By TOI
Q&A
February
25, 2021
In his
latest book The Population Myth: Islam, Family Planning and Politics in India,
former chief election commissioner SY Quraishi systematically dismantles
the myth that the Muslim population will soon overtake Hindus. He talks to
Himanshi Dhawan about how majoritarian fears of a demographic skew have no
basis in facts:
Why did
you feel the need to write about this population myth?
The
book came about by accident. In 1995 the UNFPA country director asked me to
write a strategy paper for family planning among Muslims in India. At that time
I also believed like many others that Islam is against family planning and when
Muslims oppose family planning, they are following their religious beliefs. I
also shared the misconception that as a community we produce too many children.
But studying the subject was an eye-opener and led me to the idea of the book.
It took me 20-25 years and the pandemic to see it through.
You
have found three myths that you want to bust.
I start
my book by saying, yes, the fertility rate of the Muslim is the highest and
their acceptance of family planning is the least at 45.3%. But Hindus have the
second lowest acceptance of family planning practices at 54.4%. So, if
producing children is an unpatriotic act, then both Muslims and Hindus are
unpatriotic.
The
first myth I found prevalent is that Islam is against family planning. In fact
Islam is the pioneer of the concept of family planning. The second myth is that
the practice of polygamy is rampant in India. The only study on polygamy done
by government in 1975 shows that all communities in India are polyamorous
and Muslims are the least polygamous. Islam allows for polygamy only on the
condition that the woman is an orphan unable to support herself and if you can
treat her equal to your first wife. People have construed it as permission
which it is not. As a demographer I can say it is not possible to practise
polygamy in India keeping in mind our gender ratio. If a man marries twice,
some other man must remain single.
Third
myth is that there is an organised conspiracy by the Muslims to produce many
children to overtake the Hindu population. I have not come across any organised
conspiracy among Muslims though many right-wing politicians have said in public
speeches that Hindu men must have several children. So if there is any
organised conspiracy it is from right-wing Hindus. I have written about how it
is statistically impossible for Muslims to overtake Hindus. Muslim birth-rate
is high but so is the Hindu birth-rate.
In
1951, Hindus constituted 84% of the population which has come down to 79.8%,
while in the same period Muslim population has grown from 9.8% to 14.2%. But
the Muslims’ rate of acceptance of family planning is higher and faster than
the Hindus. Fifty years ago if Hindus had one child, Muslims had 2.1 that
difference has come down to 0.5 or half a child. In 1951, Hindus outnumbered
Muslims by 30 crore which has increased to 80 crore today. In 80 years Hindus
will outnumber Muslims by 100 crore. How is it possible for Muslims to take
over this country?
You say
that religion is not a factor in population growth. Then what is?
Literacy,
particularly of girls, income and better delivery of services are key
determinants and not religion. Where do Muslims stand in literacy? They are the
most uneducated. Muslims are the poorest but they continue to be attacked on
the economic front by right-wing Hindus, who demand that goods and services
provided by Muslims should be boycotted. Third, delivery of health services
among Muslims is poor because they are increasingly forced to live in ghettos,
where doctors and nurses do not want to work. They describe the ghettos as
mini-Pakistan. Authorities want Muslims to do family planning, but they will
not like to create conditions for family planning. This is hypocrisy.
Do we
continue to deal with the post-Emergency bias?
We have
not recovered from Emergency and family planning has become a taboo subject. A
health ministry committee was set up under my chairmanship and we analysed what
is the attitude of the politicians towards family planning by looking at the
questions asked in Parliament. Population and family planning constituted
barely 0.15% of all Parliament questions.
Among
Islamic countries, which do you think provide us with the best role model to
follow?
Bangladesh
has more conservative Muslims than us and yet they have beaten us in family
planning. We also need to look at Indonesia, where imams have been roped in and
every masjid is used as a centre for family planning communication. Even
Iran, another conservative Islamic country, has a 74% acceptance of family
planning methods.
Original
headline: ‘Islam is the pioneer of the concept of family planning … and it is a
myth that polygamy is rampant in India’
Source:
Time of India
URL: https://newageislam.com/debating-islam/interview-former-cec-s.y.-quraishi/d/124400
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