Nationalizing Sex by Richard Togman

Author:Richard Togman [Togman, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2019-02-13T00:00:00+00:00

Snapshots from the Former British Empire

India was not alone in its anti-natalist quest. Both Pakistan and Bangladesh inherited the British legacy of anti-natalist ideals. Pakistan’s first five-year plan explained that “the opinion of the educated classes, particularly of medical men, economists and social workers, is strongly in favour of extension of family planning facilities. . . . The country must appreciate that population growth is a rock on which all hopes of improved conditions of living may founder. It admits of no approach except that the rates of growth must be low.”91 Toward the close of the first plan, President Ayub Khan declared, “The menace of overpopulation and rapid rate of population increase exists in most underdeveloped countries, and a big concentrated drive is necessary to educate the people about the evils of overpopulation.”92 Pakistan’s second five-year plan stated: “Since population growth can threaten to wipe out the gains of development, the plan clearly recognizes the paramount need for a conscious population policy and its implementation. . . . The existing pressure of population leads to an intense struggle for the means of life at subsistence levels.”93 Upon gaining its independence from Pakistan, Bangladesh reaffirmed its commitment to population control. The government explained that “our demographic situation leaves us with no alternative but to try to contain and curb our population growth by all possible means and as quickly as possible.”94

Many former British colonies and dependencies joined the movement early. Barbados set up a parliamentary committee in 1952 to “examine the question of overpopulation and to make recommendations for dealing with this problem.”95 Hong Kong set up its Family Planning Association early, and between 1957 and 1964 it increased the number of family planning clinics from fourteen to fifty-one.96 Kenya followed suit, declaring that “in a country already suffering from high unemployment, a high population growth rate has only adverse economic effects. . . . [I]t will increase the proportion of total income that is consumed thus diminishing the level of domestic savings available for investment.”97

Egypt, with its long history of British involvement, also became a proponent of the modernization anti-natalist discourse. In its earlier colonial period, Egypt was thought to have been spared a Malthusian crisis. The British consul general in Egypt from 1883 to 1907, Lord Cromer, remarked, “One of the great advantages of Egypt’s situation is that no hidden economic problem lurked between the pages of the budget. The finance minister had not to deal, as in India, with a congested population, of whom a large percentage were in normal times living on the edge of starvation. He never had to refer to the pages of Malthus.”98 One of the first thinkers to apply Malthus to Egypt was Wendell Cleland, a sociology professor at the American University in Cairo. In 1939, using the census data established by the British, he demonstrated that poverty was rising alongside Egypt’s population increase. He estimated that Egypt would be overpopulated at twelve million inhabitants; by 1939 it already had sixteen million.99

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