What's behind Indian extremists’ anti-Muslim theory?
For years, bigots have fueled Hindu nationalist worries of demographic erasure by Muslims. However, new government data tells a totally different story.
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What's behind Indian extremists’ anti-Muslim theory?
Head of the powerful Dasna Devi temple in northern India, Yati Narsinghanand, warned the country's one billion Hindus, "produce more children or prepare to live in an Islamic state."
"With the way their [Muslims'] population is increasing, there will be a Muslim prime minister in 2029," said the extreme priest at a religious conclave last month, after being released on bond following his detention earlier this year on hate speech charges.
“Once that happens, 50% [of] Hindus will have to undergo religious conversion, and 40% will be killed.”
Data from a government study earlier this month exposed his apparent lies. Even though Islam is practiced by barely 14 percent of the population, Narsinghanand's statement echoes a theme that Hindu racists have used for years to instill fear over the potential of a Muslim-majority India in a country that is 80 percent Hindu.
Islamic misconceptions
One common misunderstanding is that Muslims have a considerably greater reproductive rate than other communities in India.
According to the most recent National Family Health Survey, the Muslim fertility rate fell the highest among all communities between 2015-16 and 2019-20 and now stands at 2.36, nearly half of the figure of 4.4 from three decades ago.
While this is still the highest fertility rate among all religions in India, the gap with the Hindu fertility rate – 1.94 – is closing. The most recent figures back up results from the Pew Research Center in September, which were based on earlier data.
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“It’s clear as daylight: the idea that Muslims are going to become India’s biggest community is a total hoax,” says former Indian chief election commissioner SY Quraishi, whose 2021 book, The Population Myth, challenges this notion.
According to Quraishi, fearmongering over the alleged threat to India's Hindu majority has intensified during the last eight years. That period corresponds to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party's reign (BJP). Sadhvi Rithambara, a fiery leader of the BJP-affiliated Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), advised Hindu couples to have four children on the same day Narsinghanand spoke out.
If members of Congress and important media figures in the United States have emphasized the "great replacement theory" that further emboldened extreme right-wingers and white supremacists, members of parliament and television stations in India have mainstreamed the falsehood of a demographic threat to Hindus that has further incited violence against Muslims.
