ALAKA M. BASU - Swamped by Ignorance and Prejudice, But Certainly Not By Muslims
The last thing we need is for reproductive decisions to
be dictated by base motives that pit ‘us’ against ‘them’ and for women’s
bodies to be used to wage a proxy war in which the only winner is ugly
sectarianism
The recently released 2011 census tables on religion tell us
that Hindus now number (that is, in 2011 they numbered) 966 million (966257353
to be precise) and Muslims 172 million (172245158 to be precise); in other
words, Muslims have grown by 34 million over the span of 10 years while the now
close-to-a-billion Hindu majority has added 139 million to its own numbers.
These statistics have generated some anxiety and paranoia among a large number
of people on Facebook and Twitter, with only a minority of these social media
users being more sanguine that ‘our nation’ is not being taken over by ‘other’
people.
Misleading media coverage
Demographic fear-mongering is not unique to India and not
new in India. Even before the release of these census figures, pronouncements
on fearsome demographic imbalances periodically hit the news whenever
‘religious’ leaders – Hindu or Muslim – feel that they have not attracted
enough attention lately. Our media rush to give them attention and also take it
upon themselves to contribute to the cause.
Thus one national daily had a large front-page headline
declaring “Hindu Population Falls, Muslims Rise”, while another
one declaimed, “Hindu population declined; Muslims increased: 2011 Census.” Only
the rare patient reader who went beyond the headlines would realize that it
wasn’t the absolute number of Hindus that had fallen (as I
said, that number has risen by 139 million), just that their proportion in
the country had dropped by 0.7% between 2001 and 2011. At that kind of rate of
change—and especially given that birth rates have been dropping for all
sub-sets of the population in the country—we will have to be reborn several
times before we see any reversal of the Hindu majority in the country,
notwithstanding a Vishwa Hindu Parishad spokesperson’s claim that the census
numbers were a ‘red signal for Hindu existence’.
Emerging trends
In the coming weeks and months, there will undoubtedly be
more sophisticated analyses of some of the interesting details that underlie
these broad statistics. Some of it has already begun in the media: on regional
differences in religious group growth rates (for example, that Muslims in the
south have lower fertility than Hindus in the north); on the socio-economic
determinants of religious differences (for example, that once we control for
income and education, the Hindu-Muslim gap in birth rates narrows
significantly, even if Muslim fertility still remains somewhat higher than
Hindu); on religious differences in gender discrimination (for example, that
Muslims have much lower levels of female sex selective abortions than Hindus,
even if they are in increasing danger of aping the discriminatory practices of
their Hindu neighbours); on trends in religious group fertility (for example,
that fertility declines are currently sharper among Muslims).
These elaborations are useful for two reasons. One, they are
of interest because they help us better understand the micro-level motivations
and compulsions and constraints that underlie macro numbers. Secondly, these
elaborations have a very useful policy role – if the goal of development policy
is to improve the lives of a country’s citizens, then we need to know what
their needs are. For example, do Muslim women have an unmet demand for
contraception, and if they do, is this a need that cannot be met by the female
sterilisation that is the predominant form of birth control offered by our
family planning program, in practice even if not in principle?
Data needs analyses for policy, not politics
Policy planners also need to know what the consequences of
high or low fertility are, as opposed to the determinants that take up so much
of our time; not the rabble rousing political consequences that wilfully
exploit these census numbers, but the consequences for women and families in
terms of health, education and standard of living, as well as larger level
consequences on the environment, savings rates and so on.
However, at the public level, these analytical elaborations
of differentials by religion in population growth rates are unfortunately being
largely deployed to explain or ‘defend,’ the differentials. This is
well-meaning, but it does not address two important matters. First, Indian
Muslims do not and should not need to explain or defend, or have explained or
defended on their behalf, their preferences or behaviour, whether on
childbearing or on cricket teams, to establish their Indian credentials.
Secondly, and more importantly, these analyses do not
address the right of all women, Muslim or Hindu, Sikh, Christian or Jain, to
control their own reproductive selves and the duty of state and society to help
them exercise such control. India is a signatory to the Plan of Action of the
1994 Cairo Conference on Population and Development, in which the central
commitment is to the rights of women and families to decide for themselves what
their family size will be.
Women’s right to reproductive choice
A paranoid and supposedly threatened Hindu majority
leadership has no right to tell Muslim women to have fewer children or to
exhort Hindu women to have more (as is also often done). And a paranoid and
supposedly threatened Muslim minority leadership has no right to tell its women
to keep breeding in the larger community’s interest.
As the bearers (and rearers) of children, women everywhere
need the freedom, the physical ability and the psychosocial information to work
out for themselves when—as well as, if at all—to begin childbearing, with whom
to have children, and when to stop. Reproduction – whether any children, many
children, or few children – is not a social or religious duty. And it certainly
is not a patriotic duty, even if Germany under Hitler and Italy under Mussolini
once thought so, and even if worried Japan and Singapore and Italy today, less
loudly, think so. The last thing we need is for something as intimate as
reproductive decisions to be dictated by base motives that pit ‘us’ against
‘them’ and for use women’s bodies to be used to wage a proxy war in which
the only winner is ugly sectarianism.
