[Forward to Sex Problems in India]

GENEVA, 2nd May, 1927.

Forward

In this book, "Sex Problems in India," whichProf. Phadke treats the various problems in the light of modern practical science. His chapter on "The Vindication of Birth Control" is especially sound and clearly stated.

The plea the author makes for Eugenic Marriages is the plea of the far-sighted patriot, whose desire is that the country of his allegiance shall grow strong on sound biological principles.

There is knowledge in the world to-day, which, if placed at the disposal of the people for their guidance, would help to eliminate some of the most persistent social evils of this country. Many of these evils keep cropping up generation after generation, while efforts to deal with them, especially in Europe and America, are mainly palliative. I refer to infant mortality, child labour, maternal mortality, and other problems arising out of the increasing hordes of inert, unfit multitudes being born into the world every year.

In the western countries where the effort to solve such problems by legislative methods has practically failed, we have had to resort to a large expenditure to keep alive those very types whose multiplication causes dysgenic conditions. Our hospitals, as well as institutions for the feeble-minded and insane, are overcrowded. The cost of maintaining these institutions casts a tremendous burden upon the normal person. This lessens the ability of the healthy normal classes to rear larger families, with the consequence that the birth rate is of so differential a character that it constitutes a problem and in some countries it has become an alarming factor. The future of western civilization is threatened by this stupendous error.

This is only one angle of the social side of birth control. There is another which is also treated by the author in a masterly fashion: that of the individual woman. He asks that marriage shall be based on love and affection. That it shall be consummated only after maturity. That children shall be born to parents only when there is that development of the body and mind which modern students of psychology claim is necessary for the parents as well as essential to the well-being of the child born.

A country cannot keep pace in the world to-day when its population is bowed down by large families, misery and poverty.

A nation ignoring the researches advanced by modern science, relentlessly holding to customs outworn and proven inadequate, cannot claim equal recognition with those countries which have left behind them outworn dogma and medieval superstitions.

The Sex Problems in India are doubtless much the same fundamentally as the problems of other countries. But in the occident an effort is being made to solve such problems fearlessly and honestly.

Prof. Phadke has undertaken this task for India. I heartily recommend his book to those who are seeking guidance along these lines.

MARGARET SANGER.