The Likely and Unlikely Actors in Indian Sexology: Sexual Knowledge and Socio-Religious Reform in Modern South Asia, 1870–1950

The field of sexology has long been identified as a Euro-American discipline centered on sexual pathology and biopolitical governance. In South Asia, colonialism is often treated as a watershed that transformed the codification and governance of sexuality. Decentering both Western conceptualizations of sexology and the British colonial state as the sole purveyor of sexual governance, this paper demonstrates that by the late nineteenth century, sexuality had become a significant site of intervention for Indian socio-religious reformers and sexologists who deployed sexual science as a tool of national transformation.

Histories of sexology have traditionally foregrounded physicians and psychiatrists. Without ignoring these clinical actors, this paper argues that sexual expertise in modern South Asia was also shaped beyond the clinic. Focusing on reformist religious organizations such as the Arya Samaj, Christian missionary networks, and the Theosophical Society, it shows that sexual instruction—particularly directed at adolescents—became a central concern from the early 1900s onward.

Hindu reformers affiliated with the Arya Samaj promoted brahmacharya (celibacy) as an ideal of individual and collective health. Christian missionaries, supported by transnational bodies such as the British Social Hygiene Council, disseminated sex education aimed at “civilizing” Indian youth. Meanwhile, Indian physicians and psychiatrists fused eugenic thought with nationalist discourse, urging the rejection of child marriage and advocating sex hygiene to produce a racially fit and self-governing citizenry.

By foregrounding the entanglement of clinical, religious, and reformist actors, the paper intervenes in the historiography of South Asian and global sexology. It demonstrates how sexual science in India acquired a distinctive vocabulary shaped by nationalist anxieties and socio-religious reform, rather than simply reflecting colonial imposition.