India: Sangh brand of scaremongering and communal propaganda re Muslim population

Muslim population myths
by TK Arun
(Times of India, Oct 30, 2013)

At the recently concluded national executive meet at Kochi, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh joint secretary Dattatreya Hosabale called upon Hindus to start having more children. The RSS fear is that Hindus will become a minority in India in the not-too-distant future. This rests on a number of population myths the RSS has assiduously been propagating over the years. These myths are ridiculous to the rational mind but have currency, due to vocal assertion repeated over time and space. …

What of the RSS fear of Muslims becoming more than half of India's population by 2035? To make this claim, its number crunchers have to project a total population of 198 crore by 2035. By most estimates, India's population would peak at 154 crore by 2050. The simple extrapolations used for demographic scaremongering have no basis in science.

To the extent social backwardness has been identified as the reason for high TFRs, whether in regions or in communities, the need is to invest more in things that create development: skills, awareness, education, healthcare, roads, power, broadband, teledensity. But any move to step up investment in Muslim-majority areas, as the Planning Commission has made, is immediately branded as minority appeasement by the Sangh Parivar.

India cannot progress as a nation with the Sangh brand of scaremongering about the nation's largest minority moving from the fringes of national consciousness right to the centre. It is the same RSS, which carries on this kind of false and irrational propaganda, that controls and guides the principal Opposition party, the BJP.

And so long as the BJP remains part of the Sangh Parivar, the family of organisations ideologically inspired and controlled by the RSS, its ability to respond to the polity's natural pressure towards the middle ground would remain muted. …

http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cursor/entry/muslim-population-myths