POPULATION          

Mohan Rao on Muslim Population Growth Rate

With elections looming around the corner, the BJP and its sympathizers among the intelligentsia, have lost A time in resurrecting an issue they have flogged often enough in the past. The issue is the "Muslim rate of to his population growth" (revived) by the publication of elected data from the 1991 Census.

That the Muslim rate of population growth is as much a chimera as the Hindu rate of economic growth, or the cow-belt rate of social progress, does not bother these propagandists. For what is being attempted is not to understand realities the basis of all social sciences but in project a fractured view of it for purely political purposes.

Preliminary results from the 1991 Census indicate that, excluding Assam and Jammu and Kashmir, the rate of growth of the Muslim population has been 32.8 per cent, whereas that of the Hindu population has been 22.8 per cent. However, what is crucial is that these data on growth rates by religious communities is not cross insulated with their determinants: income and literacy for start. The exercise then is meaningless.

The basic organized propaganda regarding a Muslim rate of population growth rests on the following four assertions, which are, as it were, articles of faith:

1. The law permits a Hindu male to have only one wife. A Muslim male, on the other hand, is allowed to have and tends to have more than one wife.

2. Islam, unlike Hinduism, forbids family planning. Muslims therefore do not practice family planning. 3.Muslims thus have a higher birth rate than do Hindus.

4.  It follows therefore that Muslims will soon out- number Hindus in India.

What, however, do facts brought out by official and non-sectarian agencies have to tell us?

Nuptiality Rates

Let us look at the data on marriages - what are called nuptiality rates. The percentage incidence of polygamous marriages (i.e. one wherein a man has more than one wife) is 5.80 among Hindus. The percentage incidence among Muslims is, in fact, slightly lower at 5.73 per cent. These figures are from the Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India and are to be found in the publication Polygamous Marriages in India A Survey (Census of India 1971, Series 1. Miscellaneous Studies, Monograph No.4, New Delhi, 1971).

There is absolutely no truth to the commonly propagated assertion that bigamy or polygamy is commoner among Muslims. Indeed the Census Commissioner and Registrar General state:

"In India as a whole the incidence of polygamous marriages is highest among the persons returning their religion as tribal religion (15.25 per cent), next come the Buddhists (7.97 per cent) followed by Jains (6.72 percent).

What the data clearly reveals is that of all these religious groups, Muslims have the lowest incidence of polygamous marriages. What is equally important to bear in mind is that a high incidence of polygamous marriages- do not serve to increase fertility as is commonly propagated. Given the fact that the sex ratio (that is, the number of females per thousand males in India is highly unfavorable to females amongst both Hindus and Muslims, more than one female marrying one male is not likely to increase fertility; on the contrary it is likely to have a fertility depressant effect in both these communities.

 Religious Sanction of Family Planning

Similarly, there is no truth to the assertion that Islam forbids acceptance of family planning. In a study entitled Is Islam Against Family Planning? Khan points out that (Islam) does not forbid family planning (Khan, M.A.Ed. Birth Control Amongst Muslims in India, Manohar Publications, New Delhi, 1978). What (Islam) does prohibit are abortions and sterilizations but even these are permitted on health grounds. Let us also note that the proportion of couples using contraceptives in predominantly Muslim countries like Turkey, Indonesia and Egypt is very high. In India to the percentage of Muslims practicing family planning has gone up significantly: 40.7 per cent among Muslim women as revealed by Family Planning Practices in India: Third All India Survey, brought out by the Operations Research Group in Baroda in 1990. What is striking is that this percentage has gone up more than proportionately among Muslims from a figure of 23 per cent in the Second All India Survey conducted a decade earlier.

 Fertility

The growth rate of the Muslim population is higher as the birth rate amongst Muslims is marginally higher than among Hindus. But this is neither the total nor the real picture.

Consider, for example, the data on fertility by religion provided by the Vital Statistics Division of the Ministry of Home Affairs in Fertility Differentials in India (New Delhi, 1976). It indicates that the difference in the total fertility among religious groups is less than that between the rural and urban populations. The total fertility rate for Hindus in rural areas is 5.7, while in urban areas it is 4.2. For rural Muslims it is 6.2, while for urban Muslims it is 4.9. Christians have the lowest total fertility rate of 4.4 in rural areas, and 4.0 in urban areas. For the population as a whole it is 5.8 in rural India, and 4.3 in urban India. This clearly means that other factors are more important than religion in explaining differentials in fertility.

The same document provides extremely interesting data on fertility in relation to monthly per capita expenditure. With a per capita monthly expenditure of Rs. 21 to Rs. 50, the total marital fertility rate among Indians is 6.8 in both rural and urban areas. With a rise in monthly per capita expenditure to Rs. 51 to Rs. 100, the total marital fertility declines to 5.8 for rural population and 4.3 for urban ones. At a monthly per capita expenditure of Rs. 101 and above, the total marital fertility rate drops to around 2.5 for both rural and urban populations.

The data, then, clearly indicate that decline in fertility is associated with, among other factors, increasing income. It is thus more than likely that the marginally higher fertility among Muslims reflects their relatively lower socio-economic standing. Indeed, this is substantiated by a host of findings by the National Sample Survey Organization during the course of the 43rd Round which were published in 1990.

The same round of the NSS also provides data on monthly per capita expenditure by religion and rural urban residence. This reveals that whereas close to 53 per cent of Muslims have a monthly per capital expenditure of less than Rs. 160, the corresponding figure among Hindus is 36 per cent. In the highest per capita monthly expenditure group of more than Rs. 310, the proportion of Hindus was 22 per cent while that of Muslims was only 10 per cent. Indeed, an earlier study in urban India - where the majority of Muslims live conducted by the NSSO had concluded that:

Muslims in urban India are about 20 per cent below average in per capita monthly expenditure which makes them nearly as poor as the SC and ST communities... (Bhattacharya et al. "Disparities in Level of Living Across States and Social Groups in Urban India During 1973-74", Sarvekshana, Journal of the NSSO, Vol. 10, No.2, 1986).

Socio-economic Determinants of Fertility

It is well known that acceptance of family planning - and perhaps birth rates are dependent upon a host of socio-economic factors. Some of the major ones are income, occupation, education and skills, access to technology, child survival, the economic value of children and security in old age (Government of India, Planning Commission, Report of the Working Group on Population Policy, New Delhi, 1980). The significance of these lends further credence to the possibility that the Muslims have a marginally higher birth rate because they are relatively more disadvantaged in all these areas.

Data from the 43rd Round of the NSS, referred to earlier, substantiate this point. With reference to literacy for instance, data reveal that in rural India 51 per cent of Hindu males were illiterate! The figure for Muslim males was 58 per cent. The contrast is every more striking for urban India: 25.3 per cent of Hindu males were illiterate while among Muslim males the proportion was a significantly higher 42 per cent.

On female education and employment the NSS data reveals that in urban India as astonishing 42 per cent of Hindu females and 60 per cent of Muslim females are illiterate. Graduates constitute merely four per cent among Hindu females and a negligible 0.8 per cent among Muslim females. The illiteracy rates are of course much higher among women in rural India although there the difference by religion is not very marked. School enrollment rates and school continuation rates, at all ages in both urban and rural India are significantly lower among Muslims than among Hindus. The differences are more glaring among females.

Data on work participation rates reveals that they are substantially lower among females than among males The female work participation rate among Muslim females in urban India is the lowest at 11.5 per cent. In rural India it is 19.6 among Muslim females and 33 among Hindu males.

Neither Hindus nor Muslims are undifferentiated homogeneous, communities and we do not have data on demographic indicators and their determinants, among comparable sections of these communities.

 Will Muslims Outnumber Hindus?

Yet another myth that has been propagated is that given the higher growth rate among Muslims in India they will soon outnumber Hindus. A study by P.S. Bhatia entitled "Population Growth of Various Communities u India: Myth and Reality" (Demography India, Vol. 19 NO. 1, January, 1990) looks into this issue. The study projects the prevailing growth rates among Hindus and Muslims into the next century. The Hindu population increased by 23.71 per cent between 1961-71 and b 24.71 per cent between 1971-1981. This is an increase of 0.71 per cent points. The Muslim population increased by 30.85 and 30.20 during the corresponding periods. This constitutes an increase of 0.05 per cent points, which is much less than that of Hindus.

Assuming the same rate of increase into the future Bhatia found that in a hundred years from 1981, that is in the year 2081, Hindus and Muslims will record a decadal growth rate of 30.71 and 30.55 per cent respectively. In other words, the growth rates of Hindus will be higher than that of Muslims. it is simply not true then that Muslims will outnumber Hindus in India.

Further, data clearly indicate that there has been a decline in fertility among all communities in both rural and urban areas. Between 1971 and 1981 the general marital fertility for the Indian population declined by 192 The decline was 20 per cent and 20.1 per cent among per cent in rural India and 20.1 per cent in urban India. Hindus in rural and urban India respectively. The percentage decline among Muslims was 17.3 and 18.5 in rural and urban India respectively... This data is also from the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India and are to be found in the publication Census of India 1981, Series I, Part II. a

What the data strikingly reveals is that there has been significant decline in the fertility of the Muslim community in both rural and urban areas, the decline in the fertility among Hindus is only marginally higher. The trend in the fertility among the two communities is however similar. What this point to is the task ahead of bringing about socio-economic development in the country as a whole and including her largest minority population.

 Conclusion

If facts are rationally examined, the inescapable conclusion is that religion is not the primary and determining factor in population growth. The Hindutva Vadi propaganda only indicates that there is total disdain for science and scientific enquiry. Indeed, all fascistic enterprises have this in common, appealing to the most chauvinistic and atavistic, among the people. The attempts to imbue demography with religion is clearly guided by the same dangerous motives.

(Dr. Mohan Rao is Professor in the Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health, School of Social Sciences, JNU, New Delhi)

(Sources The People's Democracy, 24 December. 1996)