[Proposed measures in two states reflect the volatile tensions between Hindus and Muslims over the country’s future.]
By Gerry Shih
In previous decades, this measure
by the leader of the country’s most populous state might have been
uncontroversial. Over the past month, it’s been explosive.
Supporters held a protest to demand even tougher population controls in
Uttar Pradesh, a vast expanse of 220 million people. Demographers
debated whether legislation was necessary, given that Indian birthrates
are falling swiftly. Critics saw something deeply cynical:
a veiled attempt to mobilize Hindu voters by tapping
into an age-old trope about India’s Muslim population ballooning out of
control.
As India barrels toward a pivotal
election in Uttar Pradesh early next year, population bills introduced by the
ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have become a new flash point in the
national debate, vividly illustrating how the issues of religion and identity,
spoken or implied, form the most powerful undercurrent in the country’s
politics.
BJP leaders in two states, Uttar
Pradesh in the north and Assam in the far northeast, have formally proposed
legislation that would bar those with more than two children from sought-after
public sector jobs or benefits, such as government food rations. Similar
proposals have been aired by other states’ leaders and at the
national level in parliament.
Adityanath and other top party
officials say they seek to improve life for all Indians by tackling
a generally accepted problem. India will edge past China as the world’s most
populous country sometime around 2027, according to United Nations projections.
“The new Uttar Pradesh population
policy is for all and not just one community. It will inevitably ensure
sustainable development with reduced inequality in income distribution,”
Siddharth Nath Singh, spokesman for the Uttar Pradesh government and the BJP,
said in an email. “Different demographics have different development levels,
and the government will aim to create that balance in various regions of the
state.”
But for many across India’s
political spectrum, the initiatives, coming seven months before Uttar Pradesh’s
state elections, seem an unmistakable nod to the concerns of a conservative
Hindu political movement that seeks to establish India, following centuries of
Muslim and British rule, as a Hindu state with a secure Hindu majority and
distinctly Hindu character.
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Since 2011, when official census
figures emerged showing Hindus dipping to 80 percent of India’s population
compared to 84 percent in 1951 — Muslims increased from 10 percent to 14.2
percent during that same period — the question of how to maintain “demographic
balance” has gained urgency for the movement’s leaders. A 2016 national survey
finding that Indian Muslim women had, on average, 2.6 children compared to 2.1
for Hindus provoked more concern.
Fears about Muslims overtaking
Hindus “is an often-articulated Hindu nationalist trope that’s acquired a
ferocity,” said Ashutosh Varshney, director of the Center for Contemporary
South Asia at Brown University. “It’s not very different from the right wing,
White American anxiety that Whites will become a demographic minority in the
United States. In America, the issue is immigration. In India, the issue is
fertility rates.”
Six years ago, as a member of
parliament, Adityanath told supporters at a Hindu monastery that “the
comparatively high fertility rate among Muslims will cause a dangerous
demographic imbalance.” In 2018, Mohan Bhagwat, leader of the influential Hindu
nationalist organization, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), called for
legislation to limit childbirths.
Demographic anxieties are now a
staple of India’s right-wing social media, where a flood of shrill, exaggerated
or false posts warn of Islam on the march. The Muslim population is expanding,
the narrative goes, because of forced conversions of Hindus through marriage,
illegal immigration from Bangladesh, and of course, higher fertility rates.
Last year, Adityanath introduced a
law in Uttar Pradesh that he said would curb “love jihad,” a term used by Hindu
nationalists who allege Muslim men are marrying and converting Hindu women as
part of a campaign.
Invoking demographics can be a
powerful wedge, even when it’s not articulated, said Mohan Guruswamy, a former
BJP member and government adviser who quit the party in 1999.
“It’s code that everybody has
internalized,” Guruswamy noted. “When they say, ‘Those people are breeding,’
who are they referring to? Muslims and lower castes.”
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Demographers say Muslim families,
who tend to occupy India’s lower socioeconomic strata, have fertility rates
that are on par with groups such as Dalits, the lowest-ranked caste in India,
formerly referred to as “untouchables.”
“To a great extent, the higher
fertility among Muslims can be explained by lower levels of education among
women and poor economic status,” said T.V. Sekher of the International
Institute for Population Sciences in Mumbai. “If we are able to meet the unmet
need for contraception, the fertility rate will come down significantly.”
In the 1950s, the average Indian
woman had six children. The rate has fallen dramatically to roughly 2.2 today,
just above what’s needed to maintain a level population, and the
Indian government says a nationwide two-child policy is unnecessary.
Not so, argues Ashwini Upadhyay, a
BJP lawyer and former party spokesman who drafted a population-control bill
that has been circulating in the upper house of parliament since July. Upadhyay
has crisscrossed northern India in recent weeks, holding a string of rallies for
such measures as well as for national laws removing the special considerations
in education and marriage that religious and ethnic minorities receive — all
priorities for Hindu nationalist groups.
“Poverty, malnutrition,
unemployment, air pollution, crime, 100 million homeless — the root cause of it
all is the population explosion,” Upadhyay said. After the Uttar Pradesh bill
becomes law, national population legislation will surely follow, he predicted
confidently during a recent stop in his New Delhi office before heading to
another rally. “The country is now ready for population control. There’s
massive discussion on digital media, print media, and YouTube channels.”
These initiatives do not aim to
stoke division and actually “will more benefit the Muslim community,” he
maintained. “They will come swiftly into the middle class.” One of the events
Upadhyay organized this month, a raucous rally in New Delhi, showed how the
demographic issue can filter down to the Hindu nationalist grass roots and
become a venomous force.
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As Upadhyay spoke into a crackly
microphone — flanked onstage by Hindu priests and a Bollywood actor — nearby
streets began filling with thousands of demonstrators. Many were groups of
young men hailing from across the northern Hindu heartland. Some came from as
far as Kolkata, nearly a 24-hour train journey away.
Forty-year-old Hakumar Rawat said
Pakistan had practically eliminated Hinduism while India had allowed Muslim
communities to grow by converting children and constructing mosques with “black
money” from overseas.
“They have five, six, 10 children,”
said Rawat, a tattoo of the Sanskrit symbol for “Om” visible on his neck. “They
are playing the long game.”
Nearby, Gaitanjali Mohapatra jabbed
a finger at a placard listing the Hindu right’s grievances. “The biggest issue
is population,” the social worker said. “It’s not helping that Bangladeshis and
Rohingya keep crossing the border into Bengal and Assam.”
The atmosphere thickened with
humidity and rage as noon approached. Upadhyay departed the stage, but men
waving enormous Indian flags and leading rolling chants of “Glory to Lord Ram!”
whipped the upscale plaza into a barely contained frenzy. A protester climbed
onto a barricade and began live-streaming the scene on Facebook, telling his
followers the rally was a warning to Muslims plotting Ghazwa-e-Hind, a
prophesied holy war to conquer India.
Moments later, the crowd heaved
with a new slogan: “When we cut down Muslims, they’ll cry Ram, Ram!” (That
chant resulted in the arrest of six men, including Upadhyay, for “promoting
enmity” between religious groups. Upadhyay denied any direct involvement and
was released on bail.)
Straining to speak over the
increasingly agitated crowd, a college student named Divyam Sinha said he had
taken a two-hour train ride to meet other young nationalists who want an India where
they can live “securely and happily.”
Muslims “are on a mission to
capture this country,” Sinha said. “So if Mr. Yogi Adityanath comes and says
he’ll do something about it, it’s a great achievement.”
Shams Irfan and Taniya Dutta
contributed to this report.
