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While communal hatred and population myths around Muslims are scaling up, S Y Quraishi, Former Chief Election Commissioner has released "The Population Myth", a book that would discredit them. 

The entire Hindutva narrative, for long has fearmongered Hindus on the increase in the Muslim population and how it would overtake the Hindu majority in some imagined time frame with more children through polygamy. The discourse on population explosion and population control has been prominent in India, but recently it had shifted from a socio-economic concern to a political propaganda. 

Besides, WhatsApp forwards alarming the allegedly ‘shrinking’ Hindu population, that the Muslims shall soon overtake the Hindus in numbers and emerge as a political majority in the country, there are also widespread inflammatory speeches by radical outfits and fringe groups accusing the Muslim community of being baby-producing centres and urging the Hindu community to bear more children to compete with Muslims. 

The book has attracted much attention and a discussion on the book at the CDPP’s Citizenship weekly seminar was conducted on February 20th. Along with him at the program were Poonam Muttreja who heads the Population Foundation of Indian and P C Mohanan who has headed the National Statistical Commission. 

The statistics clarify that just like the Hindus, Muslims have witnessed a decline in the decadal growth rate, and both communities are headed towards slow population growth. The National Family Health Survey data indicates that fertility among Muslims dropped by 40.8% between 1992-93 and 2015-16, and among Hindus, fertility rates fell by 35% in the same period. The gap between Muslim and Hindu fertility has narrowed to 0.5 percentage points. 

Experts opine that fertility in India is more of a region than a religion problem. For instance, the total fertility rate for Muslims in Tamil Nadu ( 1.74) and Kerala (1.86) was much lower than Hindu fertility rates in Bihar (3.29) and Uttar Pradesh (2.67). Hence, the argument that attributes population growth to religion is fundamentally flawed. And it must be concluded that regions with lower socio-economic and educational development witnesses higher fertility rates regardless of religion. 

Polygamy and Population

Polygamy is not practised by Muslims alone. The Status of Women in India report of 1975, the only study on this so far, shows that all communities in India are polygamous. Interestingly, the least polygamous were Muslims. Tribal communities have 16% polygamy, Hindus are 5.8% and Muslims are 5.7%. 

Quraishi notes that the census from 1930 onwards, in every census, Muslims were the least polygamous, followed by the Hindus. In any case, in both communities, polygamy was going down. Secondly, that polygamy leads to population growth is also a myth. 

Quraishi admits that the Muslim birth rate is the highest and demography has changed in the last 70 years. 84% of Hindus has come down to 79.8% and Muslims have gone up from 9.8% to 14%. But Muslims are catching up fast with family planning and they will not overtake Hindus in birth rate. After 60 years, there was 4.2% increase in the Muslim population; the projection is that in 2100, Muslims will become 18% of the population. There is no question of Muslims overtaking. Professor Dinesh Singh, former VC of Delhi University, who is an expert, studied the data and says the same.

The slogans like “Hindu Khatre mein Hai” (Hindus are endangered) Hum Paanch, Hamaare Pachees (We are five, and 25 are ours) or Hum chaar, hamare chalees (We are four, and 40 are ours) are all malicious propaganda. " Give me one Muslim with four wives and 25 children; one in a population of 1.3 billion!", Quraishi challenged in an interview.