Bodies in Labor Transiting through Colonial Indian History

Abstract

This paper offers an account of my three year contribution to the Research Project “Bodies in Transit” (ref. FF1201347789C21P) funded by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and the European Regional Development Fund. It focuses on the history of the medicalization of childbirth during the British Raj in India, how birth and delivery were stolen from indigenous midwives (dais) and how hospitalization became desirable among the Indian elite. Furthermore, it discusses not only how the traditional birth assistants were represented by the colonial mission of the British Empire in the 19th century but also how American second wave feminism in the 20th century represented traditional midwives as “the Third World Other,” through two wellknown authors: Rudyard Kipling and Katherine Mayo. In order to unravel the mechanisms of this internalized obstetric violence in India, we make use of the theories promulgated by the Spivak, Mohanty, and Foucault, in order to demonstrate that not only motherhood, but also the rite which converts women into mothers, have been manipulated by power