APPENDIX I
*ON MEASURES FOR BIRTH-CONTROL
Mr. P. J. Roham (Ahmednagar South) : Sir, I beg to move—
“This Assembly recommends to Government that in view of the urgent need of limiting the family units, Government should carry on an intensive propaganda in favour of birth-control among the masses of this Province and should provide adequate facilities for the practice of bith-control.”
Question proposed.
Mr. P. J. Roham (Addressed the House in Marathi) : The educated class has, by this time, fully realized the necessity of birth-control and fortunately the leaders in our country also are unanimous on this point. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Sir Ravindranath Tagore and Mrs. Sarojini Naidu, know very well the importance and the urgency of the movement for birth-control and are in favour of contraceptives. Babu Subhash Chandra Bose, the President of the Indian National Congress, said in his presidential speech :
“If the population goes up by leaps and bounds, as it has done in the recent past, our plans are likely to fall through.”
Even Mahatma Gandhi has written long ago as follows :
“I must not conceal from the reader the sorrow I feel when I hear of births in this land.”
Very few have an adequate idea of the immense loss sustained by children born of persons who are handicapped either physically, mentally or financially. The parents as well as the society also suffer very much. The prevention of the births of such children would considerably reduce the death-rate among mothers who succumb to child-birth and its concomitant diseases, lower infantile mortality, improve public health by removing the many diseases due to want of even the prime necessaries of life felt by many persons, check the offences perpetrated by persons suffering from intense poverty and would bring about an all-round uplift of society by affording full scope to its spiritual advancement.
*Speech delivered by Shri P. J. Roham. He has expressly stated that the speech was based in all respects on the points drawn by Dr. Ambedkar for his own speech and that Dr. Ambedkar is the father of this speech. Shri Roham further states that he was complimented by Dr. Ambedkar for almost reproducing the speech which, he had contemplated to deliver in the Assembly, but he could not do so owing to his inability to attend the Assembly on that day, i.e. on 10th November 1938.
B.L.A. Debates, Vol. 4 (Part 3), November 1938. pp. 4024-38.