating discussions with professors and colleagues, who came from all corners of the world. I also studied public policy at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin, Germany – where I received a professional-oriented training that complemented my research-focused study at IHEID. My higher education was possible due to the kindness of merit scholarships, which covered tuition as well as living expenses, for which I am extremely grateful.
My PhD project with the department of history under the direction of Prof Subho Basu seeks to disentangle the intellectual histories of women within the social institutions of marriage and family in modern India. By the 1930s, concerns about overpopulation worldwide, discussions dominated by eugenicists and neo-Malthusians, reached Indian shores; and the responses by leadership in India represented the tensions between nationalism and modernity – in many ways perpetuating the cleavages of caste, class and privilege. By the 1950s, India received a lion’s share of international funding for “family planning” programmes – reflecting colonial anxieties to contain the populations of the decolonizing world. By international funding, I refer to international organisations such as the UN, World Health Organisation, Ford Foundation, Population Council and more – that both represent and do not represent nation-states. This study plans to converge institutional and government law (moving from the colonial to the post-colonial state) – and to identify intellectual transgressions of women who negotiated government-regulated family planning programmes within their everyday gendered responsibilities of marriage and family in western India.
This project seeks to assert that the ideological and material ways regarding family planning projects in modern India were deeply intertwined – without suggesting there was a sharp distinction between the “macro” factors and the local ones. The space of the law then remains integral to my work – the law, in many ways, representing the tensions between the ideological and the material. One of the most important legal moment that remains critical to my study includes the Age of Consent Bills/ Sarda Act/ Child Marriage Restraint Act – that moved the minimum marriageable age of the girl from 10 to 12 years in 1891, and later fixed the minimum marriageable age for girls at 14 years and boys at 18 years – the only personal law that applied across communities. The relevance of my discussions therefore seeks to cut across communities and castes, as well to be alert to the demographic of the women concerned in these histories. In sum, the project explores non-confrontational, intellectual transgressions of married women within the social institutions of marriage – from late colonial to independent India, complicating the emphasis on 1947 – reflecting my own political assertion as a historian to recover the intellectual histories of women – as much an engagement with the present, as with the past.
My research work in the archives in Ahmedabad, Bombay and Delhi, as well as writing and publishing my work has been an interesting, challenging and satisfying journey. I am truly grateful to the Schull Yang International Experience Award for these exceptional opportunities of archiving, researching and learning. I look forward to another exciting, stimulating and productive year of my PhD. I thank you Ms. Yang and Mr. Schull sincerely for enabling this extraordinary journey.
