Patient Welfare vs. the Health of the Nation: Governmentality and Sterilisation of Leprosy Sufferers in Early Post-Colonial India

Abstract

Discussions of human sterilisation frequently intersect with literatures on population management and eugenics. Foucauldian concepts of governmentality, particularly in its bio-political aspect of governmental interest in managing the health, fertility and well-being of populations, provides a useful starting-point for considering the debates on sterilisation of leprosy sufferers in 1940s and 1950s India. Two manifestations of governmentality emerge in the discussions. The first, primarily advocated by leprosy workers, focused on the welfare of the population with leprosy and argued for voluntary sterilisation, particularly of men by vasectomy, as beneficial to their lives and well-being. The other, propounded by a minority within both houses of the Indian Parliament, focused on the broader welfare of the Indian population and proposed eugenicist legislation for compulsory sterilisation of adults with leprosy as a means to exclude them from the Indian population as 'unfit'. The sterilisation debates show the presence of both coercive and non-coercive approaches to population management in post-colonial India and the complexity of discourses within each approach. Ultimately, the more inclusive, non-coercive governmentality orientated towards the welfare of the leprosy sufferer prevailed against a coercive eugenicist approach. During the debates, however, leprosy sufferers' own views can barely be glimpsed.