Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan slammed RSS chief Mohan Bhagawat's statement that there is a "religious-based imbalance" in India and, therefore, the government must introduce population control policies, The News Minute reported.
On Thursday, Vijayan called Bhagawat's statement an utter lie, "false propaganda" to "unleash communal animosity", which the RSS relentlessly propagated through the ages. He said at the moment, Bhagawat is targeting upcoming elections.
Bhagawat claimed on Wednesday that there is a demographic "imbalance" and "population imbalance" that must not be ignored.
In a statement released by his office, Vijayan said that Bhagwat's statement was only the reiteration of RSS's age-old lie that Hindus would become a minority in the country in the near future. He said that the population growth of the country is determined by the 'total fertility rate (TFR). The Union Health Ministry's National Family Health Survey (NFHS) of 2019-21 has suggested that the TFR of the Muslim community is decreasing compared to other religions.
He further said that the TFR of Hindu and Muslim communities were 1.9 and 2.3 as per NFHS 2019-21. It was 2.6 for Muslims in 2015-16 and 4.4 in 1992-93. He stated a 46.5 per cent decrease has registered for Muslims since 1992-93, while it is 41.2 per cent for Hindus. Also, when the Hindu population growth declined by 3.1 per cent, as per census figures, Muslims went down by 4.7 per cent.
Further, a report by The Wire, citing NFHS 2019-21, states that the difference between Hindu and Muslim fertility is 0.42, while in 1992-93, Muslim women had 1.1 more children than Hindu women. When Hindu fertility dropped by 30 per cent, Muslim fertility fell by 35 per cent in the last 20 years, Wire reports, proving that decline in Muslim population growth was larger than that of Hindus. "This establishes that Hindu-Muslim fertility rates are on track to absolute convergence, presumably by 2030," TNM quotes the report.
Vijayan alleged that RSS starts spreading fake figures when such authentic figures are available to the public. Secular society must recognise such harmful moves that promote hate politics for electoral gains.