Myth-making can be a lucrative affair for politicians. New India may be particularly susceptible to divisive myths given the diverse means of dissemination available. But some myths predate the reshaping of the republic and rear their ugly heads from time to time. One of these is the fear of Muslim overpopulation. A Bharatiya Janata Party legislator recently claimed that the rising population of Muslims in the country is responsible for terrorism and rise in rapes, and will lead to "anarchy", suggesting the passing of a law to control their population. This bogey has long been part of the Hindutva agenda. No less than the prime minister has been known to have subscribed to this view. But profiting from the majority community's fear of conceding access to power and resources to people depicted as outsiders has not been the prerogative of saffron outfits alone. Is it not this terror that underlies the Assam Accord that was signed by the Congress? The National Register of Citizens has only further queered the pitch by shifting from an Assamese/non-Assamese binary to a distinction between Muslims and Hindus. Each time, the re-kindling of such dread is accompanied by the presentation of half-truths. Actual figures can reveal the sinister motives behind the demonization of the minority community. Indeed, the population growth rate of Muslims is higher than the corresponding figure for the Hindu community. But the former rate fell to a 20-year low in 2011 - at present it will take Muslims till 2220 to just catch up with the Hindu population. Not to mention that at the current rate, three out of four people will be Hindu in India by 2050.
The trope of Muslim overpopulation is a reliable tool the world over. Tellingly, it works only where Muslims are culturally distinct minorities, like parts of Europe, and loses power where their population is growing the fastest, like sub-Saharan Africa. The claim of Muslim overpopulation falls apart when examined closely. The fastest drop in fertility rates in modern history happened in the Islamic theocracy of Iran - from seven in 1950 to 1.68 in 2017. What changed? Besides encouraging family planning and distributing contraceptives, Iran made girls' education a priority. Education is inversely proportional to fertility rates as opposed to persecution and conflict which are directly proportional. The consequences of spreading the myth of Muslim overpopulation will thus be counterproductive for its propagators. But can such a fact stand in the way of short-term political dividends?