بالآخر ہندوستان میں مسلمانوں کی آبادی میں اضافہ کے جھوٹے دعوی کی قلعی کھل ہی گئی جبکہ تازہ ترین سرکاری اعدادوشمارشاہد ہیں کہ 2001 سے 2011 کے درمیان دس برس میں مسلمانوں کی آبادی بڑھنے کی رفتار میں5فیصد کمی واقع ہوئی ہے۔
2001 میں مسلمانوں کی آبادی میں 29 فیصد کی شرح سے اضافہ ہو رہا تھا اور 2011 تک یہ شرح کم ہو کر 24 فیصد پر آ گئی۔وزارت داخلہ نے 2011 کی مردم شماری کے اعداد و شمار ابھی تک باضابطہ طور پر جاری نہیں کیے ہیں لیکن جو تفصیلات سامنے آئی ہیں اس کے مطابق ملک کی اوسط شرح پیدائش 1.8 فیصد ہے۔
اداد و شمار کے مطابق ہندوستان میں مسلمانوں کی آبادی بڑھ کر تقریباً 18 کروڑ ہو گئی ہے جو کہ مجموعی آبادی کا 14.2 فیصد ہے۔ملک میں ہندوو ں کی آبادی اس مدت میں معمولی سی کمی کیساتھ 80 فیصد سے نیچے آ گئی ہے۔خیال رہے کہ 1991 سے مسلمانوں کی آبادی میں اضافے کی رفتار میں مسلسل گراوٹ آ رہی ہے۔ 1991 میں جو شرح 32.2 فیصد تھی وہ 2001 میں 29 فیصد پر آئی اور 2011 میں یہ مزید کم ہو کر 24 فیصد پر پہنچ گئی ہے۔اگر یہ رجحان جاری رہا تو 2021 کی مردم شماری تک مسلمانوں کی آبادی میں اضافے کی رفتار موجودہ قومی رفتار یعنی 18 فیصد سے نیچے جا سکتی ہے۔عجیب بات یہ ہے کہ ہندوستان میں ذرائع ابلاغ اور ماہرین مسلمان کی گھٹتی ہوئی رفتار کو اس طرح پیش کر رہے ہیں جیسے مسلمانوں کی آبادی میں ’دھماکہ خیز اضافہ‘ ہو رہا ہے۔بعض مغربی ملکوں کی طرح ہندوستان میں بھی دائیں بازو کی ہندو تنظیمیں مسلمانوں کی اونچی شرح پیدائش کو ایک ایک مسلم مملکت میں بدلنے کی مسلمانوں کی ایک سازش قرار دیتی رہی ہیں۔حالانکہ آبادی کے ماہرین زیادہ بچوں کی پیدائش کو تعلیم کی کمی اور غربت سے منسوب کرتے ہیں اور وہ ثبوت کے طور پر ہندوو ¿ں کے اس گروپ کا حوالہ دیتے ہیں جو تعلیمی اور اقتصادی طور پر مسلمانوں کے ہی زمرہ میں آتے ہیں اور ان کی شرح پیدائش بھی مسلمانوں کی طرح اونچی ہے۔لیکن آر ایس ایس، وشو ہندو پریشد اور بی جے پی کی بعض دیگر محاذی تنظیمیں ملک میں مسلمانوں کی’ آبادی کے دھماکے‘ کے پرچار میں لگی ہوئی ہیں۔یہ پروپیگنڈا بھی عام ہے کہ مسلمان مذہبی وجہ سے مانع حمل طریقوں کا استعمال نہیں کرتے۔دنیا میں تقریبا 50 ایسے ممالک ہیں جن میں مسلمانوں کی اکثریت ہے۔
ان میں سے 46 ممالک ایسے ہیں جہاں تعلیم کے فروغ اور بیداری کیساتھ شرح پیدائش میں تیزی سے کمی کا رجحان ہے۔ایران میں گذشتہ 20 برس میں شرح پیدائش اس حد تک نیچے آ گئی ہے کہ جلد ہی وہاں کی آبادی گھٹنا شروع ہو جائے گی۔بنگلہ دیش کی شرح پیدائش ہندوستان کے ہندوو ں کی شرح پیدائش سے کم ہے اور جلد ہی اس سطح پر پہنچ جائے گی جہاں آبادی مستحکم ہو جاتی ہے۔یہی حال پاکستان، ملائیشیا، انڈونیشیا، قطر اور دوسرے ملکوں کا ہے۔صحت اور تعلیم دو ایسے پہلو ہیں جن میں پوری دنیا میں مسلمان پیچھے رہے ہیں۔چھوٹا خاندان صحت، تعلیم اور خوشحالی کا ضامن ہے۔ آئندہ دو دہائیوں میں ہندوستان کے ہی نہیں بلکہ پوری دنیا کے مسلمانوں میں شرح پیدائش آئیڈیل شرح حاصل کر لیں گی۔
In
1909, a Hindu communalist by the name of Colonel U.N. Mukherji wrote a
pamphlet Hindus: A Dying Race. His projections, based on the study of
census data between 1881 and 1901, suggested that Hindu demographic
share was declining with every passing decade. Col. Mukherji met Swami
Shraddhanand of Arya Samaj at Calcutta in 1911. His novice study
prompted Swami Shraddhanand to formulate Shuddhi and Sangathan. It was a
project to bring back converted Hindus into their native Hindu fold.
The rest is history!
In recent years, in analyzing India's religious demography, the authors [all non-demographers] of the book - "Religious Demography of India", Joshi et al., have explicitly stated that there is much Indian Religionists - a term used as an euphemism for Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains - need to fear. They claimed, "The proportion of Indian Religionists in the population of India has declined by 11 percentage points during the period of 110 years ... Indian Religionists formed 79.32 per cent of the population in 1881 and 68.03 per cent in 1991 ... If the trend ... continues, then the proportion of Indian Religionists in India is likely to fall below 50 per cent early in the latter half of the 21st century." As can be seen the authors purposively included Pakistan and Bangladesh in their rhetoric. The sly authors don't tell their readers that for the present Indian Union, the "decline" has been trivial in the last 100 years (e.g., from 86.64 % in 1901 to 85.09 % in 1991). But who wants to do the math when the politically motivated, chauvinist, non-demographers are doing all the hard work for their mesmerized audience!
Since the publication of this Hindu Mein Kamf of sort, touted as a 'landmark' work by former Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani, many Hindu communalists and fanatics of the Hindutva have played the religious card too well to drum up support within the broader Hindu community. They claim, like those authors, that "pocket of high Muslim influence seems to be now developing in the northern border belt covering Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal and Assam. And a border pocket of even more intense Christian influence has developed in the north-eastern states". Now the issue has become a national one catapulting many obscure, chauvinist political figures to national roles. It won't be any surprise when the Hindu fundamentalist BJP (a member of the Sangh Parivar) wins the next national election in India and her one-time tea hawker Narendra Modi (now the chief minister of Gujarat) becomes the Prime Minister.
As I have noted before, these narrow-minded Hindu fanatics are simply oblivious of the various factors that contribute to demographic changes in a landscape - e.g., the fertility and mortality rates, socio-economic conditions, female literacy, urbanization, family planning and migration. In a 2005 paper, "District Level Fertility Estimates for Hindus and Muslims," Professor S Irudaya Rajan of Center for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India, provided estimates of crude birth rates (CBR) and total fertility rates (TFR) for Hindus and Muslims for 594 districts of India, and assessed the state and district level differentials across the country. It reconfirms that there is a regional variation in fertility in India, with higher fertility in the north than in the southern and western parts, irrespective of religious affiliation.
Professor Rajan's analysis showed that while the difference is narrow or negligible in south and west India, a significantly higher rate of Muslim fertility is observed in eastern and north-eastern India. The difference in Hindu-Muslim fertility is far higher in states like West Bengal, Assam, the north-eastern states and a few northern states (thus contributing to higher annual growth rate). But in other parts of the country, Muslim fertility is falling in line with Hindu fertility as the difference is narrow both at higher and lower levels of fertility. This sharp differential in fertility among Hindus and Muslims in northern and eastern parts of India can be explained by the female literacy differentials by religion in these states rather than any other social-economic variable. As demographers have found out female education always emerges as a major predictor for fertility differentials. All those states recording much higher Muslim fertility than that for Hindus have very low female literacy levels among Muslims. The largest differential between Hindu-Muslim female literacy is in Haryana, where female literacy among Muslims is as low as 21.5 % compared to 57.1 % among Hindus.
I have analyzed the data statistically and found that there is a strong correlation between the differentials in TFR and FLR:
TFR-delta = 0.823 - 0.0484 FLR-delta
with a R-sq(adj) of 73.1%. However, if the data for Jammu and Kashmir, Daman & Diu, Dadra & Nagar Haveli, Andaman & Nicobar, and Punjab (with high residual errors) are discarded from the analysis, the correlation is much improved with a R-sq(adj) of 88.1%. The corresponding regression equation then becomes:
TFR-delta = 0.908 - 0.0532 FLR-delta.
The data strongly corroborate the well-known fact that those two parameters have inverse relationship, i.e., when female literacy rate goes up, the total fertility rate goes down.
Prof. Rajan's study also reconfirms regional variation in fertility in India: higher fertility in the north compared to the southern and western parts of India, which is true irrespective of religious affiliation. For instance, the illiterate women in Kerala have fewer children compared to illiterate women in Madhya Pradesh or anywhere else in India.
When it comes to fertility rate, socio-economic condition does matter. This well-known fact is reflected in the Indian census data. Even in the demographically developed state of Kerala (which has the highest literacy rate - 94% in India), the population growth rates of Hindu brahmins are much lower than that of Hindu nairs, followed by Hindu ezhavas. Similarly among Christians, Syrian Christians' growth rates are lower than that of Latin Christians. In the post-partition early decades Kerala's population growth rate was not only high (above 2% per annum) by its own standards, but also higher than India's growth rates several decades after independence. During the 1991-2001 decade Kerala's growth rate was just 0.9 % per annum as against India's 1.9. Similarly, between 1981-91 and 1991-2001, the Muslim growth rate in India has shown a decrease from 3.2 % per annum to 2.9 % per annum.
In the pre- and early British era of colonization of India, Muslims, in general, who were economically more prosperous than other religious groups, had a lower growth rate. As their socio-economic condition deteriorated during the British colonial era and after Indian independence, the growth rate increased. Professor Rajan's demographic study also shows that at the beginning of the 20th century, Muslim growth rates were slightly lower than that for Hindus. Since then, Muslims in India registered higher growth rates in comparison to Hindus as well as the total population right through the last 100 years. Even during the influenza decade of 1911-21, India's growth rate was zero and the Hindus registered a negative growth rate. Muslims registered a minimal growth of just 0.1 % per annum. The defining moment of both the Hindu and Muslim population growth rate was after independence. Muslims registered a negative growth rate of 1.8 % per annum in 1941-1951 resulting from the large-scale movement of people from India to Pakistan. On the other hand, Hindus registered the highest growth rate of close to 2.4 %. The growth rates of Hindus and Muslims in the post-independence decades, Hindu population growth hovered between 2.0-2.2 % per annum whereas Muslims growth was between 2.7-2.8 %. In other words, both groups grew by more than 2 % per annum during 1961-1991.
In the post partition era, Muslims as a whole appear to have 0.75 % higher annual growth rate than majority Hindus (e.g., 2.57% compared to 1.82% in 1991-2001). And unless their socio-economic conditions improve significantly with jobs and education, esp. amongst the Muslim females, this trend may continue for a foreseeable future.
In the 2001 Indian census, only the five bigger states (Uttar Pradesh - 18.5 %, Bihar - 16.5 %, Assam - 30.9 %, Kerala - 24.7 % and West Bengal - 25.2 %), two smaller states (Jammu and Kashmir - 67 % and Jharkland - 13.8 %) and one union territory (Lakshadweep - 95.5 %) had a proportion of Muslims above the national average of 13.3 %. Professor Rajan's study showed that among the above eight states/union territories, five of them reported their Muslim growth rates as below the national growth rate of 2.57 %; in fact, two states reported below the national average of 2.03 %.
- See more at: http://www.iviews.com/articles/Articles.asp?ref=IV1404-5711#sthash.DeX4GLwP.dpuf
In recent years, in analyzing India's religious demography, the authors [all non-demographers] of the book - "Religious Demography of India", Joshi et al., have explicitly stated that there is much Indian Religionists - a term used as an euphemism for Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains - need to fear. They claimed, "The proportion of Indian Religionists in the population of India has declined by 11 percentage points during the period of 110 years ... Indian Religionists formed 79.32 per cent of the population in 1881 and 68.03 per cent in 1991 ... If the trend ... continues, then the proportion of Indian Religionists in India is likely to fall below 50 per cent early in the latter half of the 21st century." As can be seen the authors purposively included Pakistan and Bangladesh in their rhetoric. The sly authors don't tell their readers that for the present Indian Union, the "decline" has been trivial in the last 100 years (e.g., from 86.64 % in 1901 to 85.09 % in 1991). But who wants to do the math when the politically motivated, chauvinist, non-demographers are doing all the hard work for their mesmerized audience!
Since the publication of this Hindu Mein Kamf of sort, touted as a 'landmark' work by former Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani, many Hindu communalists and fanatics of the Hindutva have played the religious card too well to drum up support within the broader Hindu community. They claim, like those authors, that "pocket of high Muslim influence seems to be now developing in the northern border belt covering Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal and Assam. And a border pocket of even more intense Christian influence has developed in the north-eastern states". Now the issue has become a national one catapulting many obscure, chauvinist political figures to national roles. It won't be any surprise when the Hindu fundamentalist BJP (a member of the Sangh Parivar) wins the next national election in India and her one-time tea hawker Narendra Modi (now the chief minister of Gujarat) becomes the Prime Minister.
As I have noted before, these narrow-minded Hindu fanatics are simply oblivious of the various factors that contribute to demographic changes in a landscape - e.g., the fertility and mortality rates, socio-economic conditions, female literacy, urbanization, family planning and migration. In a 2005 paper, "District Level Fertility Estimates for Hindus and Muslims," Professor S Irudaya Rajan of Center for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India, provided estimates of crude birth rates (CBR) and total fertility rates (TFR) for Hindus and Muslims for 594 districts of India, and assessed the state and district level differentials across the country. It reconfirms that there is a regional variation in fertility in India, with higher fertility in the north than in the southern and western parts, irrespective of religious affiliation.
Professor Rajan's analysis showed that while the difference is narrow or negligible in south and west India, a significantly higher rate of Muslim fertility is observed in eastern and north-eastern India. The difference in Hindu-Muslim fertility is far higher in states like West Bengal, Assam, the north-eastern states and a few northern states (thus contributing to higher annual growth rate). But in other parts of the country, Muslim fertility is falling in line with Hindu fertility as the difference is narrow both at higher and lower levels of fertility. This sharp differential in fertility among Hindus and Muslims in northern and eastern parts of India can be explained by the female literacy differentials by religion in these states rather than any other social-economic variable. As demographers have found out female education always emerges as a major predictor for fertility differentials. All those states recording much higher Muslim fertility than that for Hindus have very low female literacy levels among Muslims. The largest differential between Hindu-Muslim female literacy is in Haryana, where female literacy among Muslims is as low as 21.5 % compared to 57.1 % among Hindus.
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I have analyzed the data statistically and found that there is a strong correlation between the differentials in TFR and FLR:
TFR-delta = 0.823 - 0.0484 FLR-delta
with a R-sq(adj) of 73.1%. However, if the data for Jammu and Kashmir, Daman & Diu, Dadra & Nagar Haveli, Andaman & Nicobar, and Punjab (with high residual errors) are discarded from the analysis, the correlation is much improved with a R-sq(adj) of 88.1%. The corresponding regression equation then becomes:
TFR-delta = 0.908 - 0.0532 FLR-delta.
The data strongly corroborate the well-known fact that those two parameters have inverse relationship, i.e., when female literacy rate goes up, the total fertility rate goes down.
Prof. Rajan's study also reconfirms regional variation in fertility in India: higher fertility in the north compared to the southern and western parts of India, which is true irrespective of religious affiliation. For instance, the illiterate women in Kerala have fewer children compared to illiterate women in Madhya Pradesh or anywhere else in India.
When it comes to fertility rate, socio-economic condition does matter. This well-known fact is reflected in the Indian census data. Even in the demographically developed state of Kerala (which has the highest literacy rate - 94% in India), the population growth rates of Hindu brahmins are much lower than that of Hindu nairs, followed by Hindu ezhavas. Similarly among Christians, Syrian Christians' growth rates are lower than that of Latin Christians. In the post-partition early decades Kerala's population growth rate was not only high (above 2% per annum) by its own standards, but also higher than India's growth rates several decades after independence. During the 1991-2001 decade Kerala's growth rate was just 0.9 % per annum as against India's 1.9. Similarly, between 1981-91 and 1991-2001, the Muslim growth rate in India has shown a decrease from 3.2 % per annum to 2.9 % per annum.
In the pre- and early British era of colonization of India, Muslims, in general, who were economically more prosperous than other religious groups, had a lower growth rate. As their socio-economic condition deteriorated during the British colonial era and after Indian independence, the growth rate increased. Professor Rajan's demographic study also shows that at the beginning of the 20th century, Muslim growth rates were slightly lower than that for Hindus. Since then, Muslims in India registered higher growth rates in comparison to Hindus as well as the total population right through the last 100 years. Even during the influenza decade of 1911-21, India's growth rate was zero and the Hindus registered a negative growth rate. Muslims registered a minimal growth of just 0.1 % per annum. The defining moment of both the Hindu and Muslim population growth rate was after independence. Muslims registered a negative growth rate of 1.8 % per annum in 1941-1951 resulting from the large-scale movement of people from India to Pakistan. On the other hand, Hindus registered the highest growth rate of close to 2.4 %. The growth rates of Hindus and Muslims in the post-independence decades, Hindu population growth hovered between 2.0-2.2 % per annum whereas Muslims growth was between 2.7-2.8 %. In other words, both groups grew by more than 2 % per annum during 1961-1991.
In the post partition era, Muslims as a whole appear to have 0.75 % higher annual growth rate than majority Hindus (e.g., 2.57% compared to 1.82% in 1991-2001). And unless their socio-economic conditions improve significantly with jobs and education, esp. amongst the Muslim females, this trend may continue for a foreseeable future.
In the 2001 Indian census, only the five bigger states (Uttar Pradesh - 18.5 %, Bihar - 16.5 %, Assam - 30.9 %, Kerala - 24.7 % and West Bengal - 25.2 %), two smaller states (Jammu and Kashmir - 67 % and Jharkland - 13.8 %) and one union territory (Lakshadweep - 95.5 %) had a proportion of Muslims above the national average of 13.3 %. Professor Rajan's study showed that among the above eight states/union territories, five of them reported their Muslim growth rates as below the national growth rate of 2.57 %; in fact, two states reported below the national average of 2.03 %.
- See more at: http://www.iviews.com/articles/Articles.asp?ref=IV1404-5711#sthash.DeX4GLwP.dpuf
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