Creating sexual consumerism in late colonial South India: a study of S. S. Vasan’s contribution to vernacular sexual consumer culture

Abstract

ABSTRACT S. S. Vasan (b. 1904?–26 August 1969) was an advertising canvasser turned writer, a mail-order entrepreneur, a publisher, and a film producer. His many (and overlapping) professions made him an important propeller of consumerism in late colonial South India. One such site of consumption was his investment in promoting products and literature related to body culture and sexology. This article argues that Vasan’s new advertising techniques such as the use of unprecedented full-page advertisements and elaborate illustrations, and strategic marketing practices re-imagined the place of ‘obscene’ literature within the domestic sphere. The article tracks how, by using his business acumen and journalistic networks within the early twentieth-century print culture in Madras, Vasan played many parts in creating and later monopolizing the market for self-care products and sexology within an expanding erotic consumer culture.