Ruling out the widely believe and propagated misconception that Muslim populations in India is exponentially increasing due to polygamy, S.Y.Quraishi, the former Chief Election Commissioner of India said, “Though the birth rate among Muslims is quite high and family planning adaptation is very low compare to other communities in the country, the gap being shown and propagated targeting the Muslims community too is also a false narrative and a mere exaggeration.”
He was recording his lecture on a more contentious and argued-over issue of Muslims population with a thread “Muslim Population, the Myth and the Fact” as part of a public lecture series being rolled out with a theme of “Reimaging India.”
“False narratives is being propagated like a word of veracity that the Hindu families bear not more than two children while the Muslims carry atleast eight kids in a family if not ten,” he said, adding that “The government statistic categorically ruled out the illusion and established that a child gap between Hindus and Muslims never exceeded to more than one child, more precise nuance is 1.1 between both the communities. If a Hindu family have two children than the Muslim family manage to bear three.”
An illusionary figure of 8 to 10 children in a Muslim family, he said, is just an exaggeration. The 1.1 gap is also wearing thing as the Muslim families are rapidly adopted family planning in recent past that narrow down the gap further to a 0.48 child.
“Though the family planning ratio among the Muslims comes across 45.3 percent which is arguably less, but no one discuss about the second position that enjoyed by none other than the Hindus who enjoys more birth rate with mere 54.4 percent family planning after Muslim. When you compare it with the family planning ratio of Sikhs then you find a steep rise of 79 percent,” explained S.Y.Quraishi, an author of the book “The Population Myth, Islam, Family Planning in India.”
Recalling the last speech of PM Modi on Red Fort wherein he linked the child ratio with that of Patriotism saying communities having low child ratio are the most patriotic among all, Dr. Qurashi aid, “If such is the case then those communities having excess child ratio are less devoted to their nation according to PM. This way, however, the Sikhs are arguably the most patriotic community in the country but still some leaders do not spare even the most patriotic people and tag them as Khalistani terrorists.”
All this shows that the Muslims are not alone responsible for the significant increase in the population as Hindus are equally contributed to the chaotic situation. In fact the Hindus hold more responsibility than Muslims as the population gap among Muslims and Hindus in the year 1954 was nearly 27 crore which has now jumped to 80 percent and is further increasing. Now the question arises of Muslims would overtake the other community in population and capture the entire political power in India while the graph clearly shows that Hindus are still leading with increasing population? As such the narrative that the Muslim population is exploding in the country is just a myth and a mere exaggeration of actual demographic paradigm of the country.
