Population: India’s bigotry
Extremist members of India’s Hindu majority are concerned by the country’s new title as the world’s most populous country. Unfortunately, it is for the wrong reasons. Instead of worrying about how to bring down the country’s birthrate, which remains high enough to eventually cause resource stress, Hindutva activists have been spreading disinformation to try and generate anti-Muslim sentiment based on the country’s high population growth rate.
The internet, especially social media, is spilling over with claims that Muslim families are having five to 10 children in an effort to convert India into a Muslim-majority country, never mind that government statistics and basic math both negate these claims. Despite being India’s largest religious minority, the country’s 200 million-plus Muslims are only about 15% of the population, compared to almost 80% which are Hindu. And while the birth rate for Muslims is indeed higher, the difference is nominal — 2.3 children per Muslim woman compared to the national average of 2.0 children per woman. It would take centuries of consistent growth at that level for the populations to reach parity. Meanwhile, the decrease in birthrates seen among Indian women is relatively consistent across religious backgrounds, as people of all faiths chose to have fewer children. As an illustration, India is expected to add about 300 million people in the next 30 years, including about 100 million Muslims.
But demographic scaremongering is common among bigots the world over. From concerns in Europe over the tiny Jewish, Muslim, South Asian or African population ‘taking over’ their countries, to certain Americans’ fear of the growing Latino population, to Israelis’ fear of Palestinian birthrates, scaremongering over birthrates and demographic shifts is used as a thinly-veiled justification for supremacist policies and beliefs. Unfortunately, India is also one of the few countries in the world where it is not the fringe, but top leaders from the ruling party who are espousing such views.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 8th, 2023.
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