 I'm delighted to have with us Dr. Sarah Hodges, Associate Professor at the Department of History in the University of Warwick. Sarah Hodges, welcome to NewsClick. You worked on the reproductive health in Tamil Nadu. You read and write Tamil fluently. Your first book was called Contraception, Colonialism and Commerce, Birth Control in South India, 1920 to 1940. Can you tell us briefly what were your major findings? Well, certainly the starting point of the study was looking at the question of birth control in colonial India. I think many people are familiar with the history of family planning in India as a post-independence phenomenon, something that the independent Indian state took up. In many ways, the point of the book was to engage with the colonial history of birth control, and that meant two things. One was that family planning was not a policy that the colonial state pursued at all. We have many instances in the 1910s and certainly into the 1920s where Indians make representations to government saying, can you not include contraception as part of your public health program? And they say no. Largely because they feel it is simply too controversial. They don't want to stir up trouble for themselves. So that's the first thing. The history of birth control in colonial India is not actually a colonial project. The second thing is that really birth control was taken up as part and parcel by certainly some constituencies as part of the social reform movements. But within this, we see two perhaps surprising things. One is that the main in the Tamil Nadu case in colonial Madras, the main drivers behind organizing contraception for women largely, although not only, were men. And the second was that the people who were pursuing largely the importation of contraception for women were not also part of the social reform movements. So some were, but not all. How did the non-Brahman movement in Tamil Nadu contest Malthusian claims? Well, in the Madras setting, there were really two groups who were, although not in dialogue with one another, engaging in importing contraception and informing people about its availability. The first, of course, was the self-respect movement. Now, they were less engaged in importation, but within the movement's 1920s and 1930s history, one of their major programs was self-respect marriage as a way to eradicate caste. And, of course, as you're familiar with, one of the things that happens at a marriage, particularly a self-respect marriage, is speech giving. And many of these speeches, the chief guest and the honored speaker would say that in order for a couple to have a revolutionary family life, a self-respecting family life, that they each actually needed to be free. And to be free meant in many ways, particularly for women, to be free of the constant burden of childbearing. So there was a very radical, quite emancipatory feminist agenda, I think at the heart of the self-respect movement's uptake of contraception, in terms of as a self-conscious policy. On the other hand, you had the Mylapore set, who were largely chief court justices, one V. Paramesam and many chief court lawyers, who were part of something that started in Madras in the 1920s, called the Madras Neo Malthusian League. And now, what was particularly interesting, it was said of course that in order to have your cases heard favorably, you were meant to join this league. And so many people, it's claimed or perhaps joked, joined it out of professional advancement. It was started by two men, one had 13 children and the other had none. And so it was claimed that of the birth control movement, one of the founders knew nothing of birth and the other nothing of control. However, having said this, what the Mylapore set was, certainly not everyone was embracing contraception and importing and organizing dispensaries where it was available, rather chemist shops. But of those who were, it was also simultaneously advanced at a time when practices of child marriage were under review. So what we see these men arguing is not that contraception for women is a radical emancipatory agenda, but actually something, the problem with child marriage isn't children getting married or rather girls. The problem with child marriage is girls having babies too early. So they were very interested in promoting contraception as a way to maintain the practice of child marriage without its so-called deleterious non-eugenic effects. Today, you've been working on contemporary public health issues, stem cells, God-blood banking, medical waste. What factors shaped this fascinating transformation? You would agree most historians prefer to stick to archives. Some do. I think as an historian, trained as an historian, I certainly have always been interested in the contemporary articulation of historical phenomena. So I think what the historian brings to the study at the present is a deep skepticism about claims of the new. And perhaps you would agree that as we survey what's been happening in India over the past 10, 20 years, many times people are very strident in their claims that this is new. We've not seen this before. So I think what the historian can bring is a slightly longer view to claims of the new around that. Having said that, however, certainly when I began to in conversation with you and other colleagues pay closer attention to the contemporary rearticulation of the politics of health under liberal reforms. I simply couldn't stop thinking about it. So I hope to marry the past and the present in a sort of critical, if constructive dialogue. Coming to cod blood banking in Chennai, what factors explain the rise of what you have called the fantasy of the stem cell? Well, the fantasy of the stem cell, although my research has been based in contemporary Chennai, the fantasy of the stem cell is certainly a worldwide phenomenon. And I think there are a few things. Of course, stem cells as a medical therapeutic are things that have come online as a possibility really in the past few decades. So they are quite new. There are several things that are noteworthy about them. One is the claims, the incredibly speculative claims that are being made about what stem cells can or cannot do. They are in short being talked about by people from within the community of doctors and hematologists as well as outside. They're being talked about as a miracle cure. So I think, you know, we all want something for nothing. The second thing is the rise of the fantasy of the stem cell is very much part and parcel of a new way of understanding the possibilities for limitless growth. So what is special about stem cells? What make them therapeutically useful?