Gandhi courageously spoke in favour of population control. Yet his argument in favour of population control was not the usual Malthusian fear of over-population. As early as in 1925, he had written in Young India that if suitable improvements could be made in the laws relating to land and the state of agriculture, and an allied occupation could be provided, India could support twice its population. Gandhi said:

This little globe of ours is not a toy of yesterday. It has not suffered from the weight of over-population through its age of countless millions. How can it be that the truth has suddenly dawned upon some people that it is in danger of perishing of shortage of food unless birth rate is checked through the use of contraception?

This and other ideas of Gandhi on birth control are well presented in Chapter LVI: Birth Control in India of My Dreams . The population of India at that time was about 262 millions. Today, as per the 2001 Census, it stands at 1029 million. Therefore, today, there is all the more reason to control the population, particularly since the perception of the ecological crisis is more vivid than it was in Gandhi's time. His support for birth control was related to the “political” situation prevailing in the country. He said that there could be no two opinions on the necessity for limiting births (Suman, 1969). But, like Marx, he rejected the idea of a universal theory of population. To him, in some circumstances it may be considered quite rational to encourage reproduction but in many others it may be considered irrational. According to Gandhi, in his days, religion favoured a small family and birth control had become a political duty. Some of his committed supporters found his involvement with birth control a little embarrassing, but for Gandhi, the political situation at that time demanded that people avoid any kind of wastage of the vital force (Desai, 1973) and take up the task of ending colonization and poverty more seriously. Thus, politics had become a religious activity.