Demographic Politics And Population Growth - 2

[G.Subramaniam]

Even commie paper Hindu agrees on islamic demographic tactics



http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2010...511000.htm



Kerala's demographic trends bear watching





B.S. Raghavan













The barbaric act of chopping off the hand of a college lecturer in Kerala, whom Islamic fanatics had been accusing of insulting the Prophet in a question he had set for the internal examination of B.Com students, has sent shock waves throughout the country. The brutal incident has since been traced to some members of the Popular Front of India (PFI), said to be a fringe radical Islamic outfit, which, as per pamphlets seized from its office during the probe into the crime, entertains hopes of installing Islamic rule in India.



The Chief Minister of Kerala, Mr V.S. Achuthanandan, has, in a media meet at Delhi at the time of the National Development Council meeting, expressed his fears, purportedly based on evidence uncovered by the police, that the PFI was hatching a plot aimed at Islamisation of Kerala and that “In 20 years, India and Kerala will become a Muslim-dominated region. Youngsters are being given money and lured to convert to Islam, marry Muslim women and then give birth to Muslim children so that they can multiply.”



All for ‘love'



This is reminiscent of the observations of the Kerala High Court on December 9 last year in a case against ‘love jihad' (conversions of girls from other religions to Islam after enticing them to marry Muslim boys) that there were indications of as many as 3,000-4,000 ‘forceful' religious conversions in Kerala in the last four years under the guise of ‘love', and the government should consider enacting a law to prohibit such ‘deceptive' acts.



Steep fall



To what extent do demographic trends in Kerala bear out the possibility of Muslim domination? From what I have gathered from the studies of noted demographers such as Mr P.N. Mari Bhat and Mr A. Francis Xavier, and from the book, Religious Demography of India, published by the Centre for Policy Studies, Chennai, India's Muslim population will keep increasing by one percentage point each decade and its share will rise from 13.4 per cent of the total population in 2001 to 17.3 per cent by 2050.



For the sub-continent as a whole comprising India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, the proportion of Muslims is projected to increase from 30 per cent as of now to 50 per cent around 2060.



As regards Kerala, in the last 100 years, the population of Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists has been declining by 1.2 per cent every decade resulting in a steep fall from 69 per cent of the total population in 1901 to 56 per cent in 2001.



During the first half of the 20th century, the Christian share in the population had increased from 14 per cent to 21 per cent. In the post-Independence era, the percentage of Muslims in the State as a whole has gone up from 17.5 to 25.



Regional trends



The trends pertaining to specific regions of Kerala are equally interesting. In the Malappuram district, in the period from 1951 to 2001, the increase in the Muslim share in the total population has been by 14 percentage points, from 54.3 to 68 per cent.



In the entire Malabar region, comprising Kasargod, Kannur, Wayanad, Kozhikode, Malappuram and Palakkad, the non-Islamic, non-Christian section of the population has dropped from 65.3 per cent of the total in 1951 to a near minority level of 52.7 per cent in 2001.



In the same period, the Muslim share in the region has gone up from 31.4 per cent to 41.1 per cent and the Christian share has also risen significantly from 3.3 per cent to 6.2 per cent.



I am convinced that the trends I have set out are not part of any design on any particular community's part to overturn India's religious demography in its favour. Even so, they bear watching.