Osho Quotes on Birth Control
- The country is becoming poorer every day, and the politicians cannot prevent it, for the simple reason that if they try to prevent it… And the only way to prevent it is to spread birth-control methods. That goes against the orthodox Indian mind, and to annoy the orthodox Indian mind means you lose your power; next election you will be gone. So you know that if you do something to prevent it, you are finished; if you want to keep yourself in power, then you know the country is going to die and starve. Already India has nine-hundred million people. When I started speaking there were only four hundred million people. If they had listened to me, it would never have got into such a bad situation. But they threw stones at me.
- The politicians are afraid that if they force birth control on the country then the people won’t vote for them, so they cannot enforce birth control. So they deliver sermons on brahmacharya, celibacy; they themselves are not celibate, and they go on teaching people celibacy. And people love these ideas, these are the ideas they have loved for centuries so they feel very good: this is their culture, their culture is being praised. This is the right way to control population — celibacy. And how many people are going to do it? That is not the point at all. A cultural idea, praised for centuries, feels very ego-satisfying. Celibacy is not going to work. Birth control will have to be brought in. If people willingly accept it, good. If they don’t accept it willingly, then it has to be forced on them. People cannot be left to destroy the whole country. But if you talk about enforcing birth control they say then you are not a democrat. You stop people by force in many things: thieves are not allowed to steal — is it non-democratic? Thieves should be allowed, given freedom — democracy means freedom! Murders are not allowed. Now giving birth to so many children is far more of a crime than stealing; in fact it is a far bigger crime than murder. Things have changed, situations have changed. Now to bring an unnecessary child into the world is far more a crime than killing a person. It is not a question of democracy, it is a question of survival. Democracy is good, but democracy can exist only if the country can survive. The country is dying, starving. Unless birth control is enforced totally, this country cannot be rich. My attitude is very clear, my approach is absolutely clear, but the country’s old mind is not ready to listen.
- What has Christianity done for the whole world? It has created more poverty by preventing people from using birth control methods. Now birth control methods are a hundred percent effective; at first they were not. The pill had to be taken before you made love. Now there is another pill that you can take afterwards; there is no need to take it beforehand. This is far safer. And sometimes the pill disturbs the hormonal system of the woman, so a third pill has come into being which the man can take. The woman need not take anything. Now things are so simple, why go on increasing unnecessary population?
- The country is becoming every day poorer, with more population, more population…. No guts in this man Rajiv Gandhi! Because now, birth control needs almost military action — nothing else will help. And armies are sitting around unnecessarily. Bring those armies to every village and sterilize people! But the fear… in the election these people will defeat you, and the fear is right. Indira Gandhi got defeated on the same point, because Sanjay was too much interested in birth control, sterilization. And he was absolutely right, but because of him Indira Gandhi was condemned that she was giving him the power and he was going too far. Not voluntary birth control — because voluntary birth control won’t succeed. People believe that children are given by God and to interfere in the work of God is a sin. So unless it is compulsory, such that either you get sterilized or otherwise you get shot… You can choose — this is freedom of choice. But no politician has the guts to give this freedom of choice. Just within two days all this nonsense of population explosion can be stopped. Within two days! Just bring the guns and give the freedom to the people to choose — either the doctor or the army! But please don’t misunderstand me — I simply want that something drastic should be done to prevent the population explosion. Things can be done only Stalin-style, there is no other way. But Joseph Stalin never got the Nobel Prize, and these pygmies are getting Nobel Prizes.
- No religion wants to use methods of birth control for the simple reason that that reduces their numbers. Catholics are against it, Mohammedans are against it, Hindus are against it. Everybody is against birth control for the simple reason that it will reduce their numbers — and numbers are power. The more people follow your church, the more powerful you are. This is part of politics, power politics. They are not concerned about the future of humanity, they are not concerned with the misery of people, they are not concerned with poverty. To give birth to a child now is almost a crime, because the world is already overpopulated. Half of humanity is starving, and by the end of this century the starvation is going to be so acute, so intolerable, that the earth is going to become a mad planet. Either suicide or murder will be the only possible ways for people to exist, and both are wrong.
- The Catholic pope and the Hindu shankaracharya and the Hindu priests, these will be the responsible persons, because they are all against birth control. They talk beautifully, they rationalize beautifully, that they are against birth control because birth control is against nature. If birth control is against nature then the pope of the Vatican should be against medicine, because that too is against nature. If a person is dying of cancer, let him die, don’t give him medicine. On that point the pope is absolutely silent. In fact, Christians go on opening new hospitals. If birth is natural, then death is natural. If you have disturbed the balance by preventing people from dying, then you have to accept the other part of it also. Allow people to die naturally; then let them give birth to as many children as they can. Then there will be no imbalance; nature balances itself. Just fifty years ago in India, out of ten children nine were going to die within two years, only one was going to survive. Now just the opposite is the case: nine are going to survive, only one is going to die. How has it happened within fifty years’ time? Modern medicine has done the miracle; it has changed the whole balance. If you accept medicine and if you accept the hospitals and if you accept that people have to be saved from cancer and tuberculosis, then you have to use birth control. Otherwise how can the population be kept within normal, bearable limits?
- All Christian priests are insisting for more poverty, for more orphans. The reason is that they need more Catholics, more Christians — from these orphans, from these poor people, they can get new converts. Already the Catholic church has six hundred million people in its fold; still there is no satisfaction. It wants more and more people, at the risk of the whole planet committing suicide! It is because of Christianity — and they have influenced all the religions because it is the greatest religion as far as membership is concerned, the most powerful. Other religions have also followed the same ideas.
- All the religions of the world are against birth control methods, the pill. They are against abortion. It means the woman remains biologically in bondage, and her energies continue to create only mediocre people, crowds to serve in the armies, navies, airforce, to be killed or to kill-at the most to be clerks, nurses, porters. What do you mean by creativity? You have created a porter. Do you feel proud? How much pride can it give to you? Every parent should feel ashamed. You are creating like animals. Science has given you a chance today to get out of the bondage of biology-a great freedom so that sex becomes, for the first time, not a biological reproductive method; it becomes sheer play, joy. You are asking me, if women’s energies are not poured into creating children, then what will happen to those energies? Why can’t you start…. There are thousands of ways to make this world more beautiful. Anything that makes the world more beautiful is creative. Landscape the garden around your house. Crossbreed plants; create new flowers that have never existed before. And of course, they will give new fragrances which the earth has never experienced.
- If you try to persuade Indians it will take hundreds of years, and meanwhile they will be producing so many children that by the time you have convinced them about birth control, it will be of no use: they will have filled the whole country with so many people that it will have become impossible. So India has to be very strict about population growth. It has to support those people who use birth control methods. Birth control materials should be free. And secondly, anybody who is practicing birth control, and is not producing children, his income taxes should be less, and his other taxes should be less. Right now it is a very stupid situation. On the one hand the government goes on saying to the people that the population has to be stopped, birth control has to be used. And on the other hand, the more children you have, the less income tax you have to pay. This is a contradiction. It seems compassionate that the man who has more children should pay less taxes because he has to take care of the children. But who is responsible for those children? And you are giving an incentive to people to produce more children! All incentives for population growth should be stopped. A person who remains without children his whole life should be rewarded in every way. This is going to be something undemocratic, but it will create the situation for democracy one day. Democracy needs a certain situation to blossom, to flower. My suggestion to Rajiv is that if an emergency measure is needed, it should be imposed without your having any fear of being called dictatorial. It is better to be dictatorial than have the whole country dying, starving, in hunger.
- You should use your whole energy to create more food, to create more clothes, to create more houses. Secondly, you have to be very strict about birth control. First put in jail people like the shankaracharya and Mother Teresa, who are preaching against abortion, against birth control, against the pill. Make it a law that anybody who teaches against birth control is a criminal. It certainly is a great crime in a country like India. Just in thirty years’ time, India has doubled its population. By the end of this century it will have defeated China in population; because China is strictly controlling its population, but India is not doing anything. Birth control has to be done on a war scale; use your whole army to propagate the idea. And the people who resist should be imprisoned. And don’t be bothered that you will be told by the world, “This is not democratic.” This is democratic. Suicide is not democratic.
- Absolute birth control is needed at least for two decades. Absolute, I say! Not that you have to stop after two children or three children — no, that will not help. Half the world is dying of starvation, and you will be surprised to know that the poor countries, the starving countries, produce more children, for the simple reason that they don’t have any other means of passing their time. To go to the movies, money is needed; to go to a disco, money is needed. Sex is the only free entertainment. Absolute birth control is needed. This is the only city where no child has been born in four years. Unless we cut the world population there is no way to avoid violence. People are hungry, people are starving, dying. When somebody is hungry he is going to steal. When somebody is dying, what does he care if he kills somebody else and gets money to survive? — because lust for life is the basis of all biological growth. A man can do anything to survive. And secondly, if abortion becomes illegal… the pope would like to make all birth control methods illegal. If abortion is illegal, if birth control methods are illegal, can you think what will happen to this world? Everybody will be at everybody else’s neck just to survive. And it has to be remembered that birth control and abortion have given women equality, the same status as men; otherwise the woman can never be equal to man. In poor countries she is continually giving birth, a child every year. She is always pregnant. She cannot work, she cannot be financially independent. She cannot get as educated as man, she cannot be in politics; she has to take care of the children. Birth control methods, abortion — these have made possibilities for women to be equal to men; otherwise all talk about equality is bogus, false, pseudo.
