Author: Balbir K. Punj
Publication: Asian Age
Date: September 28, 2004
There is no worse example of shooting
the messenger rather than the message in the Union home minister Shivraj
Patil giving a dressing down to the census commissioner Jayont Kumar Banthia
for what the 2001 census figures have revealed. Forget the census commissioner.
Why is the government, also its fellow travellers, so hell-bent on propagating
the myth that Muslim growth rate is not high and whatsoever increase has
taken place in their numbers is because they are poor, backward and lack
in education?
Facts. In Kerala, Muslim literacy
rate is 89.4%, a little below 90.9% of overall literacy but their growth
rate is enormously high at 16% as against 9% for Kerala as a whole and
7.29% for Hindus. In Maharashtra Muslim literacy is 78.1%, better than
the overall literacy of 76.9%, yet Muslims are growing at 35% as against
23% for Maharashtra as a whole. In Chhattisgarh, Muslim literacy is way
ahead at 82.5% as against the state's overall 64.7%; but so is there growth
rate at 37%, nearly more than double of the state's average of 18.3%.
In Orissa, Muslim rate of growth
is 31.88%, almost twice the corresponding figure of 15.86% for Hindus.
For West Bengal the figures for Hindus and Muslims are 14.18% and 25.91%
respectively. Hindu rate of increase in population against that of Muslims
in brackets for some other states is: Tripura 14.86 (29.49), Assam 14.95
(29.30), Uttar Pradesh 17.82 (27.50), Madhya Pradesh 10.43 (17.02), and
Gujarat 22.13 (27.33).
Are poverty and illiteracy alone
responsible for this phenomenon? No. The growth of Muslim population is
a universal phenomenon. The monumental study Religious Demography of India
(Centre for Policy Research, Chennai), notes, "The share of Muslims in
the population of the world has grown significantly from 12.4% in 1900
to 18.7% in 1990. They are the only religious group to have made such a
large gain in their share of the world in the course of 20th century."
In fact, Muslims are the only community
extremely conscious of the "merits" of this burgeoning population (they
are least interested in its demerits). You must have come across statements
from Muslims taking pride in the fact that Islam is the fastest growing
religion of the world. Fastest growing, however, doesn't mean the religion
is so fascinating that people are thronging to join it as people in Punjab
joined Khalsa of Guru Govind Singh during the Mughal rule. Fastest growing
means either reproducing fast or gaining recruits through marriages, a
mode of proselytism encouraged in Islam as holy duty.
Nor is this phenomenon something
new to India. When census in India was introduced by the British in 1881,
Hindus measured 75.093% (79% along with other religionists of Indian origin)
in undivided India, a percentage that declined slowly to 69.457% (73 along
with other religionists of Indian origin) in 1941. The Muslim percentage
share, in the corresponding period, shot up from 19.97% to 24.28% (Religious
Demography of India, P. 21). Thus within 60 years, the Hindu-Muslim difference
was lessened by 10 percentage points. No wonder, this had an extremely
important role in causing the partition of the country.
However, many Muslims hold that
the government of India has always kept the real number of Muslims a secret.
Ahmed Bukhari, when he spoke from New Delhi's Ram Lila Maidan last year
about launching an all-Muslim party, exhorted that Muslims who constitute
25% of India's population can't be left at the mercy of "secularism." But
what happens when such views come from mainstream Muslims?
K.M. Yusuf, former judge of Calcutta
High Court on being appointed the chairman of West Bengal Minority Commission
was interviewed by Rasheeda Bhagat (The Hindu, Friday, October 1, 1999).
Yusuf: When the census is done;
large chunks of Muslim population are left uncounted . in the last three
census-exercise.
Bhagat: Would you agree with the
point of view that the real percentage of Muslim population in India is
about 25%?
Yusuf: There is no denial. It may
be more. Anyway, it cannot be less than 20%. It could be 25%. I don't say
like some others that it is 30%. It is a quite substantial chunk.
The pseudo-secularists may claim
that as Hindu population is over 80 crores while Muslim population, only
13 crores, the higher growth figure for the latter would not radically
change this demographic gap for quite some decades. But it is not the demographic
change alone that we are concerned about. The reason behind the continuing
poverty levels of Muslim population that these and other figures reveal,
is damaging to Muslims themselves if the community's leaders do not come
forward and think out of the groove to which they are accustomed.
The small family norm alone would
enable them to afford better education, better nutrition and better life.
This does not require any statistics to confirm. It is part of our national
population policy. But while Sikhs, Jains, Christians, Buddhists etc.,
have all more or less followed it, only the Muslim community refuses to
do so. Worse, "secular" outfits like the Congress, by maintaining a huge
silence about this refusal for fear of vote bank loss, continually push
the Muslim community into the ghetto of poverty and deprivation.
The census statistics reveal more
about the dismal situation of the Muslim community. For instance, the percentage
of child population (age 0 to six) at 18.7 is the highest among Muslims
as compared to all other communities. Significantly that percentage is
lowest (10.6%) among the Jains who also form one of the better-off communities
in the country. The link between population norm and prosperity (lower
the population growth, greater the level of prosperity) is significantly
established by comparing factors like the proportion of child population,
working population, female literacy rate, work participation rate and income
levels. So far as child population ratio is concerned, it is very low among
Jains, Sikhs and Christians. Among all these three communities female literacy
rate is very high (90.6%, 63.1% and 76.2%).
The picture all this draws up should
alarm any civil society if it is truly concerned about the welfare of the
Muslim community. How much is its self-isolation, its refusal to send girls
to schools, its madrasa-centred education, its comparatively large child
population (that is the family size) responsible for this? Why are the
"secularists" reluctant to raise these questions? Why is it the Muslim
leadership alone is blaming others, while other minorities (Jains, Christians,
Buddhists, Parsis) do not enter the blame game? Even among Muslims, why
is it that sections like the Dawoodi Bohras (normally very conservative
in their religious beliefs) are industrious, enterprising and better off,
and not other Muslims? Does it not show that it is not any perceived grievance,
rather than refusal to take to modern education and enterprise that is
at the heart of the issue for the Muslim community?
In fact the census exercise should
be modified to gain far more knowledge on the economic, educational and
attitudinal status of people, so that we could gain more in-depth knowledge
about the real issues that make some people go forward while others go
backward in the same environment. If you claim that your religion forbids
you from having a bank account because that involves accepting interest,
can you blame the state for your isolation from modern economic enterprise?
There are several such attitudinal
issues among different communities, and the country has a right to know
which of them adds to their isolation. For instance, it has been revealed
that in Moradabad district among the Muslim population there has been a
deliberate refusal to get their children vaccinated against polio. As a
result, polio has already struck the area, but there is a conspiracy of
silence and even acquiescence by the community and the political leadership
instead of encountering this superstition boldly.
Then there is the question of immigration.
The demographic situation in several sensitive areas is changing radically.
You cannot blame the census officials for revealing this truth! The case
of Assam is already well known over the last 30 years. It is now evident
that in some border states like Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland, the Muslim
population growth could only be explained by huge illegal immigration.
In both Tripura and Assam it is above 29%. In Nagaland Muslim population
has grown by 150%, in Arunachal by 180% mainly due to illegal immigration.
In some districts of Assam like Goalpara and Morigaon, Hindus have already
been reduced from majority to minority due to Bangladeshi infiltration.
The AASU general secretary A.K.
Bhuyan had commented, "Indigenous Assamese students who form 28% of the
population are facing a demographic attack" in these districts. He says
in 40 out of 126 Assembly constituencies, Muslims call the shots; it would
soon be in 50% of these constituencies at this rate. This is not a question
of Hindus versus Muslims, but Indians versus Bangladeshis. In the context
of the rise of fundamentalism in Bangladesh, the continuous high decibel
anti-India rabble rousing that is going on there almost every day, should
we shoot the census commissioner or calmly analyse the reality he presents?
* Balbir K Punj is a Rajya Sabha
MP and convener of BJP's Think Tank and can be contacted at bpunj@email.com
