New Delhi: Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) leader Mohan Bhagwat, in his annual Dusshera address on Wednesday October 5, proposed a population control law that would be “equally applicable to all”, and lamented the “imbalance based on religion” and “forced conversions”. were breaking up the country, NDTV reported.
Bhagwat cited East Timor, Kosovo and South Sudan as examples of “new countries that have emerged due to community-based religious imbalances”.
“Along with population control, balancing the population on a religious basis is also a matter of importance that cannot be ignored,” he said, delivering his speech in Hindi, according to the channel. information.
“People need resources, or they become a burden… Some people think that people can be an asset. We have to work on a policy keeping these two aspects in mind,” he continued.
Regarding the “religion-based imbalance” in the population, he said: “The birth rate is one of the reasons; conversions by force, luring or greed, and infiltration are also big reasons.
The RSS leader further stated that women’s health would “certainly be kept in mind” in any policy the RSS put forward on procreation and population control. It was also the first time that the RSS had invited a woman – mountaineer Santosh Yadav – as the main guest for its Dussehra rally in Nagpur.
Fact check
Bhagwat’s latest remarks are in line with an antiquated RSS trope and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) political front has long moved to hold the country’s largest religious minority group – Muslims – responsible for population growth.
However, empirical evidence disputes both claims of alarming population growth and perceived differences in Hindu-Muslim population growth.
Representative image. Photo: Virtual Rachel/Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0)
As Thread reported earlier, the National Family Health Survey (2019-21) indicates that the difference between Hindu (1.94 children per woman) and Muslim (2.36 children per woman) fertility is only 0, 42 children per woman. This is a radical departure from the situation in 1992, when it was estimated that Muslim women had on average 1.1 more children than Hindu women.
The real picture emerges much more clearly when we consider the “trend” rather than the “point estimates”. Over the past two decades, Hindu fertility has been found to have dropped by 30% compared to 35% among Muslims. In fact, the rate of decline in population growth among Muslims has been greater than that of Hindus over the past 20 years. This establishes that Hindu-Muslim fertility rates are on track for absolute convergence, likely by 2030.
Even a 2021 report from the Pew Research Center supports these findings. The fertility rate of Muslims is now almost equal to that of Hindus, and between 1992 and 2015, the fertility rate of Muslims fell from 4.4 to 2.6 while that of Hindus fell from 3.3 to 2 ,1, indicates the ratio.
In a video interview (exact timestamp: from 8 min 20 s) carried by Thread Earlier, former Chief Election Commissioner SY Quraishi recalled his meeting with RSS leader Bhagwat to present his book, The Population Myth: Islam, Family Planning, and Politics in India. Qureshi said he told the RSS leader that it was pure “propaganda” by Hindutva groups that Muslims would outnumber Hindus.
“Even in 1,000 years it wouldn’t happen. The issue of polygamy [often raised to argue about Muslims’ higher population growth rate than Hindus] does not arise in India. I told him about the gender ratio of 1,000 men to 940 women in India and the fact that there are 60 single people struggling to get their first wife. And, I asked where is the question of polygamy. To this, he reacted with a hearty laugh… Which means he recorded everything I said,” Quraishi recounted during the meeting.
It seems that the head of the RSS didn’t find the time to read Quraishi’s book.
On the other hand, even the specter of “population explosion” often raised by many is also not based on any justification, and the data speaks otherwise. In fact, Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself in his 2019 Independence Day speech addressed the issue. “We have to worry about the population explosion,” he said, adding that it was affecting India’s development negatively.
According to the NFHS (2019-21), the total fertility rate (ISF) fell from 2.2 in 2016 to 2, below the desired value of 2.1. According to population experts and researchers, at a TFR of 2.1, a population is reaching replacement level fertility, which means there will be no population growth.
The GFR and the annual population growth rate are used around the world to quantify population growth. Furthermore, India’s population growth rate fell from 1.73% in 2001 to 1.04% in 2018, according to World Bank data. The population growth rate in 12 states was even less than 1%, and even states like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Haryana – considered high fertility states – saw a significant decline in their growth rate over time.
In his speech, Bhagwat also referred to “conversions by force”. Hindutva garb has also long raised the bogeyman of ‘forced conversions’ – particularly Christianity which eats away at the overwhelming majority of Hinduism. According to a report published by Thread earlier, the allegation is not based on reality.
According to available census data, the size of the Christian community relative to the country’s population has either been static or declining since 1971. The 1971 census estimated that Christians made up 2.6% of India’s population. In 2001, this figure fell to 2.3%. Although the religious makeup of the 2011 census figures was never released, data leaks showed that there was a further decline in community size.
On the controversial issue of religious conversion, a Pew research report published in June 2021 notes that it is “rare” for a person in India to change from one religion to another. “An overall pattern of stability in the share of religious groups is accompanied by a slight net change in the movement into or out of most religious groups. Among the Hindus, for example, any conversion out of the group corresponds to a conversion in the group”, underlines the report.