Book Review: Confronting Saffron Demography

Book Review
Name of the Book: Confronting Saffron Demography -
Religion, Fertility and Women’s Status in India
Authors: Patricia Jeffery & Roger Jeffery
Publisher: Three Essays Collective, New Delhi
(www.threeessays.com)
Year: 2006
Pages: 161
Price: Rs. 200
ISBN: 81-88789-40-2

Reviewed by: Yoginder Sikand

A standard theme in Hindutva discourse is the
allegation of Muslims being engaged in a well-planned
‘conspiracy’ to rapidly multiply in order to convert
India into a Muslim-majority country. Muslims,
Hindtuva ideologues claim, are fanatically opposed to
family planning, and this is said to be legitimised by
Islam itself. Hence, Hindutva leaders insist, Hindus
must produce as many children as they can in order to
stave off the alleged looming Muslim population
explosion.

This book brilliantly succeeds in forcefully debunking
this baseless Hindutva myth. Drawing on intensive
fieldwork conducted by the authors in Bijnor, a
district in western Uttar Pradesh, the book discusses
population dynamics at the local level to show that
the notion of an alleged Muslim ‘conspiracy’ to
overwhelm India by rapidly multiplying is completely
false and unsubstantiated.

The ideology of Hindutva, or Brahminical Hindu
fascism, is based on an unrelenting hatred of Muslims
and other non-Hindus. In Hindutva discourse, the
authors tell us, Muslims are described in crude
essentialised terms. Muslim men are charactersied as
uncontrollably lascivious, obsessed with sex,
irredeemably polygamous and cruel oppressors of their
womenfolk, who are portrayed as hapless baby-producing
machines for their men, passive actors in an alleged
plot to reduce Hindus into a minority. Muslims are
portrayed as blind followers of fanatic mullahs who
are said to be vociferously opposed to family
planning. Muslim men are then contrasted with Hindu
men, who are described as supposedly chivalrous,
monogamous, faithful to their wives and devoted sons
of ‘Mother India’.

In the first section of the book, the authors
incisively critique Hindutva discourse about Muslim
domestic politics and fertility behaviour. While they
admit that the overall Muslim fertility rate is
marginally higher than that of the Hindus, they insist
that it is not that different to back the claim that
Muslims would reduce the Hindus to a minority any time
in the foreseeable future. In fact, they point out,
the all-India Muslim average fertility rate of 3.6 (in
1998-99) is well below what is possible for
populations where no form of birth control is used.
They argue that the difference in fertility rates
between Muslims and Hindus is decreasing over the
years, suggesting that Muslims’ use of contraceptive
methods has increased faster in the past decade than
in the case of Hindus. Hence, they argue, the decline
in Muslim fertility rates will probably be greater
than that of the Hindus in the foreseeable future.

The existing difference in fertility rates between
Hindus and Muslims, the authors argue, is not because
of an alleged Muslim ‘plot’ to swamp India or because
of a supposed Islamic abhorrence of family planning.
Rather, it owes essentially to various social and
economic factors, as well as the fact of Muslims being
a marginalized, excluded minority, victims of various
forms of discrimination, at the hands of both the
state as well as of the ‘upper’ caste Hindu-dominated
wider society. Comparing fertility rates across
states, they point out that Muslim fertility rates in
southern India are lower than Hindu fertility rates in
north India. This can be accounted for by the fact of
greater access to education and health services in the
south. In other words, the authors contend, the
marginally higher all-India Muslim fertility rate owes
largely to the fact that, as compared to ‘upper’ caste
Hindus, Muslims are considerably poorer and have less
access to proper education and health services. In
this, they are no different from other similarly
placed groups, such as the Dalits, who, too, have
higher overall fertility rates than ‘upper’ caste
Hindus.

As for the claim that the higher Muslim fertility rate
owes to a supposed inherent Islamic ban on family
planning, the authors note the diversity of opinion
that has always existed among the ulama or Islamic
clerics on the issue. While some ulama have completely
ruled out birth control, others have supported and
sanctioned various forms of family planning. In
countries such as Indonesia, Iran and Bangladesh,
numerous ulama have been in the forefront of
government family planning campaigns. Hence, the fact
that Muslims do resort to various forms of birth
control means that they do not see any inherent
barrier to it in their way of understanding Islam. As
the authors insist, ‘Indian Muslims’ fertility
behaviour cannot be attributed to a supposedly
universal and timeless Islamic condemnation of
contraception in general’. ‘In any case’, they add,
‘if Muslim religious leaders in India condemn
contraception, we must ask how far their audiences
take this into consideration in their own fertility
behaviour’ (p.30).

The second section of the book focuses on population
dynamics in rural Bijnor, a district that has a Muslim
population of over 40%. Despite their large numbers,
the authors write, Muslims are a marginalized
community in the district, considerably poorer and
with less access to education and adequate health
services than Hindus, particularly the ‘upper’ castes.
In a sense they are even more marginalized than the
Dalits, who, besides having access to reserved
government jobs and special development schemes, have
the local parliamentary seat reserved for a member of
their community, despite Muslims being the single
largest community in the district.

Contrary to Hindutva propaganda, the authors say,
family dynamics among Hindus and Muslims of similar
economic background in Bijnor are remarkably similar.
Muslim women are not characterized by any additional
or unique form of oppression or seclusion that Hindu
women are free from. In fact, the authors add, Muslim
girls may be less ‘at risk’ as compared with their
Hindu sisters, because of various factors, including
the common Muslim practice of marriage to close
relatives living in the vicinity of the girls’ natal
home, less dowry demands and pressures, a much lower
degree of ‘daughter aversion’ and considerably lower
incidence of female foeticide because of the Qur’anic
abhorrence of the practice, which has now assumed
alarming proportions among many Hindus in large parts
of the country. On the issue of Muslim polygamy, which
Hindutva and even ‘secular’ feminists regularly
invoke, the authors write that in Bijnor Muslims are
as unlikely to be polygamous as Hindus are. In this
regard they refer to a survey that found that at the
all-India level polygamy is less prevalent among
Muslims than among Hindus, despite the fact that,
legally speaking, Hindus, unlike Muslims, cannot enter
into polygamous unions. In any case, the authors add,
Islam does not encourage polygamy but only permits it,
and that too under very stringent circumstances.
Further, they argue, the supposed link that is often
established between polygamy and higher fertility
rates is fallacious. Because of economic and other
constraints, women in polygamous marriages are likely
to have less, not more, children than those in
monogamous marriages.

On the issue of Muslim Personal Law, which Hindutva
and even many ‘secular’ ideologues insist is uniquely
unfair to women, the authors offer an interesting
alternate perspective. They write that despite the
heated controversy that Hindutva groups in Bijnor and
elsewhere provoked in the wake of the Shah Bano
judgment and the passing of the Muslim Women’s
(Protection of Rights in Divorce) Act, which they
branded as an instance of ‘Muslim appeasement’, there
is no evidence to suggest that differences in personal
laws between Hindus and Muslims work, at the
ground-level, to uniquely privilege Muslim men or
uniquely oppress Muslim women. This is because in
rural Bijnor customary law is still practiced and the
lived realities of Hindu and Muslim women have little
to do with formal law or theology as such. This, in
turn, raises the complex question of the efficacy of
law and legal change in protecting women’s rights.

If at the domestic level Muslim women are not more or
uniquely oppressed as compared to their Hindu sisters,
they do suffer an additional form of discrimination—as
Muslims—the authors argue. In recent decades, Bijnor,
as in many other parts of India, has witnessed a
considerable upsurge of the Hindu Right. This has led
to a growing communalization of everyday life as well
as of the state apparatus itself. Communal violence
and often violence instigated by agencies of the state
have taken a heavy toll of Muslim lives and property.
It has also led to a growing ghettoisation of Muslims
and their mounting economic and educational
marginalisation. This has obviously had a crucial
impact on the conditions of Muslim women. Due to what
the authors term as ‘institutionalised
discrimination’, government schools, health centers
and development programmes are much less likely to be
located in or to cater to Muslim-dominated areas than
Hindu, particularly ‘upper’ caste, localities.
Government schools are characterized by a distinct
Hindu ethos, and the syllabus is replete with Hindu
images and stories as well as distinctly anti-Muslim
and anti-Islamic statements and claims. School
teachers, mostly ‘upper’ caste Hindus, are less likely
to make a regular appearance in schools located in
Muslim (and Dalit) localities, and are also likely to
favour students of their own communities over Muslims.
All this naturally dampens the enthusiasm of many
Muslim families to send their children, particularly
girls, to government schools. Many Muslims feel that
it is pointless educating their children beyond a
certain level because, owing to discrimination, they
will not be able to acquire jobs in the public or
private sector. To add to this are regular cases that
the authors refer to of Muslim school girls being
harassed sexually as well as communally by Hindu
youth, which naturally causes many Muslim families to
prefer to keep their daughters at home or else to send
them to madrasas, where they are taught Islamic
disciplines but little else.

It is thus not because of any lack of enthusiasm for
educating their daughters, as is routinely alleged in
the Indian press and by Hindutva ideologues, but
because of ‘institutional’ discrimination as well as
pervasive Muslim poverty, which the state has done
little or nothing to address, that Muslim girls are
characterized by a considerably lower level of
educational attainment than Hindu girls of similar
economic background. Since lower fertility rates are
linked to increased women’s educational attainment
levels, the marginally higher level of Muslim
fertility is understandable, and cannot, the authors
insist, be accounted for by any alleged inherent
Muslim opposition to family planning or to any
supposed conscious effort to convert India into a
Muslim-majority country.

Based on interviews with a number of informants, the
authors argue that the lack of enthusiasm for the
government family planning programme among many
Muslims in rural Bijnor can be attributed not to Islam
as such but, rather, to the poor quality of service
and contraceptive technologies offered under the
programme and the ‘supercilious and disdainful manner
of medical and paramedical staff’ (most of whom are
urban ‘upper’ caste Hindus), especially with regard to
Muslim, Dalit and poor Hindu villagers. Many Muslims
feel that they are specially singled out by family
planning workers, as they had been during the black
days of the Emergency (1975-77), and regard the
programme as a conspiracy to eradicate them. At the
same time as they see family planning workers
zealously targeting Muslims, they argue that
government health services in Muslim-dominated areas
are of much poorer quality than in Hindu, especially
‘upper’ caste, areas, thus lending further weight to
their suspicions about the actual intentions of the
family planning programme. They point out, and this
the authors confirm, that “health workers rarely visit
Muslim women in their homes and if they make forays
into Muslim villages or neighbourhoods, they may be
suspected of doing so only in order to ‘motivate’
people for family planning”.

The suspicion on the part of many Muslims in Bijnor of
the government’s family planning programme has only
been strengthened by the alarming rise of the Hindu
Right in recent years, the communalization of the
state machinery and the mounting wave of anti-Muslim
violence in which often the agencies of the state have
been deeply implicated. This has been further
compounded by the family planning programme’s bias
towards sterilization, despite the government’s
announcement of a so-called ‘cafeteria’ approach in
which people could select the method of family
planning best suited to their needs. The focus on
sterilization, as opposed to other methods, has been
further enhanced by the fact that family planning
workers are given additional financial and other
incentives for each case of sterilization that they
are able to conduct. Many Muslims believe that Islam
forbids sterilization, and although they are amenable
to other forms of family planning these are not made
readily available to them. Yet, the authors point
out, Muslim’s reactions to the family planning
programme ‘cannot be largely (leave aside wholly)
attributed to their understanding of Islamic
doctrine’. In fact, they ‘approach fertility
limitation in a similar fashion to that of most of the
other groups […], with no generalized resistance to
spacing methods of fertility limitation, but with an
aversion to terminal methods and a mistrust of the
government’s family planning programme’.

Since poverty and educational marginalisation lead to
higher fertility rates, the marginally higher Muslim
fertility rate is understandable, the authors contend,
because Muslims, on the whole, are a largely
economically marginalized community. In the face of
the fiscal crisis of the Uttar Pradesh state since the
last decade, with rapid privitisation and the
neo-liberal policies that the Indian state has adopted
under pressure of the World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund, subsidies and government spending on
social services have been drastically cut. The
devastating impact of ‘globalisation’, the authors
write, has hit vulnerable and marginalised
communities, including the Muslims, the most, leading
to their further immiserisation and rendering them
increasingly vulnerable to the ‘free-market’, which is
heavily loaded against them. Thus, government
infrastructural investment in Muslim areas in
education and health care, already miniscule, has
further declined, with obvious implications for Muslim
fertility rates. The rapid privitisation of health and
education has worked to the benefit mainly of the
‘upper’ caste Hindu elites, further enhancing the
marginalisation of Muslims. As the authors put it, ‘It
is ironic, therefore, that Muslims in general are
blamed for their fertility and backwardness. The
political and economic marginalisation of which they
are more likely to be victims is a crucial element in
their educational trajectories and in their
reproductive health and contraceptive decision-making’
(p.22).

Muslim fertility behaviour, the authors conclude,
cannot be understood in a sociological vacuum or by
invoking theological arguments, as the Hindu Right
does. There is, they insist, ‘absolutely no support
for the Hindu Right contention that Muslims are
inherently hostile to education or that their
fertility levels reflect an intentional strategy to
outbreed Hindus’. In fact, the authors argue, the onus
of Muslim ‘backwardness’ and consequent higher
fertility levels rests less with Muslims themselves
than with their detractors. ‘Upper caste Hindus are
precisely those most prone to voice the common wisdom
about Muslims and the most readily mobilized by
organizations of the Hindu Right’, they write. ‘Yet’,
they add, ‘ironically, it is their own domination of
local social and political processes that has been
crucial in generating and sustaining systematic
communal and gender biases in the education and health
sectors. All in all, these imbalances demonstrate the
profoundly communalized and gendered character of
local society and the local state, and the
significance of inequality, not simply of difference.
Upper caste Hindus, then, are deeply implicated in the
processes that disadvantage Muslim women—processes
that have little to do with the ‘Islamic tradition’”.
In other words, ‘the chains of causation and
responsibility’, for higher Muslim fertility, ‘are not
as the Hindu Right like to portray them’ (p.118).

This remarkable and path-breaking book is a brilliant
and forceful rebuttal of pernicious Hindutva
propaganda. The numerous repetitions in the text as
well as the absence of direct quotations from
interviews with local respondents may, therefore, be
excused. The book deserves to be summarized and
translated into local languages in order to reach a
wider readership.