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Paper short abstract

This paper critiques how Indian marriages impose pregnancy as obligation and shows how women and grassroots groups resist these pressures. It argues for decolonising SRH by asserting bodily autonomy and recognising reproductive choice not motherhood as central to justice.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines how expectations of pregnancy within marriage in India continue to reproduce colonial, caste-patriarchal, and demographic-control logics that position women’s bodies as sites of obligation. In many communities, marriage is framed as a transition into motherhood, with family, religious norms, and state policies reinforcing reproduction as a duty rather than a choice. These pressures echo historical population-management agendas that have long shaped India’s SRH landscape, marginalising women’s autonomy and indigenous knowledge systems. Drawing on insights from grassroots organisers, community health workers, and young married women resisting compulsory motherhood, the paper explores how individuals and collectives are redefining reproductive decision-making as a matter of bodily sovereignty. Narratives from Dalit feminist groups, indigenous midwives, and queer-affirming SRH advocates illustrate the diverse strategies through which communities challenge pronatalist expectations from community-led counselling networks and culturally rooted contraceptive practices to public campaigns that reframe child-free marriages as legitimate and dignified. The paper also considers how contemporary challenges economic precarity, climate anxieties, and the rise of digital surveillance in welfare and health systems intensify scrutiny over married women’s reproductive choices, while simultaneously sparking new solidarities for reproductive justice. Ultimately, the paper argues that decolonising SRH in the Indian context requires decoupling marriage from compulsory reproduction and transforming state and social narratives that cast pregnancy as a marital mandate. Instead, it calls for approaches grounded in sovereignty, healing, and liberation, positioning reproductive choice as central to women’s full personhood and justice.