Sexology as a Means of Sex Education in Colonial and Early Post-Colonial India (Poster 28)

• In Event: AERA Promising Scholarship in Education Research: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research

Abstract

Sex education has been a controversial subject in India. India does not have a comprehensive sex education curriculum. Attempts to introduce sex education in schools have been controversial as political and conservative social groups argue that sex education is antithetical to Indian culture and religion. My poster, based on my dissertation project on the history of sexology and sex education in India, will argue that though Indian lacks a formal sex education curriculum, discourses surrounding sex education have been in circulation since the early 20th century. I will argue that sex education in India has always been approached in an indirect manner for a range of purposes including the control of sexually transmitted diseases, adoption of birth control as well as eugenic purposes. My poster will show how the popularization of sexology initiated one of the earliest campaigns of sex education called social hygiene. Sexology and social hygiene emerged as a broad-based social movement that witnessed the participation of a wide variety of actors comprising sexologists, socio-religious figures ranging from Christian missioners to Hindu reformers, colonial administrators, and anti-colonial nationalists. The social hygiene envisaged sex education as a program that was not just restricted to classrooms but existed a means of social and national transformation that would put an end to child marriage, control prostitution and encourage Indians to development a scientific attitude towards sex. I will highlight how the family planning program of the post-colonial government was framed around a similar model of the indirect dissemination of sex education.

Author

• Arnav Bhattacharya, University of Pennsylvania