ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the maternal and infant welfare discourse that acquired prominence in Bengal in the interwar years provided ideological justification for bringing pregnancy and childbirth under medical supervision in order to fulfil the broader nationalist objective of promoting the healthy growth of the nation. It argues that the dual engagement of Bengali medical professionals with the nationalist rhetoric of motherhood and the global eugenic concern for better racial stock provided the rationale for 'expert medical control, developing, co-ordinating and directing all effort, voluntary and official, towards the one common goal of robust individual health and racial improvement'. The chapter demonstrates how debates on the importance of maternal and infant life came to reflect nationalist imperatives of the Bengalis in the post-Swadeshi era. It examines the constitution of a medical discourse on maternal and infant health that was heavily laced with social, nationalistic and eugenic concerns in the interwar years.
