Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s Prime Minister, has given free hand to the Indian ruling classes in their campaign against the Indian babies. Under the unofficial, yet distinctly recognizable, leadership of Lady Dhanvanthi Rama Rau, wife of India’s prominent banker and diplomat, the male and female representatives of wealth and high society gather around the banner of ‘The Family Planning Association’. With official blessings they hold meetings and distribute their propaganda with the avowed purpose of pressing for more drastic measures against over-population.

Progress has been made during the last ten years; from moderate beginnings with the advocacy of the ‘safe period’, the Association and the Health Ministry went on to endorse artificial contraceptives and sterilization, so that today there is a growing demand for legalized abortion. No Tibetan crisis or Chinese threat is capable of turning these people’s minds from their single goal—the decimation of future Indian generations.

Justification is provided by the humanitarian and patriotic motives that inspire their relentless struggles against the natural expansion of the race. Arguments are invoked about world peace, which is to be promoted by their efforts; others claim that population limitation is vindicated on religious grounds because it prevents millions of souls ‘cascading into perdition’.

For many it has already become a way of life, and an end in itself that no longer requires any theoretical or practical justification. As one of the ladies at a recent meeting of the Family Planning Association summed it up: ‘We are on the lookout for children everywhere. Where there are children there must be parents.