(ML International Newsletter November-December 2004)
Census and Nonsense: The Sangh's Communal Demography
by Manisha Sethi
A comedy of errors was played out when the Census
Commission first raised the cry of spiralling Muslim
growth rate and falling Hindu growth rate, only to
rectify their schoolchild-like error by admitting that
the growth rate was not adjusted against the 1991
census figures, when the solitary Muslim majority
state was not included. So in fact now, with the
adjusted figures, Muslim population was not rising at
the rate of 36 per cent as declared earlier but at the
rate of 29.3 per centódown from 32.9 per cent in 1991.
Indeed the Muslim growth rate registered a decline
greater than that of Hindus, which stood at 3.6 and
2.8 per cent respectively. Further, the decline in
Hindu growth rate could have been possibly triggered
not by falling birth rates but because several large
communities who had previously been recorded as Hindus
- the Jains, Veershaive/Lingayats in Karnataka and the
Sarna in Jharkhand - insisted on a separate
identification this time.
But the Hindutva brigade would not be pacified.
Praveen Togadia was particularly miffed at the
'adjusted figures' and threatened to move court over
the change whereby the Hindu population 'jumped from
80.5 per cent to 81.4 per cent'. He saw it as a
conspiracy to 'hoodwink' the Hindus about the actual
growth in Muslim population, which was poised,
according to him, to become a majority by 2111, unless
checked. Venkaiah Naidu announced that high Muslim
growth coupled with 'demographic invasion' by
Bangladeshi infiltrators should be a 'cause of grave
concern for all those who think of India's unity and
integrity in the long run', namely the Rashtriya
Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) and its affiliates. For Ram
Madhav, the RSS spokesperson, even the earlier
unadjusted figures do not measure up adequately.
According to him, 'our own study has shown much higher
growth [for the Muslims]'.
'Our own study'? True, the Organiser routinely lists
horror stories about the rising Muslim population, but
none of these lay claims to being a 'study'. The
study under question, one can hazard a guess, is
Religious Demography of India by A.P Joshi, M.D.
Srinivas and J.K. Bajaj (Centre for Policy Research,
Chennai, 2003). With its plethora of tables and
statistics on census between 1881 and 1991, it is a
supreme example of how figures divorced from all
socio-economic contexts may be harnessed in the
service of a dangerous ideology. The basic thesis of
the 'study' is thus: The population of 'Indian
religionists' is steadily declining while that of
other religionists, namely Muslims and Christians, is
steadily rising, resulting in a fall of about 11 per
cent points for the former. The downward graph of the
Indian religionists and the upward, resurgent curve of
the non-Indian religionists 'will intersect at 50 per
cent mark just before 2061', following which the
Indian religionists will be rendered a minority (There
is obviously no consensus in the Hindutva camp about
the precise date of the Doomsday: Togadia predicted
2111).
How do Messrs. Joshi, Srinivas and Bajaj arrive at
this calculation? Simple. They take liberties with
conceptual as well as geographical boundaries!
According to them, 'Indian religionists' include not
only Sikhs, Jains and Buddhistsówhich were in any case
defined by Article 25 of the Indian Constitution as
Hindus - but much more remarkably, also, Jews, Parsees
and Bahais. It is therefore only a residual category,
including under its denomination all those who are not
Muslims and Christians.
India, for them, is not the Indian Union but in true
Akhand Bharat style, subsumes India, Pakistan and
Bangladesh! By their own calculations for the Indian
Union, the fall in the population of Indian
religionists is only about 2 percent nowhere as
dramatic as 11 per cent. Though by itself 2 per cent
is not significant, what worries them is that while
Indian religionists have been able to rebuff the
advance of Islam and Christianity and continue to form
an overwhelming majority in large swathes of areas,
there are certain regions where the Indian
religionists are under great pressure (Uttar Pradesh,
Bihar, West Bengal and Assam) or turning into a
minority (Kerala, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, the
Northeast). The existence of pockets of Muslim and
Christian influence, say the authors, 'formed the
demographic basis of Partition of the country in
1947', thus hinting that a rising Muslim and Christian
population signals another impending partition. L.K.
Advani who has written the Foreword to the book, in
his own words, was a 'victim' of religious demography
and thus urges all to take serious note of the
findings of the book.
The spectre of 'Muslims overtaking Hindus in India' is
not of recent origin. It is as old as the census
itself and the communalist mythmakers drew sustenance
from it. For instance, O Donnel, the Census
Commissioner for 1891 calculated on the basis of the
sluggish growth rates of the Hindus in comparison with
that of Muslims the ëexactí numbers of years it would
take for the Hindus to disappear altogether. H.H.
Risley, Home Secretary, Govt. of India, wondered if
the figures of the last Census were a 'forerunner of
an Islamic and Christian revival which will threaten
the citadel of Hinduism' (cited in P.K. Datta's
"'Dying Hindus': Production of Communal Commonsense in
Early 20th Century Bengal" in EPW, June 19, 1993).
Over the years, it has become a vital component of the
communal commonsense. Best encapsulated in Modi's
infamous, 'Hum paanch, hamaare pachchis' (We five, Our
Twenty Five) insinuation. (Does he even recognise the
kind of sex ratios that would be required in the
Muslim community for realising his fantastical 'hum
paanch'?). These canards though are easily disproved
through reference to actual facts: Pune's Gokhale
Institute in the 1990s had calculated that the Muslim
population will remain fixed at 14.2 per cent of the
total even if the same trends persist for the next 100
years. The myth of Muslim polygamy was punctured by
the Survey conducted by Registrar General of India in
1961, which established the incidence of polygamy as
lowest among the Muslims.
What is completely lost in population data based on
religious distinctions is that communities are not
homogenous monoliths but are riddled with internal
socio-economic divisions, factors that actually
determine population rates. It has been well
established that development is the best contraceptive
and population rates directly reflect a peopleís
access to a host of factors such as education,
employment, nutrition, health etc. High population
rates are only an indictment of the Indian State's
inability, nay unwillingness to ensure a just and
equitable distribution of the country's resources.
Therefore, when a Venkiah Naidu or an Arun Jaitley
preaches to the Muslims to adopt family planning
measures, they are not only bolstering the commonsense
about Muslims as a community that traditionally shuns
family planning but are also cleverly shifting the
burden of its backwardness on to the community. Notice
how Maulana Sayed Kalbe Sadiq was hailed as a model
reformist when he called for a discussion on the issue
of family planning in a forthcoming meeting of the All
India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB). Precisely
because it trained the spotlight on the community and
its alleged need to 'reform' rather than on the
State's failure to deliver the goods. The Congress of
course, having burnt its hands once over the forced
sterilization drive under Sanjay Gandhi's directions
sang the song of 'voluntary' family planning.
What is as disturbing as the cry of the Islamic
population bomb is the silence over the real bombshell
of the census the abnormally skewed sex ratios across
communities, reflecting a marked preference for sons.
Again, if one were to go beyond the religion-wise
data, we find that in Haryana, for instance, the sex
ratio in lower income families is an astonishingly
high 1000, while in high income families, it is a mere
600! Clearly, the model 'hum do hamare do' (We Two,
Our Two) high-income (mostly Hindu) families follow
their own population control by killing girl foetuses.
The RSS, naturally, is silent on this murderous trend
in patriarchal Indian society.
Between 1991 and 2001, Hindus added to their
population numbers equivalent to the total Muslim
population. Why then this paranoia? It is more than a
simple matter of creating and sustaining stereotypes
or keeping the fires of communal antagonisms
simmering: at its heart lies the project of fashioning
society and State in the mould of a fascist vision.
The model of 'One People, One Culture' conceives of a
seamless Hindu civilization based on Sanatan Dharma,
which countenanced ëdifferenceí or heterogeneity for
the first time with the arrival of Islam and
Christianity. It is only the followers of the
Indic/Indianist/Vedic/Sanatani religion into which
melt the heterodox faiths of Buddhism, Jainism,
animist religions of the Adivasis and powerful
anti-Brahmanical movements who are the true
inhabitants of the nation. In We or Our Nationhood
Defined, Golwalkar had declared that "the Hindus alone
are the nation and the Moslems and others, if not
actually anti-national are at least outside the body
of the nation." Thus, if the nation is to be
preserved, the contaminating presence of the
non-nationals and anti-nationals has to be mitigated.
In his Foreword to Religious Demography in India,
Advani says, " The growth and decline of population
play a crucial role in the rise and fall of nations "
That is why active and alert societies "keep an eye
on the changing demographic trends within themselves".
However, as the sham demographers of the RSS, Joshi,
Srinivas and Bajaj tell us, defending the demographic
balance also requires a vigilante State. Gujarat
perhaps provided the best example of how 'active' and
ëalertí societies and an interventionist State may
keep an eye on the demographic trends. Genocide, after
all, is the preferred mode of ëpopulation controlí for
the fascists - recall how the saffron mobs of Gujarat
specially targeted the wombs and unborn foetuses of
Muslim women.
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