Resources for all concerned with culture of authoritarianism in society, banalisation of communalism, (also chauvinism, parochialism and identity politics) rise of the far right in India (and with occasional information on other countries of South Asia and beyond)
[Excerpts from RSS Gen sec on the Right Wing web site called opindia .... "Dattatreya Hosabale, general secretary of the RSS,
expressed concern about India’s population imbalance on Wednesday,
stressing the importance of strict enforcement of anti-conversion laws
and the formulation of a uniform population policy.
The
RSS general secretary, speaking to reporters after a four-day Akhil
Bhartiya Karyakari Mandal meeting of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh,
said the organization is working to raise awareness about religious
conversions. Hosabale also stated that RSS led Ghar Wapsi drive has
given favourable outcomes in bringing back people who converted to other
faiths like Islam and Christianity.
The
RSS leader raised concern over decreasing population of Hindus and
added that India needs to have a uniform population policy.
“Due
to religious conversions, the Hindu population has dwindled.
Trespassing in certain parts of the country has exacerbated the problem,
which must be addressed. Thus, India should have a population policy
that has been thoroughly thought out and is equally applicable to all
communities,” he said on the final day of the RSS working committee
meeting."
Why fears over rising Muslim population share, immigration unfounded
October 2, 2021, 9:49 PM IST SA Aiyar in Swaminomics, India, TOI
The rise of communal tension in recent years owes much to the BJP’s stress on two themes. One is high Muslim fertility that supposedly threatens the majority status of Hindus. The second is the threat to India from Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh, who have been called “termites” by Home Minister Amit Shah. Both themes have been torpedoed by recent analysis of India’s own data by the Pew Research Centre, a non-partisan US think tank. [ . . . ]
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/Swaminomics/why-fears-over-rising-muslim-population-share-immigration-unfounded/
The Telegraph, 24 September 2021
Editorial: Clinching proof
Pew study finds that religious conversion has had no impact on the composition of India’s population
The Editorial Board | Published 24.09.21, 03:29 AM
Sudden demographic imbalances among religious communities in a heterogeneous society can lead to social and political tensions. The conclusion of a report by the Pew Research Center that the populations of India’s principal religious groups have remained stable since Partition must, therefore, come as a source of relief for planners and conscientious citizens. The study — it drew its data from the decennial census and the National Family Health Survey — found that there has been a marked decline, as well as near-convergence, in the fertility rates of Hindus and Muslims. The latter — the community may have had the highest fertility rate but — had experienced the sharpest drop; between 1992 and 2015, their fertility rate dropped to 2.6 from 4.4. The corresponding figure for Hindus was a decline from 3.3 to 2.1. Two other, equally significant, inferences have been drawn by the study. First, it found that religious conversion has had no impact on the composition of India’s population. Second, it argues that there is no concrete evidence of undocumented migrants flooding India because of the absence of signs of outmigration from neighbouring nations.
The report, which complements an earlier study published in June, would be useful to demographers and policymakers to frame future interventions. This is because India’s average fertility rate — at 2.2 — remains higher than those of advanced economies. The obvious thrusts should be on literacy and public awareness. The 2011 census had revealed that the literacy rate among Muslims was a little lower than 70 per cent. Investments must be made to raise this and improve standards of education among minority communities. That would facilitate greater awareness about the perils of the burden of having a large family and give women greater autonomy in decision-making. Another important takeaway is the dismantling of the false rhetoric concerning the surge in Muslim population or, say, the influx of migrants into India. The data demonstrate that the toxic narratives concerning India’s largest minority community have been created by the ruling party without any real empirical evidence. Yet, the Bharatiya Janata Party has succeeded in disseminating such spurious information precisely because of the ineptitude — unwillingness — of the Opposition to challenge this narrative with facts and findings from credible institutions and agencies. Data, experts have opined, are very much the new oil. Why, then, should they not be used as fuel by political parties to battle the demonization of minorities?
Fact check: Are illegal Bangladeshi migrants responsible for increase in Assam's Muslim population?
As National Register of Citizens is updated to identify illegal immigrants, a former statistics professor’s book busts a few myths about the state’s demography.
Reuters
Census reports have long been a pivot of Assam’s politics, spawning anxiety among its people that “unabated infiltration” from Bangladesh would endanger their cultural identity. It is claimed that the influx from the neighbouring nation is why Muslims have grown from being 24.68% of the state’s population in 1951 to 28.43% in 1991 and 34.22% in 2011.
It is a myth that Infiltration: Genesis of Assam Movement busts conclusively.Thebook, published last year, is written by Abdul Mannan, former professor of statistics at Gauhati University. He concludes that Assam’s Muslim population has increased because of the community’s high birth rate and not because of illegal immigration from Bangladesh. Illegal immigrants in Assam are estimated to number between 16 lakh and 84 lakh, in a total population of 3.12 crore according to the 2011 Census.
Discussing Mannan’s findings in a recent article in the Economic and Political Weekly, the political scientist Akhil Ranjan Dutta wrote:
“Successive censuses have proved, as Abdul Mannan has established using extensive data in his recent book on immigration in Assam, that birth rates among Scheduled Tribes, Scheduled Castes, and Christians in Assam had been even higher than among Muslims during 1971-91. This was due to the backwardness of these communities in all dimensions of development.”
But that is getting ahead of the story.
In the 1950s and 1960s, successive Congress governments expelled lakhs of Bengali Muslims from Assam on the ground that they were illegal infiltrators from what was then East Pakistan. It was not until Bangladesh became an independent country in 1971, however, that popular anger against the so-called foreigners acquired intensity. Bangladeshi Muslims were perceived to be flooding into Assam through the porous border to escape poverty.
By 1979-80, the All Assam Students Union was spearheading the anti-foreigner movement, cashing in on wild estimates of the number of Bangladeshi immigrants to gain wide support. One estimate numbered the Bangladeshis at 45% of Assam’s estimated population of 1.6 crore in 1981. Such claims were hard to refute, not least because the 1981 Census could not be conducted owing to the Assam agitation, then at its peak.
In 1991, the Census reported that Muslims were 28.43% of Assam’s population, up from 24.56% in 1971. Several publications interpreted these figures to reach an alarming conclusion: Bangladeshis were demographically colonising Assam.
For instance, Asam Bani, a popular weekly, claimed in its August 18, 1994 edition that 16 lakh Bangladeshis had entered Assam between 1971 and 1991. Who were they? Muslims, Asam Bani declared, after analysing the Census data. Since Hindus had a growth rate of 41.89% in 1971-1991 and Muslims 77.42%, the weekly argued that the excess growth rate of Muslims was primarily because of the Bangladeshis.
It further argued that had the influx from Bangladesh been negligible, the growth rate of Muslims would not have exceeded 45%. Why? It did not offer a reason. Still, such claims became common sense in Assam.
It is this common sense that Mannan challenges: the rise in Assam’s Muslim population was not unusual and it was not a consequence of immigration from Bangladesh. After all, the all-India growth rate of Muslims between 1971 and 1991 was 71.47%, just a little lower than the 77.42% that the Muslims of Assam clocked in the same period.
More significantly, the growth rate of Assam’s Muslims in 1971-1991 compared favourably with the community’s growth rate in states such as Uttar Pradesh (76.30%), West Bengal (77.32%), Madhya Pradesh (80.76%), Rajasthan (98.29%), Tripura (89%), Punjab (110.32%) and Himachal Pradesh (77.64%). Barring Punjab, all these states have always had sizeable Muslim populations.
In this context, Mannan asks a crucial question: “If it is assumed that the high growth rate among Muslims in Maharashtra, Punjab and Haryana is due to the migration of Muslim workers from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Assam or West Bengal, then how would we explain the high growth rate in Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Rajasthan and West Bengal?”
Certainly not on account of Bangladeshi infiltrators, with West Bengal perhaps being the exception.
The growth rate of Hindus (41.89%) in Assam in 1971-1991 was indeed much lower than that of Muslims (77.42%). But parsing this low growth rate throws up a story: Assam’s Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes grew at a higher rate than even Muslims – Scheduled Castes at 81.84% and Scheduled Tribes at 78.91%.
The high growth rate of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes too is not unique to Assam. As Table 2 shows, the growth rate of Scheduled Castes was far higher than that of Hindus generally in most states. In fact, Scheduled Castes in Andhra Pradesh (83.43%), Maharashtra (189.44%) and Karnataka (91.41%) grew at a higher rate than in Assam. The growth rate of Scheduled Tribes followed similar trends as Table 2 shows. (Remember that Scheduled Tribes, unlike Scheduled Castes, are more concentrated in some states.)
Referring to these trends, Mannan asks: Is the higher growth rate among Muslims, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes linked to poverty, illiteracy and social backwardness?
He proceeds to answer this question through another statistical comparison. Table 3 shows the growth rates of various communities in each of Assam’s 23 districts between 1971 and 1991. (There are now 33 districts). The growth rate of the Scheduled Castes is higher than that of Muslims in 10 districts. In eight districts, the Scheduled Tribes outstrip the growth rate of Muslims.
Significantly, Mannan compares the growth rates of Muslims in Upper Assam and Lower Assam in this period. This is because Muslims in Upper Assam are largely of indigenous origin while Lower Assam is home to Muslims of Bengali origin. The latter are not infiltrators. They are descendants of Bengali Muslim peasants settled by the British in marshy and riverine areas of Assam to boost agriculture. Some also migrated voluntarily in search of livelihood, but, in undivided India, they were just moving from one part of the country to another.
Assam’s districts have been repeatedly divided to create new ones, leading to a peculiar trend in Dhemaji. When this district was carved out of Lakhimpur in 1989, a large number of Muslims moved to the latter for reasons of livelihood. Dhemaji thus registered a negative growth rate for Muslims, as Table 3, prepared soon after the new district was created, shows.
In 2011, Hindus comprised 95.47% of Dhemaji’s population and Muslims just 1.96%. “Dhemaji’s Muslim population was low even in 1987,” Mannan told Scroll.in. “The migration of Muslims brought down the population sharply and led to the community’s growth rate being negative. But the growth rate of Muslims in Dhemaji in 2001-2011 crawled up to 20%.”
Leave out Dhemaji as an anomaly then. In all other districts of Upper Assam except Jorhat and Sibsagar (now Sivasagar), the growth rate of Muslims was over 68%. In Jorhat, it was 60.80% and in Sibsagar 59.01%.
What Jorhat and Sibsagar have in common is a high literacy rate. In 1991, it was 65.89% for Jorhat and 64.84% for Sibsagar, much higher than the state average of 52.89%. The high literacy rates are a consequence of their relative prosperity – a large number of Assam’s tea gardens and oil fields are concentrated in these two districts, and they hum with business.
Literacy and prosperity translated, not surprisingly, in the low growth rate of Hindus in Jorhat (33.54%) and Sibsagar (35.91%). But why was the growth rate of Muslims still substantially higher than that of Hindus in the two districts? “The reason may be the social backwardness and relative poverty among Muslims,” Mannan suggests.
He also points out another statistical peculiarity: “If those who say Bangladeshi immigrants have ballooned the population of Muslims in Lower Assam, then how would they explain their high growth rate in the districts of Tinsukia (89.56%), Golaghat (97.24%) and Dibrugarh (68.43%), which are in Upper Assam, where the presence of migrant Muslims is negligible?”
Mannan then turns the spotlight on Table 4, based on the Census figures of 2001 and 2011. It shows that districts with a growth rate of 21% and above also have a high percentage of Muslims. What explains this phenomenon? Mannan chooses two districts – Jorhat and Dhubri – for comparison. In 2001-2011, Dhubri registered the highest growth rate (24.4%) among all districts of Assam. By contrast, Jorhat clocked the lowest growth rate of 9.3%.
This gulf between the population growth rates was mirrored in other social indicators. Dhubri had an infant mortality rate of 72 in 2011 as against Jorhat’s 57. In Dhubri, there was a doctor for every 10,844 people as compared to one for every 7,189 people in Jorhat. Dhubri’s literacy rate of 48.21% was far behind Jorhat’s 76.21%. There was one lower primary school for every 1,129 people in Dhubri as against one for every 638 people in Jorhat. Dhubri had a bank branch for every 29,239 people while Jorhat had one for every 11,355 people. The per capita loan disbursal in Jorhat was three times more than Dhubri’s.
It is truism in demographic studies that population explosion is a consequence of poverty, illiteracy, insufficient health and sanitation services, and a sluggish economy. “This is precisely true of Assam too,” Mannan writes.
Indeed, many foot soldiers of the Assam agitation have veered around to thinking that the presence of Bangladeshi Muslims is not as high as was previously believed. One of them is popular TV anchor and author of Assam After Independence Mrinal Talukdar. In his college days, he was deeply engaged with the All Assam Students Union’s movement. “During those days I believed Bangladeshi Muslims had a substantial presence in Assam,” Talukdar told Scroll.in. “I have a neutral position on the issue now. I am willing to go by whatever number the National Register of Citizens throws up.”
Mannan says he is certain that if the ongoing exercise to update the National Register of Citizens is carried out honestly, Bangladeshi Muslims in Assam will be counted in thousands, not in lakhs.
Regardless of how many Bangladeshi Muslims the National Register of Citizens identifies, there is no denying that the truth about Assam’s demography was sacrificed on the altar of politics. It seems spurious theories about Bangladeshi Muslims were spun not out of ignorance, but with intent. In this, two Assam police officers and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh played a crucial role. The RSS deftly turned the All Assam Students Union’s movement against outsiders, that is, Indians from other states, into one against foreigners, that is, Bangladeshi Muslims.
The second part of this series will look at how the two police officers and the RSS changed the course of the Assam movement. This is the first part of a two-part series. Ajaz Ashraf is a journalist in Delhi.
How two police officers and RSS changed the script of the Assam agitation against outsiders in 1980s
When it started in 1979, All Assam Students Union’s stir was
against Indians from other states, but it soon morphed into a movement
against Muslim immigrants.
In 1979, the All Assam Students Union launched a mass
agitation to evict outsiders. By outsiders, the union’s leaders meant
Indians from elsewhere who were perceived to control Assam’s economy. In
a few months, though, they changed tack and started railing against
foreigners, specifically illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.
This
alteration in the course of the agitation has long been ascribed to the
union’s leaders realising that the Assamese people were bothered more
about Bangladeshi migrants than Indians from other states. Abdul Mannan
turns this thesis on its head. He shows the change came about in no
small measure because of the efforts of two senior police officers and
the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.
In his book Infiltration: Genesis of Assam Movement,
published last year, the former professor of statistics at Gauhati
University cites the forgotten memoir of one of the officers to show how
they courted the union’s leaders and persuaded them to redirect popular
anger towards Bangladeshi immigrants.
The officers were Hiranya Kumar Bhattacharyya and Premkanta Mahanta. The memoir Mannan draws on is Rajbhaganar Para Kal Thokalaike
– the title roughly translates as “from dethronement to the plantain
grove” – which Mahanta wrote and self-published in 1994. His intention
behind writing it, Mahanta stated, was “to help historians with some
truths” that might be forgotten.
Mahanta’s story begins in 1978,
the year Golap Borbora’s Janata Party swept the Congress from power in
Assam. The Janata Party was a medley of organisations, including the
Jana Sangh, which would be rechristened the Bharatiya Janata Party in
1980.
On October 1, 1978, the new government appointed Deputy
Inspector General of Police Bhattacharyya to head the Border Police
Division. It was a historic “historic event for Assam”, Mahanta writes
in his memoir, as was his own appointment in the same division the
following February.
Mahanta’s was not a routine transfer. He
claims that Bhattacharyya “zealously…got me transferred from the post of
Head of the Police Training Camp to that of the SP of the Border Police
Division”.
By then, Bhattacharyya had already started identifying
and expelling Bangladeshi migrants, Muslim and Hindu, from Nalapara,
Mangaldoi and Tamulpur in Rangia, kicking off a political storm, Mahanta
writes. “I affirm that...the six-year-long Assam movement [1979 to
1985] would not have taken place if we hadn’t come together at this
point,” he says.
In March 1979, about a month after Mahanta joined
the Border Police Division, the All Assam Students Union held a
conference in Sibsagar, now Sivasagar, where Prafulla Kumar Mahanta was
elected its president and Bhrigu Kumar Phukan the general secretary. The
conference, Mannan notes, adopted 21 resolutions, one of which spoke of
the “menace posed to the existence of the Assamese by the outsiders who
controlled Assam’s economy”. The idea of Bangladeshi immigrants
threatening the state’s cultural identity had not yet been formulated.
Fuelling the fire
That
same month, Hiralal Patowari, MP from Mangaldoi, died, necessitating a
bye-election. On April 27, 1979, the customary notice to revise the
electoral rolls went out in Mangaldoi. The two police officers feared
that Bangladeshi immigrants would try to get their names on the rolls –
and use it to claim citizenship. To thwart them, Mahanta thought of
sending a Border Police Division officer with every Registrar of Voters.
The problem was, Bhattacharyya pointed out, there was not sufficient
time to train them for such a task.
Bhattacharyya had another
idea. He persuaded Chief Secretary RS Paramasivam to ask Chief Election
Commissioner SL Shakdhar for more time to revise the roll. Shakdhar gave
them an extra week. But instead of trying to prevent Bangladeshi
migrants from enrolling as voters, Mahanta writes, Bhattacharyya “came
up with the idea that since more time was granted, the names of foreign
nationals on the rolls of 1978 might also be struck off.”
This was
a cumbersome process. The rules demanded that for a name to be removed
from a particular electoral register, a voter from that polling booth
must submit a complaint in a form costing 10 paise and another voter
from the same booth must second the complaint. Bhattacharyya and Mahanta
figured that mobilising public opinion was the only way to achieve
their goal, and they launched a publicity blitz. The media began
tracking the identification process.
Next, Mahanta suggested
that they should rope in leaders who could sway public opinion on the
matter. So, Bhattacharyya hosted Purbanchaliya Loka Parishad’s Nibaran
Bora and Asam Jatiyatabadi Dal’s Nagen Hazirka for dinner. Both were
known to Mahanta from school. The memoir does not disclose what they
discussed over dinner other than that they decided to focus on the
students union leaders.
“Almost about the same time in March, the
news of Sri Prafulla Kumar Mahanta being elected as president and Shri
Bhrigu Phukan being elected as general secretary of the All Assam
Students Union…was published,” Mahanta writes. “The 21-Point Charter of
the AASU carried in it a significant point of the alarming proportion of
the unbridled influx of outsiders into Assam. At our suggestion, the
two student leaders were brought from their University hostels in order
to drive home to them the problem caused by foreign nationals…We
provided them with adequate data and information. Thenceforth, they
agreed to give priority to the issue of foreign nationals and deletion
of their names from voters’ list.”
Mahanta does not identify who organised his and Bhattacharyya’s meeting with the student leaders.
The
two officers were successful in achieving their objective: at its
executive meeting on May 23, 1979, the students union adopted a
resolution calling for a 12-hour state-wide bandh the next month to
press for the expulsion of “Bangladeshi infiltrators”.
In the
meantime, as names started being struck off voter lists in Mangaldoi,
Congress leaders complained to the Election Commission that “police had
been hatching a conspiracy by indicting genuine Indian citizens as
foreigners”, Mahanta recalls. The commission ordered a halt to the
deportation of allegedly illegal migrants and deletion of their names
from the electoral rolls. By then, however, complaints had been received
about 47,658 voters and 36,780 of them had been identified as
foreigners, Mahanta notes.
Mahanta, despite his candour, does not
mention what became of these thousands of people identified as
foreigners, Manan points out. “Were they driven out of Assam?” he asks.
“Or is it that they are still in Assam? What is the status of their
citizenship?” All Assam Students Union leaders meet Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Photo via archive.is/txIiq
A cause transformed
The
controversy over Mangaldoi’s electoral rolls became a lightning rod for
the Assam agitation. Successive governments fell, and the students
union’s war cry was now “three Ds” – detection of Bangladeshi
immigrants, deletion of their names from voter lists, and their
deportation. Assam went into shutdown for nearly a year.
In April
1980, Union Home Minister Giani Singh visited Assam to try and break the
impasse. This was followed by a midnight call from Prime Minister
Indira Gandhi to Governor LP Singh, asking whether December 31, 1965 as
the cutoff date for identifying foreigners – anyone who could not prove
they had lived in Assam before that date would be deemed a foreigner and
expelled – would be acceptable to the people. It was not to the
political leadership the governor turned to.
“The governor called
Bhattacharyya and wanted to know if the student leaders would accept the
proposal,” Mahanta writes in his memoir. “Bhattacharyya with certainty
assured the governor that it would be accepted.” Clearly, the governor
was well aware of Bhattacharyya’s relationship with the student leaders.
Bhattacharyya
immediately went to Mahanta’s residence. “We were overjoyed, sensing
the possibility of such a great success,” Mahanta recalls. “With rapture
and passion we awaited the sun to rise. That night we imagined a bunch
of thoughts and ambitious plans. Rented buildings of the Maruwari, where
the office of the Border Police Division was housed whence the
foreigners expulsion movement originated, we will purchase that and
construct a memorial there.”
Of their own role in the movement,
Mahanta declares, “If we two had not come together, the movement called
‘Assam movement’ would not have happened. I repeat it would not have
happened.”
In 1981, Bhattacharyya was dismissed from service and
imprisoned for a year under the National Security Act for his
involvement in the Assam agitation. Subsequently, the Supreme Court set
aside his dismissal and granted him post-retirement benefits.
But did the two police officers act out of their own conviction? Or were they merely puppets whose strings someone else pulled?
In the shadows
In those days, Bhattacharyya came across as an enigmatic personality. When the journalist Chaitanya Kalbag, then at India Today magazine,
met Bhattacharyya in 1983, he lived in a luxurious house bizarrely
called Wilderness. To Kalbag, Bhattacharyya cavilled against people who
believed the Assam agitation against foreigners was communal. After
Mangaldoi, Bhattacharyya claimed, 55% of the 5.8 lakh foreigners he had
helped detect were Hindu.
Bhattacharyya was also vehemently
opposed to communists. “Every Hindu [Bangladeshi] means a vote for the
communists,” he told Kalbag. “The entire Brahmaputra valley, once an
oasis of nationalism in this desert of insurgency, is surrounded by
Marxist expansionists and Bengali cultural expansionists.”
Mannan
believes Bhattacharyya and Mahanta were deeply influenced by the
ideology of the RSS, which, alarmed at the Left’s growing clout in
Assam, was willing to raise the spectre of “global multinational
neo-imperialist forces”. Not only had the Left won 24 seats in the 1978
Assembly election, it was “ruling the roost” in the universities. The
RSS wanted to smother its ideological rival in Assam, says Mannan.
In
his book, Mannan quotes leaders of the RSS, the BJP and the Asom Gana
Parishad, the name the All Assam Students Union adopted to fight
elections, to establish that the Hindutva forces were deeply involved in
the Assam movement. Even Prime Minister Narendra Modi worked there
during those stormy years. “A well-known [former] BJP state president
also revealed in one of his private conversations [to him] that during
the Assam agitation, Narendra Modi used to move about as a pillion rider
behind him on his scooter in many places in Guwahati,” Mannan writes.
But
was it really the RSS that shifted the focus of the Assam agitation
from Indian outsiders to illegal Bangladeshis? Yes, declares The Last Battle of Saraighat: The story of the BJP’s rise in the North-east by Rajat
Sethi and Shubhrastha. The book’s foreword is by RSS leader and BJP
general secretary Ram Madhav. The book identifies Shubhrastha to be
working with Madhav’s office and Sethi as the political adviser of
Manipur Chief Minister N Biren Singh, who left the Congress for the BJP
in 2016. Considering such credentials of its authors, the Last Battle of Saraighatshould be treated as an authoritative voice from the Sangh Parivar.
“RSS first transformed the agitation from being anti-bahirgat to being an anti-videshi
movement,” Sethi and Shubhrastha write, using the Assamese expressions
for outsider and foreigner. “In gradual course of time, the sentiments
were further directed against the immigrant Bangladeshis and later
against the Bangladeshi Muslims.”
It was precisely the trajectory the Assam movement took.
The
transformation of the Assam movement into a communal enterprise
happened in 1980, as Mahanta’s memoir and Mannan’s book show. The
timeline provided in The Last Battle of Saraighat confirms this. “After a series of meetings, in 1980, the RSS stated its opinion that Hindus were sharanarthis (asylum seekers) and Muslims were anupraveshkaaris
(infiltrators),” Sethi and Shubhrastha write. In this view, the Hindus
had fled Bangladesh to escape religious persecution while the Muslims
had slipped into Assam in search of better economic opportunities.
“Therefore,
RSS cleverly delineated its position on the Bangladeshi migration
issue,” Sethi and Shubhrastha write. “It took a severe position against
the Muslim migrants, articulating its idea of selective protection to
Hindu migrants in Assam.” In doing so, the RSS preyed upon the fear of
Bangladeshi Muslims demographically colonising Assam. The fear was
insidiously exaggerated, as the first part of this series shows.
The popular TV anchor and author of Assam After Independence Mrinal Talukdarwas
a foot soldier of the Assam agitation. “It has always been an article
of faith in Left circles that the Assam movement was a CIA project
called Brahmaputra,” he said. “The theory is that the Left had gained
West Bengal and Tripura and Assam was in its crosshairs. The Left had to
be checked. Obviously, it is just a theory, but there is no doubt that
subnationalism killed the Left in Assam. In hindsight, there is a case
for saying that the Assam movement was hijacked.”
The Left was
indeed killed in Assam, but so were many people for a cause that was
framed differently from how it had been conceived. This is the second part of a two-part series. Ajaz Ashraf is a journalist in Delhi.
Communalising Population Growth: Understanding Demographic Data
Ram Puniyani
The biases and misconceptions about
conversions and population growth have been used by communal forces to
divide the society. This became apparent once again when Minister of
state of Home, Kiren Rijuju tweeted that that Hindu population is
decreasing in the country as Hindus don’t convert and that minorities in
India are flourishing unlike in the neighbouring countries.
Threat of decline in Hindu population
and increase in population of minorities is being propagated time and
over again. As per the data of 2011 census figures, Hindu population now
stands at 79.8 % and Muslim population at 14.23%. “The data on
Population by Religious Communities of Census 2011 show that between
2001 and 2011, Hindu population grew by 16.76 per cent, while that of
Muslims by 24.6 per cent. The population of both communities grew faster
during the previous decade, at 19.92 per cent and 29.52 per cent,
respectively. As a long-term trend, say demographers, the communities’
growth ratesare
converging.” This means that the decadal rates of growth of both
communities is declining and converging closer to each other.
This is pointer to the fact that while
charting out the future projections it is important to keep in mind that
the rate of growth of Muslim population will be falling and will
stabilise closer to that of rate of rise Hindu population. In the total
population Muslims will remain a religious minority for the times to
come. Interestingly the population increase of Hindus during the period
of 2001 to 2011 has been 133 millions, which is close to the total
population of Muslims in 2001.The scare being spread through word of
mouth campaign and through social media about Muslim population taking
over the Hindu population holds no water, as there are clear trends of
decline in the decadal rate of growth of Muslim population as well.
The demographers point out that the
higher rates of fertility are due to lack of education and poor health
facilities. Muslims in Kerala have a lower fertility rate than many
Hindu communities in North India and even in Kerala. The economic
profile of Kerala Muslims is much different than the Muslims in Assam,
West Bengal, UP and Maharashtra for example. If we broaden this point we
will see that the rise in population among Dalits (Schedule castes) and
Adivasis (Scheduled Tribes) is much higher as such . As per the 2011
census STs are 8.6% while they were 6.23 % according to 1951 census. SCs
now are 16.6%, while as per 1951 they were around 15%.
As such the whole truth will show us
that the propaganda of communal forces has nothing to do with reality of
society and deeper causes of the same. It is in this background that
the likes of Praveen Toagadia said that two child norm should be
imposed, while the likes of Sakshi Maharaj and Sadhvi Prachi have been
extolling the Hindus to produce more children.
BJP President has called for the ‘Look
North East’ to raise the scare about the Christian population in the
North East. This primarily Tribal area saw the increase in percentage of
Christians in the decades of 1931-1951. The rise in percentage of
Christian population has a lot to do with the spread of Civil
Administration with Independence and also with the spread of education
in the region. Country wide we can see that the percentage of Christians
is static from last few decades. If at all it has declined and
stabilised. If we see from 1971, we see that Christian population was
2.60% (1971), 2.44 (1981), 2.34 (1991), 2.30 (2001) and 2.30 (2011). In
the meanwhile the propaganda of Missionary activities and increase in
the number of Christians has dominated the scene. The anti Christian
violence came to the public attention with the ghastly murder of Graham
Stewarts Stains (1999). Dara Singh of Bajrang Dal, which is affiliated
to RSS, incited the local people that the Pastor is doing conversions
which is against Hindus. Wadhwa Commission, which investigated Pastor
Stains murder, concluded that he was not involved in the work of
conversion and that in Keonjhar, Manoharpur Orrisa where the Pastor was
working, there was no increase in the percentage of Christian
population. Similarly Kandhmal anti-Christian violence was unleashed on
the pretext of murder of Swami Laxmananand. Gujarat also saw anti
Christian activities again due to propaganda that the Missionaries are
converting. At the same time we see that the national population of
Christians remains static. Some people do allege that conversions to
Christianity are there but the converts are hiding their religion, this
is again a matter of conjuncture and nothing definite can be said. Any
way it cannot be a large number in any case.
As such conversions have been a part of
the agenda of Hindu nationalism times and over again. During freedom
movement two parallel processes of conversions were going on. One was
Tanzeem, which was to convert the people to Islam, the other was Shuddhi
which was aimed at those who were supposed to have left their
‘religion-home’ and were converted toalienreligions.
The premise was that conversion to other religions has made them impure
so they need to be brought back through a process of purification. Last
several decades RSS-VHP-Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram have been active in what
is called Ghar Wapasi (return Home) to bring back the Dalits and
Adivasis who it is alleged have been converted through force (to Islam)
and allurement or fraud (to Christianity). This Ghar Wapasi campaign has
been undertaken through many newly devised rituals like bath in hot
spring or rituals around fire. This has been rampant inAdivasi areasand in slums-villages.
Adivasis are animists, while RSS claims
they are Hindus. To Hinduize them Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, now runs a
growing network of schools and hostels in large numbers in North East.
Such assertions and accompanying activities have more to with politics
rather than social welfare as such. The attempt of RSS combine is to
link religion with Nationalism.
Minority report: Muslim families shrinking fastest among Indian communities
HT Correspondent, Hindustan Times, New Delhi
Updated: May 21, 2016 00:16 IST
In the Muslim community the average family size fell from 5.61 to 5.15, the report released by the home ministry said.
(Abhishek Saha/HT Photo)
Indian families are getting smaller and the decline is sharpest among
Muslims, religious census data released on Friday said, in what could
be signs of rising literacy levels in the community.
The report of the census carried out in 2011 was released almost a
year after the government revealed religion-wise population figures from
the same year.
The latest data said the country’s average family size in 2011 was
4.45 members, down from 4.67 a decade earlier, a drop of 5.3%.
In the Muslim community the average family size fell from 5.61 to
5.15, the report released by the home ministry said. The reduction was
sharper -- 11.1% -- for Muslim households headed by men while for
families headed by women it was 4.47%.
The Muslim community is often targeted by Hindu right-wing groups of
having large families and a higher population growth rate. Last year,
BJP parliamentarian Sakshi Maharaj and Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP)
Sadhvi Prachi had separately asked Hindu women to bear at least four
children to counter the growth in Muslim population.
Religious population data released last year showed that the
community grew by 24.6 percent between 2001 and 2011. At 17.22 crore,
the community formed 14.2% of India’s 121 crore population. With a
population of 96.63 crore, Hindus constitute 79.8% of the population.
Data released on Friday also showed the average size of Hindu
families declined by 5.02% over the decade, Christian households by
6.47%, Sikh by 7.44%, Buddhist by 5.96% and Jain by 5.5%.
The average household size was higher in male headed households as
compared to those headed by females across all religious communities.
Overall, “Christians had the highest percentage of households headed
by females (17.4%) followed next by Buddhist (15.9%). The lowest
percentage of female headed households is in Jain community (11.5%),”
the report said.
The data showed that the difference in household size between
different religious communities wasn’t as big as was often made out.
Besides, the continuing decline has also narrowed the gap in family size
between different religious communities.
In 2011, the average size of a Hindu family was 4.35. In contrast, a
Muslim household had 5.15 members, a Christian household 4.05, Sikh
household 4.85, Buddhist household 4.1 and a Jain household 4.45
members.
In 2011, an average Muslim family just had 0.8 more persons than a Hindu household as compared to 1.03 persons in 2001.
The BJP promises to sniff out intruders in exotic Assam
FOLLOWING the crooked finger of the Brahmaputra river east and north
towards its Tibetan origin, Assam looks like no other place in India.
Its lush riverine lands have attracted incomers since ancient times. The
result is a medley of peoples of varied languages, dress, cuisines—and
political interests.
Yet in the current state election the prize will go either to the
incumbent Congress party or to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of the
prime minister, Narendra Modi. For the first time, it is making inroads
into India’s north-east, as the spectre of illegal immigration from
Bangladesh threatens to realign politics in the BJP’s favour. The third
parties that represent specific Assamese groups have been shunted into
supporting roles, setting the stage for a battle royal between India’s
two chief national parties. Should the BJP win in Assam, which with 33m
people is the biggest of the north-east’s seven states, the party will
be able to claim a brand that now works in every corner of the country.
Mr Modi’s familiar emphasis on the economy goes down well in Assam.
But turning the state’s complicated human terrain to the advantage of
his party, which has its roots in the Hindi-speaking north and west,
requires attention to local detail. The Assamese are anxious to preserve
their cultural identity, a mix that combines the easternmost
Indo-European stock with ethnic groups of Tibeto-Burman and Tai origin
(ie, related to present-day groups in Thailand and Laos), clusters of
endemic tribes, and also the “tea tribes” brought by the British from
east-central India to work plantations. The BJP’s standard appeal to
Hindu-first Indian nationalism never found a wide audience in a hybrid
state with occasionally secessionist tendencies.
But Assam also happens to be 34% Muslim, more than any state bar
Jammu and Kashmir. Over the past quarter-century the proportion of
Muslims has grown rapidly, even as the proportion of Assamese speakers
has dipped below 50%. Here the BJP’s strategist, Amit Shah, scented
opportunity, claiming in November that the state government was
conspiring with a smaller Muslim party, the All India United Democratic
Front, to let Bangladeshis pour over the border and change the
demographics in the party’s favour. Bangladesh, Mr Modi has also
claimed, sounding like an Indian Donald Trump, was sending intruders
over the border; his government, given power in the state, would round
them up and kick them out. Bengali-speaking Muslims feel threatened,
even though many live in communities that have been in Assam for
generations, if not centuries. Many have decamped from Congress, their
usual party, to the Muslim third party, because it is devoted to their
protection.
Though the greatest number of the state’s Bengali-speaking Muslims
are descendants of immigrants who arrived under British supervision in
the first decades of the 20th century, no one really knows how many have
entered Assam illegally since Bangladesh was founded in 1971.
Supposedly to determine the number, a National Register of Citizens is
being compiled—for Assam only.
Publication of its findings has been postponed several times before
the election and will not happen now until after the vote is declared on
May 19th. The chances are that relatively few Bangladeshis will be
decreed to be in Assam and due for deportation. After all, why would
great numbers of poor Bangladeshis want to move to Assam in the first
place? Its living standards have improved greatly under the government
of the chief minister, Tarun Gogoi, yet they still lag far behind those
of Bangladesh. Still, that truth sits uncomfortably with those keen to
work up communal divisions for electoral gain.
Juggling with facts about Muslims in Assam
Parbina Rashid
The illegal migration theory has become the ready ammunition for anyone who wants to talk about the growth rate among Muslims. But they overlook the subsidiary theory of state reorganisations! In 1971, Assam had a much larger area.
IF there is an election, can politics of religion be far behind? Especially where Muslims constitute 34.2 per cent of the population and they are in a majority in nine of the state's 34 districts?
During the Assam Assembly Elections 2016, this kind of politics did take the centre-stage. The last few months saw parties playing politics of polarisation like never before. The elections also saw psephologists and scholars commenting alike on the astronomical growth rate in Muslim population. One such comment was by Prof Nonigopal Mahanta. He said the rise in the number of Muslim-majority districts in the state from two in 1971 to nine in 2011 was a glaring proof of the increasing infiltration of foreigners (read Bangladeshis) into Assam.
Incidentally, I once had the privilege of working with Prof Mahanta when I joined the Women Studies Research Centre, Gauhati University, as a project fellow for a brief period.
The illegal migration theory has become the ready ammunition for anyone who wants to talk about the growth rate among Muslims. But they overlook the subsidiary theory of state reorganisations! In 1971, Assam had a much larger area. It lost the landmass and a major chunk of its population in the form of Meghalaya, Manipur and Tripura, the three states carved out of Assam in January 1972. The phenomenon was repeated in February 1987 when Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh were granted statehood. Needless to say, the population Assam lost to these newly formed states was non-Muslim. Assam alone was left with the Muslim concentration.
While no one denies illegal migrations from neighbouring Bangladesh, is it not the time to look at the issue not just through the political prism but also from a socio-cultural point of view?
The settlement of Muslims in Assam can be traced as far back as the eighth century when the Turks from Turkistan reached Assam crossing the Himalayas. They settled in Darrang district.
In 1874, the Muslim population of Assam was 1,104,601 and its percentage to the total population was 28.8 per cent. It increased to 3,441,554 in 1941. This was during the Raj when the migration of Bengali Hindus and Muslims to Assam was totally legal.
However, sentiments have flared up from time to time. During 1952-’71, over two lakh Muslims were expelled from Assam as “East Pakistanis.” After the creation of Bangladesh till 2002, at least one lakh Muslims were deported.”
The indigenous Muslims of the state would, in fact, want to be more at par with their Bangladeshi counterparts when it comes to grave issues like Mothers Mortality Rate which is 300 per 100,000 births as against Bangladesh's 176, a far better scenario than most states in India. Or, for that matter, Infant Mortality Rate which is 43.19 per 1000 births in India and 54 in Assam, which are much higher than Bangladesh's 32.
The PEW Research Center has released a report (2nd April 2015); which gives the projections of populations in times to come. It says that in India the population of Hindus will fall down from present 79.5 % to 76.7% and the Muslim population will rise up to 18% by 2050. The population of Indian Muslims will overtake the population of Muslims in Indonesia and Pakistan. Disturbed by these projections Sadhvi Prachi advised that Hindu women should produce 40 children each while Sakshi Maharaj, BJP member of Parliament advised four children each for Hindu women. Time and over again many a leaders from Right wing Hindu formations have been advising the Hindu women to serve the ‘nation’ by producing more children, and interestingly the celibate ones’ amongst these advisers are more vociferous on these matters!
Given that these projections may be close to the reality, how do we explain the rise of Muslim population in India, is it due to Islam? If it is due to Islam than logically the countries ahead of India (Pakistan and Indonesia) should keep the same pace and remain ahead of India as far as population of Muslims is concerned. How come the number of Muslims in India will overtake the number in other countries, if Islam is the reason? Simply this totally smashes the argument of religion being the determining factor in matters related to population growth. Within India itself; one obverses that there are serious regional differences between areas like Malabar Coast of Kerala and the UP-Bihar region. Even in the strife torn Kashmir valley one noted in earlier decades that the percentage of increase of Hindu population was more than that of the Muslims in the valley.
The second argument is that Muslims don’t take to family planning as their religion prohibits them so this increase. In his book 'Family planning and legacy of Islam' Islamic scholar A R Omran of Cairo dispels the myth that Islam is inherently against family planning, as per him there is no text in Koran prohibiting prevention of pregnancy. In Islamic countries like Turkey and Indonesia family planning methods are quite popular. In Turkey for example 63% of the population in the reproductive age group uses contraception and in Indonesia the figure is 48%. In India the number of Muslim couples in the child bearing age practicing family planning in 1970 was 9% (Hindus 14%) and in 1980, 22.5% (Hindus 36.1%) (Operation Research Group: Baroda 1981) Thus the number of additional Muslims taking to family planning is keeping pace with the number of Hindus doing the same.
Dr Rakesh Basant, an economist with IIM Ahmadabad and a member of the Sachar committee, points out that at present "there is (only) a 0.7-point difference between the Muslim and the average fertility rates. While the average fertility rate is 2.9, for Muslims it is 3.6." He emphasizes that 37 per cent of Muslims use contraceptives against a national average of 48 per cent. Therefore, contraceptive usage is about 10 percentage points lower among Muslims than the average. However, there are significant regional variations. The report observes, contraceptive usage goes up with education and development and all communities benefit from such changes.
So where do we look for answer to this puzzle of Muslim population rising more than that of Hindus in India? Just let’s have a look at the regional differences in the population growth of Hindus in India. Here the gross observation is that in the more literate Southern states like Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala the rise in the percentage of even the Hindu population is less than the percentage rise of Hindu population in the northern states like UP, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh. As far as the figures in India are concerned large number of Muslims lives in the ghetto like situations or in the outskirts of cities, and is on the lower side of the income profile. As the much discussed Sachar committee report points out the marginalization of Muslim minorities in employment and major business opportunities has led them to a condition of economic downslide or stagnation at best, not keeping pace with the overall economic growth which the country has witnessed.
This lack of equity has worsened due to the communal violence, which has led to their insecurity and ghettoisation. These two phenomenons have made them vulnerable and they have become more susceptible to the influence of conservative maulanas advising against the family planning etc.
The large section of Indian Muslims are coming from the background of untouchable Shudras, whose economic starting point has been very low, this added on by the lack of affirmative action for them and the physical insecurity has led to the present situation where the less educated men and women from this community tend to have more number of children. In contrast the percentage of Hindus in Pakistan has declined for very different reasons, the major decline being due to the mass migration away from Pakistan and Bangla Desh in the aftermath of partition. There percentage is very small, though they also face similar persecution in those countries, the comparisons are difficult. Interestingly in South Asia, the communal problem does persist, and religious majority in India suffers as minority in Pakistan and Bangla Desh.
At personal note while I was working in IIT Mumbai for long years, I could see that the number of children per family is more as you go down from the professors to the peons and sweepers. Also roughly those living in Mumbai slums have higher number of children, irrespective of their religion.
The situations in different countries in sub continent are not comparable on many counts. What is needed is an empathetic attitude to the deprived communities, going beyond the obvious and to solve the problem in right earnest.
--
Muslim population grows 24%, slower than previous decade
Bharti Jain, TNN | Jan 22, 2015
NEW DELHI: The latest census data on the population of religious groups,
set to be released shortly, shows a 24% rise in the Muslim population
between 2001 and 2011, with the community's share of total population
rising from 13.4% to 14.2% over the 10-year period.
The data accessed by TOI showed that
the most rapid rise in the share of Muslims in the total population was
witnessed in Assam. Muslims constituted 30.9% of the state's population
in 2001, but accounted for a 34.2% share a decade later. The state has
had a persisting problem of the illegal influx of Bangladeshi
immigrants.
West Bengal, another state where illegal immigration from Bangladesh
has been an old phenomenon, has also registered a rise in the share of
Muslims in total population from 25.2% in 2001 to 27% in 2011, a growth
of 1.9 percentage points over the 10 years, more than double the
national average.
Uttarakhand, significantly, has also reported
a sharp rise in the share of Muslim population from 11.9% to 13.9%, a
growth of 2 percentage points against the countrywide growth of 0.8
percentage points between 2001 and 2011.
Other states with a
significant rise in the share of Muslims in the total population as per
the 2011 census were Kerala (from 24.7% to 26.6%), Goa (6.8% to 8.4%),
Jammu & Kashmir (67% to 68.3%), Haryana (5.8% to 7%) and Delhi
(11.7% to 12.9%).
The census office had compiled this data by March last year, but the
UPA government held back the release, perhaps fearing political
repercussions of the findings on the eve of Lok Sabha elections. Union
home minister Rajnath Singh last week gave his go-ahead when Registrar
General of India and Census Commissioner C Chandramouli asked whether
the "sensitiive' figures should be released.
Singh on Wednesday confirmed that the data would be made public soon.
Interestingly, Manipur was the only state to show a fall in Muslim
population as a percentage of its total population (a fall of 0.4
percentage points).
The high growth of Muslim population in
Assam has been intensely debated and has been a source of political
confrontation. In fact, a report prepared on the issue in 1998 by the
then governor of Assam, Lt Gen (Retd) S K Sinha, had warned that illegal
immigration was slowly changing the demographic profile in several
districts. The Supreme Court has on more than one occasion expressed
concern over the change in demography and chided the government for not
stopping infiltration from Bangladesh.
source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Muslim-population-grows-24-slower-than-previous-decade/articleshow/45972687.cms
VHP reacts to Census: We will ask Hindus to reproduce more
Deeptimaan Tiwary, TNN | Jan 22, 2015, 07.48 PM IST
READ MORE VHP joint general secretary|Surendra Jain|All India Muslim Majlis-e Mushawarat
VHP reacts to Census: We will ask Hindus to reproduce more
Muslim scholars have, however, countered this fear-mongering by saying that the high growth rate of Muslims is owing to their poor socio-economic status which stands with those of Dalits and the resultant lack of education.
NEW DELHI: Even though the data on religion-based census is yet to be released officially, right wing Hindu groups are already up in arms over the TOI report showing 24% growth in Muslims between 2001 and 2011.
VHP said its stand has been vindicated and it would make fresh appeal to Hindus to reproduce more. It would also begin an agitation in the country to press government to enforce uniform civil code. Muslim scholars have, however, countered this fear-mongering by saying that the high growth rate of Muslims is owing to their poor socio-economic status which stands with those of Dalits and the resultant lack of education.
They say the census report should wake up the government on the poor state of Muslims in the country and prod them into doing something about it. VHP joint general secretary Surendra Jain told TOI, "What we have been saying since 1966, has been vindicated by this census. We will put pressure on the government to enforce uniform civil code. We will push for making family planning mandatory for all. Muslims are trying to overtake Hindu population through various ways such as infiltration and love jihad apart from reproduction. So Hindu's reproducing more is a good option to challenge this. This call is already being made." However, when pointed out that the Muslim growth rate has actually been decreasing decade after decade, Jain called it "statistical jugglery" which could not take away from the fact that Muslims were growing faster than Hindus.
"It does not mean that they will not attack us. The basic fact of the matter is that they have grown from 13.4% of India's population to 14.2%," Jain said. He also warned that if Muslims kept growing at this rate they would demand a separate nation. "During 1941, the Muslim population in the country was just 18% and they demanded a separate nation. If their growth continues at this pace, another Jinnah will stand up and demand division of the nation," said Jain.
READ ALSO: 'Bangladeshi Muslims are reason behind significant rise in Muslim population of the country'
President of the All India Muslim Majlis-e Mushawarat Dr Zafar-ul-Islam Khan said, "It has been proven through various studies that people of a certain strata of society, irrespective of their faith, have similar social behaviour which is reflected in their growth rate. Rich and educated Muslims too have as few children as rich and educated people of other faith. It has been revealed in the Sachar committee report and pretty fairly visible in the country that Muslims fair poorer than even Dalits on various indices of socio-economic well-being such as education and employment."
To illustrate his point, Islam gave the example of his own colony. "Government benefits do not reach Muslims. There are no schools in their colony. I stay in Abu Fazal Enclave, where you will find well-to-do Muslims living. There is a police station here but no school. There is not even a milk booth here."
Blaming it on politics of religion perpetrated by parties of all hues, Islam said, "It is sad that citizens of this country are not being viewed as people but Hindu and Muslim."
o o o
[see also: Where Are India’s 2011 Census Figures on Religion?
ANOTHER KIND OF POISONING
As if the nearly insurmountable ecological challenges were not enough, some parts of the Sunderbans are now having to battle the spectre of communalism, writes Uddalak Mukherjee
Bodoland’s demography is one reason why trouble will fester rather than abate: it has nothing to do with illegal migration. It has everything to do with the fact of how a minority of the population controls the lives and destinies of the others
The grim and bloody incidents in the Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC), that narrow wedge of land in western Assam where everyone is a minority — or rather a non- majority since their numbers don’t have it — have been aggravated by the verbal violence of our politicians, the blame game and the total incapacity of the State government to deal with existing conditions.
For the second time in less than two years, thousands of Muslims and smaller numbers of Bodos are fleeing their homes, frightened by their complete vulnerability to gun-wielding terrorists, the nightmare of seeing loved ones, ranging from infants to elders, butchered in front of them and, perhaps worse still, the fearful knowledge that the government can’t protect them.
Today, the capacity of the Congress-led government in Assam to ensure the protection of minorities is being gravely questioned. For in every major communal clash or bout of violence in the Bodo areas — 1993, 2008, 2012 and now — a Congress Party government has ruled Dispur.
Complex play of factors
The State government’s seeming failure may be a tipping point for the last round of the Lok Sabha election elsewhere in the country. Ironically, the greatest violence in the country during an otherwise seemingly flawless massive election exercise has been, ironically, in the home area of one of the country’s Election Commissioners, H.S. Brahma, who is incidentally a Bodo.
There is a larger failure here too, of “us,” of civil society, researchers and scholars, the media, despite the courageous and silent role of dedicated activists and groups which have tried for years to reduce the tension between Bodos, Muslims and other ethnic groups in western Assam.
While the State government has directly blamed the shadowy Songbijit faction of the National Democratic Front of Boroland for the massacres, there is, as always, a complex play of factors here.
One is the fact that the militants were under tremendous pressure from security forces since they killed an Additional Superintendent of Police in Sonitpur district. The police went after them with a vengeance, taking down several cadres; one police official believes it is this pressure that forced the faction to hit vulnerable targets, to take the heat off, get time to regroup while also stoking communal fears and exposing the shortcomings of the State government.
In addition, a statement by a prominent Bodo leader, Pramila Rani Brahma of the Bodoland People’s Front (BPF), complicated matters and triggered outrage even from the Congress, the BPF’s coalition partner at the State level. She said (without revealing the basis of her information) that since Muslims had voted against the party’s Lok Sabha candidate, he was unlikely to do well. This has led to calls for her arrest.
Yet, the trail of blood goes back, unlike many other events and challenges in the region — barely 20 years. Before 1993, there had been few clashes involving Muslims and Bodos. Later, an armed group, the Bodo Liberation Tigers (BLT), attacked Santhals as well as Muslims. For their own safety, they were placed in relief camps, which again came under attack. Accounts say that not less than 50 were killed in those incidents.
In 2002, there were a series of attacks; in one, non-Bodo passengers were pulled out of a bus and shot. Soon after this, the BLT decided to come to the negotiating table.
The BPF is the party in power in the BTC, which rules the “Bodo” districts. But there’s a major flaw in the system — the BPF doesn’t have control over law and order: the State government has jurisdiction of the police. This is because the BTC was formed under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution, which enables small tribes in four States of the north-east to run their own affairs in the manner of an expanded Panchayati Raj system, instead of being completely dependent on the whims of the State government.
The Sixth Schedule aims to protect tribal rights from encroachment by larger non-tribe groups and is in place in parts of Assam, all of Meghalaya, Mizoram and a part of Tripura.
In 2003, the Schedule was extended to the western Assam plains to create the BTC as part of an agreement between the Centre, the State government and the BLT. The BLT was virtually given an amnesty and morphed into a legal, “democratic” political entity: after some changes, the Bodoland People’s Front was born. The idea was an effort to resolve a bloody armed movement that had taken a toll of hundreds of lives. But to do so, without taking into consideration the overall realities of the region, was a recipe for disaster.
Another major outbreak occurred in 2008 in which both Bodos and non-Bodos including Muslims were rendered homeless and placed in camps. In 2008 again, bomb blasts across the State killed over 100 persons including 80 in Guwahati, the commercial and political heart of Assam; these were attributed to the National Democratic Front of Bodoland, led by Ranjan Daimary, which sought independence from India.
Fallout of manufactured consent
The worst outbreak of violence, in 2012, when over 100 died and about 4.5 lakh were displaced in rioting and killings, was described as the most extensive internal displacement since Partition. A majority of victims and homeless were Muslim; the involvement of the BPF turned up in the arrest of one of its council members, who was accused by witnesses of leading the attacks.
The area’s demography is one reason why trouble will fester rather than abate: it has nothing to do with illegal migration, Bangladeshis, etc. It has everything to do with the fact of how a minority of the population (the Bodos are some 30 per cent of the BTC area) controls the lives and destinies of the others. From an armed group, the BLT became a political party within a larger political process, with access to Central and State funds, power, land and resources. A number of its leaders were once wanted for their role in alleged killings and explosions; when they rose to office, their acolytes benefited. Their opponents, even the moderates within the Bodo community, suffered intimidation, pressure and worse.
An opposition movement has grown that sought to protect the rights of the other groups which do not comprise just the Muslims — there are Assamese and Bengali Hindus, Koch Rajbongshis and Adivasis. Together they make up nearly 70 per cent of the population. Any system that does not guarantee some basic rights to them and protect their interests is bound to fail.
The core of the problems in the north-east, be it in Nagaland, Manipur, Assam or elsewhere, lies in the mobilisation of identity over land, territory and natural resources. Many of the disputes between States, communities and even villages can be traced to this. The same is true of the Bodo areas, where Bodo lands have been encroached and settled upon by others.
There are two issues here: If key problems are to be tackled, then all sides need to sit down together to work out the ways that land and resources can be shared without creating further ill-will. The State government and the BTC have failed to do so. They have failed because they have looked for quick-fix solutions without going deep enough and far enough to meet people’s grievances. The fallout that we see today is that of manufactured consent.
If it isn’t, then Delhi should be worried because this volatile region is in danger again of falling back to the times of earlier troubles. At the State and local levels, governments and policy makers need to involve people working in the field and community representatives in search of answers.
Playing politics
There is a second critical point: if such processes are to gain momentum, then there must be a relentless campaign against terrorist groups. What has filled many with frustration and anger, within the north-east and outside, is the way governments proclaim that they will tackle ethnic and communal violence with a “firm hand”; yet, once the bloodshed is over, the displaced go home and the issues vanish from the headlines, it’s back to business as usual with the criminals, extortionists and their partners in politics and the bureaucracy.
Recent history shows how those involved in the violence are “negotiated” with, in State after State. Settlements reward the perpetrators with even more powers, cocooned by security provided by the State. This is described as part of the democratic process.
I doubt if this will wash any longer: too much blood has been spilt these past years.
In this situation, tossing out the mantra of “Bangladeshi” immigrants as being at the heart of the problem would be extremely ill-advised. Nothing could be further from the truth, so insidiously easy to push, so dangerous to stoke. The Bharatiya Janata Party needs to understand these issues in greater depth before asserting positions which could have devastating consequences on a fragile landscape.
(Sanjoy Hazarika is director, Centre for North East Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia.)
Pravin Togadia and Giriraj Singh Pravin Togadia (left) and Giriraj Singh RNA Research & Archives
Last week, on a popular and animated television news debate, BJP spokesperson Meenakshi Lekhi was asked a simple question on the criminal culpability of a party leader distributing highly provocative material in riot-hit Muzaffarnagar. Never one to give in to Arnab Goswami, Lekhi, who is contesting from a New Delhi seat, stunned everyone on the panel when she said the riots were not to be looked in isolation – the population of Muslims had increased from 5% in 1947, the year of Indian independence, to 18% today.
“Are you asking for a demographic cap?” fired Goswami. Another panelist, industrialist and BJP supporter Sunil Alagh who has started a twitter campaign “Chaiwala Hi Upaiwala Hai”, was visibly shocked at the statement and distanced himself from it. Everyone on the show, be it the news anchor or the panelists, were outraged. If at all Meenakshi Lekhi did feel embarrassed, she concealed it rather well. But there are good chances Lekhi may have seen her comment as only fair and rational considering how long she and many of her party colleagues have waited to express themselves more precisely. Lekhi was among the many BJP leaders and cadres who had received clear instructions from the RSS, the BJP’s ideological backbone, to champion the rise of soft Hindutva, a policy mastered by Narendra Modi in Gujarat, and when needed, put the traditional RSS aggression and intolerance on display.
The BJP is contesting the Lok Sabha elections, but it is the RSS that has been calling the shots. Be it extending covert support to Anna Hazare’s India Against Corruption movement or undermining the role of the erstwhile luminaries of the party like Sushma Swaraj, LK Advani, and Arun Jaitley, the RSS has emerged stronger than ever.
Having been out of power for nearly a decade, this was a make-or-break year for the Sangh. The old guard that was keen on adopting a more understated approach towards Hindutva was told it was time to bring the aggression back. Finding itself unable to reinvent itself for a modern, more urban electorate for 2014, it was decided that the selling point of the campaign would be a more alluring idea – development. It didn’t matter if it was a façade, the D-word would go on to define the BJP, and by extension the Sangh’s politics for a new generation.
When Lekhi presented those figures, she was following the Sangh mandate. She is not the one to make a political faux pas on national television. Her comments on the news debate do not reflect her naïveté or overconfidence. If at all, the arguments were woven craftily enough so that the message was loud and clear to those it was intended for. The liberals may have questioned her on social media, but for Lekhi, it must have been time to move on to another day, another show.
Pretty much like the senior leader from her party who has been unequivocal and brazen about the Sangh’s polarising politics in rally after rally in Muzaffarnagar. Sample this hate speech: “A man can live without food or sleep. He can live when he’s thirsty and hungry. But when he’s insulted, he can’t live. We must seek revenge for the insult heaped on us.”
Though reprimanded for his speech by the Election Commission, Amit Shah has planted that damning fear in the Hindu community of Muzaffarnagar which is yet to come to terms with last year’s riots. The BJP chose to be silent on the issue. As for Shah himself, he tweeted that the speech should be seen as a no ball.
Shah was personally handed over the reins of the BJP in Uttar Pradesh by Narendra Modi, his mentor from Gujarat where he served him as the Minister of State and gained a notorious reputation for managing the CM’s dirty tricks department. He was exiled from Gujarat after the Supreme Court gave him bail in three fake encounters in the state where he was charged with conspiracy, abduction, murder and obfuscation in investigation. It came as a surprise to many that with a criminal background, Modi made him the man in charge of one of the most crucial states in the country. An RSS pracharak since his college days, Shah, in Gujarat, was widely seen as a man who could get anything done. He was the man who understood caste dynamics like no one else and could manipulate it with his crass politics.
Political leaders have even hinted of Shah’s involvement in the Muzaffarnagar riots, though there has been no proof so far. Apologists for the Sangh Parivaar have distanced Shah and Modi from the incident calling it politically motivated.
The recent speech by Pravin Togadia in Gujarat has been dismissed by Modi acolytes as ‘far right’ rabble-rousing, which is apparently nowhere related to the mainstream BJP leaders. RSS spokesperson Ram Madhav tweeted that the Sangh Parivar members do not think on such lines and the entire event was attributed to that easy scapegoat, media. The party remained incommunicado despite the video of Togadia’s speech surfacing, where he has gone on record saying, “We should have it in us to take the law in our own hands in an area where we are a majority and scare them (Muslims).”
Togadia is no stranger to the game. During the 2002 riots, he had been the agent provocateur, his hateful speeches are believed to have been given a go ahead right by the CM’s office. Togadia had his first brush with the RSS’s political manoeuvring when he demanded that he should be made the CM of the state. It was the Sangh that suggested he would be required to work with the cadres in the background. Gujarat needed him, Narendra bhai had to be the face of the party in the state, the cadres his backbone. Togadia had stepped back in anger only to return with more vitriol in 2014, the year he was needed the most.
The BJP is not only maintaining a damning silence when it comes to its senior leaders, it is also extending the gesture to the new leadership. In the wake of suggestions that the caste equations in Bihar and its consolidation by non-BJP parties could sully its prospects, sitting MLC and the party’s Lok Sabha candidate from Nawada Giriraj Singh remarked, “Even within the country, there are people with Pakistani mindset who are opposing Modi and their proper destination would be Pakistan, which is their political Mecca-Medina.” Singh was making a last ditch attempt to invoke Hindutva by bringing in Mecca-Madina. While the BJP allies distanced themselves from the remarks, spokespersons from the party remained defiant. Singh is yet to apologise for his comments and stands by it. Was Singh an aberration? Perhaps not, he was a part of the larger Sangh agenda. Alleged loonies like him were the Sangh's trump cards on such occasions.
It is easy to frown upon the communal nature of their speeches, but perhaps the greatest subversion of their politics is the rhetoric used by their own prime ministerial candidate in Gujarat, the man who many believe will emerge stronger than ever in Elections 2014. Be it his ‘hum paanch hamare pachees’ statement or the use of the phrase ‘burka of secularism’ and ‘shehzada’, even in his ‘softer’ avatar, Narendra Modi has played the religion card in the garb of his oh-so-new anti-corruption politics. Scratch the surface of the BJP's campaign strategy, and the Sangh’s idea of Hindutva stares at you. Some speeches manage to make it to national television, sparking outrage, but the intricate planning and manoeuvring which has been taking place over the last one year in mofussil areas and villages goes unnoticed
You can frown upon Indian polity for being a theatre of absurd. But what makes 2014 more intriguing is the prospect of a possible comeback of Hindutva. Bedecked as development-oriented politics, this new brand of Hindutva is unafraid of debunking the secular fabric of the country. The façade had begun to slip over the last few months. As the major constituencies go to polls, it stands stark naked.
(Report in The Hindu, MUZAFFARNAGAR, December 18, 2013)
by Sandeep Joshi
With at least six small colonies being built in the rural areas of Muzaffarnagar for settlement of riot-hit Muslims who have permanently left their villages out of fear of the dominant Jat community, ghettoisation, which was till now relevant in big cities, is the new phenomenon in this agrarian belt that is bound to have a deep social and political impact in the years to come.
While 70-odd houses with two rooms each have already been handed over to affected villagers in Khampur village, similar small colonies of 60-70 houses are being built in Muslim-dominated villages like Bassi Kalan, Malukpura, Loi, Dadhedu and Jaula, all within 30 km from the district headquarters. This trend is also being seen in the neighbouring Shamli district .
“Muslims who left their homes during the riots and took refuge in nearby villages, mostly dominated by their community members, have refused to return. Now with relief camps being winded up as compensation-distribution exercise coming to an end, people of these villages have come forward to give them land at minimal charges so that riot-affected people can leave camps and build their new homes,” social activist Shandar Gufran told ‘ The Hindu’ .
It is the residents of villages worst affected by riots who have refused to return fearing yet another backlash from their “influential” Jat neighbours. These villages include Kutba-Kutbi, Tavli, Budhana, Lisad, Phugana, Kakra, Mundvar, Hussainpur and Lakh Bardi. Initially religious organisations came forward and constructed houses for displaced people in Khampur, but later the State government announced Rs.5 lakh grant to built houses to people not willing to return to their villages.
No displaced Muslim wants to leave his home and property and start living in another place, but riot-affected people allege that Jats have threatened them with dire consequences if they returned.
Ramesh Babu, Hindustan Times
Kochi, October 27, 2013
RSS to Hindus: shun family planning, have more kids
For the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), it’s the more the merrier.
On the lines of the Catholic church’s campaign to have more children and win rewards, the RSS has advised Hindus to go for bigger families and not to limit their number of children. Concerned over the dwindling size of Hindu families, it has asked community members not to follow family planning norms blindly and create small families.
The Sangh feels that big families will help check the menacing demographic changes taking place in many parts of the country. The one-child norm practiced by most Hindu families will endanger the very existence of the community, it warned.
“According to the 2011 Census, growth rate of children in the age group of 0-6 is 15% among Hindus, whereas it is 18% among Muslims. Small family norms are posing a big threat to Hindus. So each family should have three children,” RSS joint secretary Dattareya Hosbal said on the sidelines of the RSS national executive meet, which concluded in Kochi on Sunday.
Two years ago, a worried Catholic Church in Kerala had announced a mega-plan -- ‘Jeeva Samrudhi’ -- to encourage families with more than three children. It even coined the slogan of ‘big family, happy family’ and decided to bear educational and other expenses of families who have more than three children.
According to the latest Census report, Christian population has come down to 18.75% from the earlier 22% in the state, forcing the church to press the panic button.
“Blindly following family planning norms by a community won’t do any good to the country. It will trigger serious imbalance in the country,” Hosbal said, adding that the Sangh will go all out to encourage big families.
The three-day executive, which concluded in Kochi on Sunday, also supported the Madhav Gadgil Committee report on the Western Ghats.
“The flawed development model and lavish lifestyle of some are causing immense damage to the environment.
In this context, the Madhav Gadgil Committee report is a landmark. His recommendations are in the larger interest of the nation,” RSS general secretary Suresh Joshi said, demanding a national debate on both (Gadgil and Kasturi Rangan) panels on Western Ghats.
He also criticised the proposed Communal and Targeted Violence Bill which will be introduced in the winter session of parliament. “It is highly biased and unlawful. It seeks to divide society on minority-majority lines, which is unconstitutional.
It will destroy communal harmony and cause immense damage to the social fabric. Instead of preventing communal violence, it will only lead to further division on communal lines,” he said, asking the UPA government to have a second thought on it.
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. …
Mohan Rao is a Professor at the Centre for Social Medicine and Community Health, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
He can be contacted at mohanrao2008@gmail.com
The write-up has been lifted from his facebook wall.
One of the most remarkable campaigns by Right-wing forces over the last few years in India goes under the startling name of “Love-Jihad”. Love Jihad crudely but effectively argues that Muslim men are waging jihad in India through so-called love- marriages. The young men apparently waging war through love – through the capture of innocent Hindu women – are also referred to as “Love Romeos”. Given credence by the courts and police in some states, it is argued that the proponents of Love Jihad see this as a strategy by Muslim fundamentalists to lure Hindu and Christian girls into their literal arms, thus swelling their numbers in an ongoing demographic war.
