Background

Sripati Chandrasekhar was born on November 22, 1918, in Rajahmundry, India. He was the son of Sripati and Rajamma (Rao) Sarangapani. In 1941, Sripati arrived in the United States.

Education

Chandrasekhar attended Vorhees High School in Vellore, India. He also majored in economics and graduated with honors from Madras Presidency College in 1938. He followed that with two master’s degrees from the University of Madras and a doctorate in demography and sociology from New York University in 1944. His dissertation topic was his homeland’s population problems.

Career

After completing his education, Chandrasekhar lectured on India's economic and social problems at the University of Pennsylvania, and in 1945 worked as an expert in Indian demography for the U.S. Office of Strategic Services. From 1945 to 1947 he traveled around the U.S. promoting India's political independence from Great Britain.

Shortly after his marriage in 1947, he returned to India to accept an appointment as professor and chair of the Economics Department at Annamalai University. In 1948, he went to Paris and served as director of demographic research for UNESCO. In 1950, he started the Indian Institute for Population Studies (IIPS) and from 1951 to 1955 was professor and chair of the Economics Department at the University of Baroda.

Beginning in 1953, Chandrasekhar spent two years at the London School of Economics as a Nuffield Fellow in demography, and attended international conferences. From 1956 to 1957 he focused his efforts again on the IIPS, and the next year traveled through communist China studying its population and social and economic trends.

From 1959 to 1960, Chandrasekhar lectured in various countries around the world, returning to the United States as a visiting professor of Economics at the University of Pittsburgh in 1961, and lecturing across the country in 1962. From 1964 to 1965 he served as visiting professor of Demography at the University of California-Riverside and delivered National Science Foundation lectures.

Chandrasekhar often met with world leaders to discuss and advise them on the issues of population control, and to gain support for India's programs. In January 1968 he met with U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, who assured him that although the country was cutting back on foreign aid, it would continue to support India's family planning program. That same year he was elected chairman of the International Association for Voluntary Sterilization.

From 1971 to 1975 Chandrasekhar taught sociology and demography at various U.S. institutions, including the University of California-Los Angeles. In 1975, he returned to India and became Vice Chancellor of Annamalai University. He spent the last 20 years of his life traveling around the world teaching, lecturing, and attending conferences on population control.

Achievements

• Dr. S. Chandrasekhar was a pioneer in demography. Moreover, demography intersects with many areas including sociology, economics, statistics, global health, human rights, women’s rights, international law, peace and security, and the history of medicine. He spent his life advocating population control for his native India, because he believed that was the best way to improve the country's economy and protect its fragile hold on democracy. He struggled to educate the Indian people on family planning methods, particularly striving to spread the word to the remote villages throughout the country. A pioneering family planning advocate in the area of public policy, he was the author of over 40 books.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Hungry People and Empty Lands: An Essay on Population Problems and International Tensions

    (Excerpt from Hungry People and Empty Lands: An Essay on P...)

    1952
  • Red China: An Asian View

    (This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)

    1950

Politics

In April 1964, Chandrasekhar was elected to the Rajya Sabha (the upper house of India's parliament) as a member of the Indian National Congress Party representing Madras. In this capacity, he was able to promote population control measures on the parliamentary level. He was so successful in getting his message heard that three years later Prime Minister Indira Gandhi appointed him Union Minister of Health and Family Planning.

As Minister, he launched a massive campaign to promote smaller families and proposed a "cafeteria approach" to birth control for women. Eventually, his campaign included advocating for compulsory sterilization for men with large families, but this measure was unsuccessful as it was considered too drastic. He also advocated delaying the age of marriage, improving education for girls, and letting women join the workforce.

Views

Chandrasekhar believed his country to be in danger of running out of food, water, and land if the number of births continued rising and life spans increased. He advocated easy abortions for women, sterilization for men and asked married couples to refrain from sex for a year. He also opposed early marriage for women and favored artificial birth control. Many of his views were considered controversial, and he often faced considerable opposition, particularly in rural areas of the country where large families were seen as an economic necessity.

Personality

Chandrasekhar traveled the world and lectured at universities around the globe, eventually splitting his time between India and California.

A lover of classical music and mystery novels, he sometimes displayed an unabashedly flamboyant side. At the time of his appointment as health minister in 1967, he exuberantly swatted a fly on his desk while being interviewed by a reporter. ''Got him!'' he whooped. ''You can't have a fly on the health minister's desk.''

Interests

• reading detective novels

• Music & Bands

  classical music

Connections

In June 1947, Sripati married Ann Downes, an American Quaker from New Jersey. They had three children: Radha Ahlstrom, Prema and Sheila.

Father:

Sripati Sarangapani

Mother:

Rajamma (Rao) Sarangapani

Spouse:

Dorothy Ann Downes

child:

Sheila Chandrasekhar

child:

Radha Ahlstrom Chandrasekhar

child:

Prema Chandrasekhar

References

• Contemporary Authors New Revision Series: A Bio-Bibliographical Guide to Current Writers in Fiction, General Non-Fiction, Poetry, Journalism, Drama, Motion Pictures, Television, and Other Fields In response to the escalating need for up-to-date information on writers, Contemporary Authors New Revision Series brings researchers the most recent data on the worlds most-popular authors.
  2010