Vol. 2 · pages 281–285

APPENDIX I *ON MEASURES FOR BIRTH-CONTROL Mr. P. J. Roham (Ahmednagar South) : Sir, I beg to move— “This Assembly recommends to Government that in view of the urgent need of limiting the family units, Government should carry on an intensive propaganda in favour of birth-control among the masses of this Province and should provide adequate facilities for the practice of bith-control.” Question proposed. Mr. P. J. Roham (Addressed the House in Marathi) : The educated class has, by this time, fully realized the necessity of birth-control and fortunately the leaders in our country also are unanimous on this point. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Sir Ravindranath Tagore and Mrs. Sarojini Naidu, know very well the importance and the urgency of the movement for birth-control and are in favour of contraceptives. Babu Subhash Chandra Bose, the President of the Indian National Congress, said in his presidential speech : “If the population goes up by leaps and bounds, as it has done in the recent past, our plans are likely to fall through.” Even Mahatma Gandhi has written long ago as follows : “I must not conceal from the reader the sorrow I feel when I hear of births in this land.” Very few have an adequate idea of the immense loss sustained by children born of persons who are handicapped either physically, mentally or financially. The parents as well as the society also suffer very much. The prevention of the births of such children would considerably reduce the death-rate among mothers who succumb to child-birth and its concomitant diseases, lower infantile mortality, improve public health by removing the many diseases due to want of even the prime necessaries of life felt by many persons, check the offences perpetrated by persons suffering from intense poverty and would bring about an all-round uplift of society by affording full scope to its spiritual advancement. *Speech delivered by Shri P. J. Roham. He has expressly stated that the speech was based in all respects on the points drawn by Dr. Ambedkar for his own speech and that Dr. Ambedkar is the father of this speech. Shri Roham further states that he was complimented by Dr. Ambedkar for almost reproducing the speech which, he had contemplated to deliver in the Assembly, but he could not do so owing to his inability to attend the Assembly on that day, i.e. on 10th November 1938. B.L.A. Debates, Vol. 4 (Part 3), November 1938. pp. 4024-38.

264 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES The present keen struggle of life renders timely marriage impossible for many and thus exposes them to various diseases and habits. Many women become invalid for life and some even lose their lives by the birth of children in their diseased condition or in too great numbers or in too rapid succession. Attempts at abortion, resorted to for the prevention of unwanted progeny, exact a heavy toll of female lives. Unwanted children are often neglected by their mothers and hence they become nothing but a burden to society which is further deteriorated by the addition of defective progeny from diseased persons. Birth-control is the only sovereign specific that can do away with all these calamities. Whenever a woman is disinclined to bear a child for any reason whatsoever, she must be in a position to prevent conception and bringing forth progeny which should be entirely dependent on the choice of women. Society would in no way profit by the addition of unwanted progeny. Only those children who are welcomed by their parents, can be of social benefit and hence every woman must be enabled to resort to prevention of conception quite easily. Poverty is the root-cause of immorality. The following passage from the essay read by Prof. Dr. Tondler before the Congress at Vienna in 1933 would show the evil consequences of insufficiency of living accommodation. The professor said, “On the average every family gets one room in Germany, two and a half rooms in France and three rooms in England. Seventy-five thousand families had no tenements of their own in Berlin in 1925. The result is that children sleep with the adults not only in the same room but also in the same bed. Many children lose their lives by the overcrowding in insanitary dwellings. Whole families are stricken with veneral diseases. Girls have to succumb to sexual intercourse even before they are mature. Sexual connections often take place between parents and their children and brothers and sisters. The boys learn to commit thefts and the girls become prostitutes. The same condition prevails at Vienna. In 1919, out of the tenements let out, 10 per cent. had only one small room ; 37 per cent. had one big room and 23 per cent. had one small room and one big room. Out of the children between the ages of fourteen and eighteen who maintained themselves, twenty per cent. had no separate beds of their own. Towns and villages fare even worse.” In our country, the same condition prevails in cities like Bombay. A few exceptions apart, it is observed that virtue is palsied where poverty prevails. Further on it will be shown how it is well-nigh impossible to uproot poverty without the aid of birth-control. The aphorism, CkqHkqf{kr % fde~ u djksrh ikie~ ,is well known. When we have thus realised that birth-control is the sine qua-non for every progress, we must consider the means to attain that end. To be satisfied with only that much of sexual enjoyment that is necessary for getting the desired number of children and to banish sexual thoughts from one’s mind when progeny is not required, is one of the ways. The use of modern contraceptives is the other way. As for the first way, it must be

265ON MEASURES FOR BIRTH-CONTROL remembered that while continence in the unmarried state may be possible, it is nothing but displaying ignorance about human nature to expect that young and healthy married couples, living together and fond of each other, can observe continence for years together. The cases of strong-willed persons, whose minds are not affected in the presence of objects of enjoyment, apart, there is no doubt that ordinary human beings are bound to fall a prey to the influence of enticements. Is it not strange, therefore, that this fact, which is as clear as daylight, is denied by some. Self-control has been proved to be absolutely useless for birth-control from the experience of several countries and ages. Even the advocates of continence cannot claim that ordinary persons will be able to eschew sexual intercourse altogether throughout their lives. The laying aside of continence even for a single day every year may lead to an annual conception. Even, if we assume that self-control enables certain persons to bring about birthcontrol, we cannot draw the conclusion that others will be able to follow them. It is necessary to remember that just as appetite for food differs in the case of different persons, so sexual appetite also varies from person to person. Strict observance of certain rules laid down in Hindu scriptures necessitates the neglect of the ideal of family-limitation. For instance, verse 8, Chapter 54, of “Vishnu Smriti” enjoins sexual intercourse on certain specified days. Sir, honourable members have received a pamphlet written by Mrs. Sarojini Mehta, M.A., I am not going to read the whole pamphlet, but will quote only a few passages from it : “Whenever the subject of birth-control is broached, the burden of our opponents’ song is that continence (Brahmacharya) is the sovereign specific for our country and that it is better to leave Westerners to be blessed by their own artificial remedies. I humbly supplicate these honourable persons to state the grounds upon which they hold this view. It is stated that our people are spiritualistic, while Westerners are materialistic. It has now become wellnigh nauseating to hear this parrot cry repeated. In what way are our people spiritualistic ? Have our people renounced the world and become ascetics ? Can mere repetition of certain catch-phrases like “All this is delusion.” “One must abandon attachment to worldly life”, turn people into spiritualistic ? Does not every one of our villages possess Shylocks ready to demand their pound of flesh from poor and innocent debtors ? Are there not bankers mean enough to devour the deposits of widows ? Have we not scoundrels who are debased enough to leave stranded helpless widows whom they themselves have misled ? Can we claim that our society is without men who have discarded their chaste and devoted wives and taken to prostitutes ? I am completely at a loss to understand how a society can be called spiritualistic, in which many are ruined by matrimonial transactions that amount to virtual sales of brides and bridegrooms, in which a person refusing to give an absenquial feast to his

266 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES caste-people is out-casted, in which men are planning their second marriages while their first wives are burning on funeral pyres, in which even old fogies of sixty years can marry girls of twelve on the strength of monetary bribes and in which the treatment offered to widows is worse than that given even to the beasts. Western materialism cannot be held responsible for the rotten state of our society discribed above. On the contrary it is those who have come into contact with western materialism who are trying their best to remedy these evils, though their efforts are proving nothing but a cry in the wilderness.” Further on, in another paragraph, she says : “The conduct of Indraraj towards Ahilya, of Parashar Rishi towards Satyawati and of Suryadev towards Kunti would make those perpetrators liable for rigorous imprisonment in this age of Kali but that being considered to be Satya Yug, we not only connive at these delinquencies but raise books containing such descriptions to the status of ‘Sacred Books’ and insist that they must be prescribed as test-books in the curriculum for children. How many lessons on continence can pupils find in the Mahabharat, the Bhagwat and the Puranas ? How can an age, that never knew what continence was, inspire us to observe that virtue ? How is it possible to consider that age to have observed continence in which there were incidents like the story of King Dushyanta, who first misled an innocent and guileless girl living in the hermitage of a sage and then discarded her when she was pregnant ? When one considers the number of children born to certain persons mentioned in very ancient narratives, a doubt naturally arises in one’s mind as to whether the people in those days ever dreamt what continence was. How can one believe that continence was observed in those times when one considers that Sagar begot sixty thousand sons and that there were a hundred Kowrawas, twenty-seven daughters of Daksha Prajapati and several other such instances ? Continence was paid scant respect in bygone days. It can actually be seen that in these days it is kept at a distance everywhere. The birth-rate of our country is not falling lower than that of any ‘materialistic’ country. Brahmacharya cannot be observed even where the life of a woman, already the mother of many children, is jeopardised by an additional delivery. It is neglected even in the families of paupers, dying of hunger, where the addition of even a single individual to the family would be nothing short of a calamity. Even in these days of unemployment, when it is practically impossible to find outlets for sons, additional children are born even in middle class families every year or year and a half. In castes, in which the usage of dowry prevails, parents express much grief at the birth of a daughter, kill her at the very outset or bring her up most negligently so that she may die a natural death. They, however, never resort to continence to avoid the chances of girls being born. In spite of all these instances we go on proclaiming that continence alone is the ideal for our country ! Of what