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India's changing demography?
By Maxwell Pereira
mfjpkamath@gmail.com
What’s
with RSS chief Kupahalli Sudershan! Why is he so determined to
excite communal passions yet again? His suggestion to Hindus to
populate and propagate as a strategy against the purported changing
demographioc profile of the country – not only has managed to
raise eyebrows, but also rouse, expectedly, a hornets’ nest. Such
irresponsible utterances are bound to sting, and sting painfully,
to the ultimate detriment of communal health in the country’s
polity and deterioration in the sensitive and fragile communal
balance!
Whatever the tussle between RSS and BJP… one is conscious of BJP
chief - Lal Krishna Advani’s efforts in recent times to appease
minority sentiments, especially of the muslim community. Lately,
he has been vociferously endorsing worlwide acknowledgement today
that no Indian muslim has ever been found associated with Al Quieda
or Taliban related terrorist activities!
Apparently the BJP – the political wing of the RSS – and its front
runners, are hard put to explain away the repeated embarrassments
resulting from utterances and acts of Sudarshan. They have maintained
a studied silence refraining from making any comment over the
issue. But Advani has made no bones about expressing diametrically
opposite views: Even while in government, the BJP led NDA had
spoken of promoting the two-child norm.
Also, speaking recently on the theme of “Building a Better Future”
at the Hindustan Times Leadership Sunnit – 2005 concluded last
week, Advani clearly said that the alarming rate of population
growth is a threat to the country’s progress and needs to be contained.
He put across: “A serious problem related not only to the question
of democracy but even to economy and security is the alarming
population growth. Radical steps are really needed to contain
this. The excess that took place during the ‘emergency’ should
not deter the country from considering legislative measures to
ensure a two-child norm.”
Then last Thursday at a widely televised public function Sudarshan
expressed serious concern over the country’s changing demographic
profile, and asked Hindus to produce not less than three children
– calling for an end to the majority-minority concept.
This has evoked reaction from the Christian community – that the
RSS chief’s call is irrational and an insult to Indian women and
the minorities. Condemning this, National Integration Council
Member Dr. John Dayal - President, All India Catholic Union and
Secretary general, All India Christian Council pointed out in
a press statement: “Over the years, the nation has come to expect
the most bizarre and dangerous statements from the hyper-nationalist
Rashtriya Swayam Sewak Sangh and its leadership – ranging from
demands for eradicating neighboring countries to a sustained diatribe
against Muslim and Christian religious minorities who are citizens
of India.”
Reflecting the community’s shock, Dayal elaborated: “RSS views
on the status of women, their contempt for the Constitution of
India and their infinite capacity to attempt to overwhelm Indian
plurality and the identity of Tribals, ethnic and linguistic minorities
have alarmed Civil society for undermining the democratic norms
that sustain the unity and integrity of India.”
The septuagenarian bachelor’s call that Hindu couples produce
more – indeed advocating 11 or a dozen sons per family – to sustain
their religious majority in India, Dayal emphasises, goes beyond
the bizarre and the irrational. It is a racist statement soiled
by foul religious bigotry and harks back to an era of eugenics
and population manipulations that died out with the end of Hitler’s
“pure race” concepts. Similar ethnic logic in certain pockets
in Europe and Africa led to genocidal cleansing within living
memory. As callous and terrible is the implied super-patriarchal
attitude Mr. Sudershan and the RSS have of the Indian woman –
victim of child rape in the guise of traditional marriage, and
now presented as a political womb at the service of a maniacal
ideology and its demonic hatred towards other communities. The
Indian woman is now being asked to produce enough children to
correct fancied and imagined imbalances in the population of one
religion.
The RSS demographic thesis has been given the veneer of academic
exactitude by the work of the Chennai based Centre for Policy
Studies – brought out soon after the 2001 Census with a foreword
by the then Deputy Prime Minister Advani. The purpose of the voluminous
tome, to raise a bogey of a Muslim population explosion, and fears
of terrorism in a so called Christian-majority North east.
Of concern in this context are reports emanating now from Assam
on activities of the RSS-backed Lok Jagaran Manch flooding local
cellphones through SMS to the dangers of “alien invasion” – to
make it an excuse for an economic boycott of minority community
members (ostensibly Bangladeshi migrants). This has triggered
a mass exodus of muslims, many genuine Indian citizens, from the
upper Assam districts of Dibrugarh, Jorhat and Tinsukia!
What is particularly pertinent, Dr. Dayal points out, is that
“the statistical data presented (by the Chennai study) was even
then exposed to be false extrapolation. The arguments, against
the scientific and official data produced by the “People of India
Project” of the Government. That series had in fact established
that polygamy is more common in several non-Muslim groups than
in Muslim groups, which is the standard falsehood and pet RSS
grouse.
On Christians, the 2001 census once again established that the
percentage of Christian population in India is steadily going
down because of the norm of one or two children per family, even
among the poor and in rural areas. The myth of a Christian conspiracy
in the northeast based on population and conversion was also conclusively
exposed to be false, highly motivated and mischievous, and meant
entirely to defame an entire community.
900 words 21.11.2005:Copy
Right © Maxwell Pereira: 3725 Sec-23, Gurgaon-122002. You
can interact with the author at http://
www.maxwellperira.com and maxpk@vsnl.com
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