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Sri Lanka became known as an apparent ‘success story’ in the initial two decades of its independence. Crucial to this image is women’s health, given its central importance to the indicators of decreasing population growth rate and decreasing mortality. However, how have individual women’s bodies fared within the twentieth-century Sri Lankan stories of development?

In A Critical History of Women’s Health in Modern Sri Lanka Darshi Thoradeniya traces women’s health from the initial days of birth control and family planning, to development and population control, to militarisation and financialisation of women’s bodies. Questioning this ‘success story’, she shows how women’s bodies were used for the nation-building project of post-independence Sri Lanka.

Through meticulous research, interviews, policies and advertisements, and oral narratives, the author highlights how the Sri Lankan state made use of women’s health, while at the same time silencing individual women’s unique bodily and medical experiences.