91 quotes found
"At the time of partition in 1947, almost 23 percent of Pakistan’s population was comprised of non-Muslim citizens. Today, the proportion of non-Muslims has declined to approximately 3 percent."
"Pakistan is supposed to be homogeneous because 97 percent of the population is Muslim. It is in fact shot through with lines of division that aggravate the destabilizing effects of its demographic growth. Islam is not a sufficiently unifying force to silence identity politics in a country that came out of two secessions. In these circumstances, the ideal of pu- rity expressed in the name of the country might seem to be a dangerous defiance of reality. The fertility rate in the peripheral provinces and groups—Baluchis, Siraikis, Pashtuns—is higher than that among the central ethnic groups—Punjabis, Sindhis, and Urdu-speaking Muhajirs driven out of India after the 1947 partition. The taboo is so powerful in the “country of the pure” that, without apparent reason, the govern- ment postponed a census scheduled for 1981 to 1991, and finally carried it out in 1998. It was a matter of putting off delicate questions about the representation of ethnic groups in parliament and the resulting budget allocations, the resolution of which traditionally favored the central provinces. All of this oddly recalls the situation in Lebanon."
"The unspoken fact of Pakistani demography is rivalry with India. The Pakistani atom bomb is only one symptom among others, and per- haps not the most important one. Questioned about their view of their country’s demography, Pakistani authorities tirelessly repeat that they fi nd the fertility rate too high. This is a well-rehearsed refrain, composed and sung to satisfy the suppliers of funds: the World Bank, the IMF, and USAID. It is indeed worth asking whether the high fertility rate does not refl ect the deep aspirations of leaders who are at bottom more concerned with geopolitical power relations in the subcontinent than with the well-being of their population. In the Sunni Arab world, the fertility rate fl oor below which the most patrilineal countries have not been able to fall is 3 children per woman. In Pakistan it is not yet certain that it will go below 4, even if it is too soon to assert that Pakistan is going to devi- ate from a trajectory matching its level of development. The situation is in fact worrying, whatever the scenario."
"The Pakistani fertility rate is slowly declining: In 1988 it was at 5.56 children, and since then it has lost only 0.9 percent annually. With 4.6 children in 2005, 6 the Pakistani fertility rate, the highest in this group, is far above that of the Arab world, except for Yemen. One cannot fail to be impressed by the alignment of the fertility of the Muslims of northern India with that of Pakistan: In 1998 –1999, it was 4.8 in Uttar Pradesh, 4.9 in Rajasthan, and 4 in Bihar. One might suggest a slight boost from the combined effect of minority status and the fact that Muslims in these states belong to the least privileged strata in social and educational terms. The minority effect must play the leading role, because elsewhere in India, in states where Muslims enjoy higher than average educational status, in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, they also have a higher fertility rate than their Hindu neighbors."
"Pakistan is Asia's fastest-growing non-Arab country, doubling its population every 24 years."
"In Pakistan, family planning is a joke. The responsible ministry is at present headed by a fundamentalist Muslim, Saddar Niazi, who boasts of being one of fifteen children. He has declared that the pressure for family planning was a holdover from the liberal secularism of Benazir Bhutto, and that he did not intend to implement the policies of a woman charged with corruption and overwhelmingly voted out in the 1990 election.265 His stand is not exceptional, rather it is the rule among Muslim governments. At any rate, Pakistan's birth rate stands at 3.2%, almost the doubt of India's."
"In other parts of the world, conservative Islamists clamour for population growth. In Sunni societies, they continue to castigate family planning. Pakistan is a prime example. There, Abu Ala Mawdudi, founder of the Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) Party, in his The Birth Control (1937) savaged contraception as a Western plot against Islam. Family planning, he maintained, would introduce Western promiscuity, sexually transmitted diseases and women’s liberation to Muslim lands. Mawdudi’s opposition to abortion derives from a Qur’anic verse which instructs families not to kill children during times of want. He also quotes verses and hadiths extolling the virtue of children and marriage. Taking their cue from him, fundamentalists have attacked Pakistan’s family planning policies as a Western import linked to decadence, painting it as an imperialist attempt to control Islam. In stark contrast to Iran, no Islamist scholars have come out in support of family planning. In the words of Abdul Hakim, ‘the family planning programme in Pakistan works under a severe threat from religiosity … people are afraid lest they are considered irreligious for advocating family planning … whereas in Indonesia and Bangladesh the approach has been to convince religious leaders of the importance of this [family planning] programme and its compatibility with religion.’"
"The contrast between Pakistan and poorer Bangladesh is stark. Pakistan’s religious authorities resisted family planning far longer than their counterparts in Bangladesh, who are much less influenced by Mawdudi and the fundamentalist theology of the Deobandis.17 There was also a close link between Mawdudi and Pakistani military ruler Zia ul-Haq. Zia admired Mawdudi, and co-opted Mawdudi’s JI into his administration. Mawdudi was a willing partner, and Zia’s long reign between 1977 and 1988 oversaw the progressive implementation of sharia in Pakistan. Nourished by the fat of American aid in support of the Afghan mujahidin, Zia gave the Salafists a free hand in social policy and diverted funds from social services to Deobandi madrasas. The result was sharia in all its glory: education and the economy were Islamised and a new Islamic penal code became law. This included the usual raft of medieval punishments known as hudud, such as cutting off the limbs of thieves, stoning women for adultery and whipping drinkers of alcoholic beverages. Though Zia was assassinated in 1988, his Islamisation policies rolled on –driven by popular demand from Salafists, the devout middle class and Islamised rural migrants... Next door in Afghanistan, and in north-west Pakistan’s tribal areas, local religious leaders exercise enormous influence over people’s perceptions of contraception. In Taliban-dominated southern Afghanistan, locals tend to accept the prohibitionist views of their conservative imams.21 Tragically, Taliban insurgents have taken Islamist opposition to family planning to new heights, or rather depths. A favoured tactic is to assassinate clinicians. Threats, kidnappings and assassinations have brought family planning to its knees in disputed areas."
"As far back as the 3rd or 4th millennium B.C. and probably much earlier still, India was in possession of a highly developed civilization with large and populous cities."
"So in India some three to seven thousand years ago there were peoples possessing a technology sufficiently advanced to support a dense population."
"So putting the evidence from archaeology, literature, and history together, we reach the conclusion that before the Christian era India had a substantial population, first because of its advanced technology and second because of the fertile environment of the application of this technology."
"Although no data as such are available for the ancient times, there are statements of Greek writers which depict India as a country of large population. Apollodorus writes that there were between Hydaspes (Jhelum) and Hyphasis (Beas)—approximately the kingdom of Porus—1500 cities, none of which was less than a kos, which, adds Elphinstone, ‘with every allowance for exaggeration, supposes a most flourishing territory‘."
"The population of the country as a whole did not greatly vary between the early Hindu period and the first advent of Muhammadans, and it may be supposed to have lain roughly between the above limit (100—140 million)."
"The population was very much greater (on the eve of Turkish invasions) than at the death of Akbar. During centuries of invasions, constant oppression and misrule, the wholesale massacres during the Pathan period, the population of India dwindled...This broad fact emerges from the two estimates (Ferishtah’s and Moreland’s), howsoever erroneous or full of fallacies the individual estimates may be."
"Although there were mass conversions, the country was too vast, the invaders too few, and the volume of immigration too small to change the social complex… India, therefore, never became a Muslim nation, but remained simply a Hindu country in which Muslims were numerous."
"All the people..are idolaters . There is not a single Musalman. Occasionally a Musalman may visit the country... but the natives are all infidels."
"Therefore, wherever Muslims made successful inroads, they reduced the Hindu population directly by slaughtering the men in large numbers and taking away the women and children as captives. It indirectly reduced the Hindu populace by rendering the remnant Hindu men unprocreative by depriving them of childbearing female partners. Since those women became the vehicle for breeding Muslim offspring instead, the final result was a reduction of the Hindu populace and a sharp rise in the number of Muslims. The growing Muslim population was to be maintained by the toiling of the vanquished Hindus, subjected to grinding taxes. This is roughly the same protocol, which Prophet Muhammad had applied to the Jews of Banu Qurayza and Khaybar."
"Of the whole population of Hindustan... five parts in six are composed of Hindus..."
"In short, while there can be no doubt about the presence of some Muslims in Sind, Gujarat and on the western coast of India, their number, till the end of the tenth century was almost microscopic. In Hindustan proper, east of the river Indus, there were hardly any Musalmans in A.D. 1000."
"It has been estimated earlier that there were about four hundred thousand Muslims in India in A.D. 1200. If their numbers became double in sixty to seventy years, they would have been about 3.2 million in 1400. The total population of India in 1400 has been estimated at 170 million. The Muslims would have been about 1.8 per cent of the total population with 50 to 53 Hindus to one Muslim."
"We have, therefore, only one choice left to arrive at a tentative percentage of Muslims in A.D. 1600... by 1600 Muslim numbers may not have risen beyond 15 million. In that year the total population of India has been estimated at 140 millions. Muslims would have formed about one-ninth to one-tenth of India’s total population."
"Even under Mohammedan rule, India remained largely a pagan land."
"In the whole of India the proportion of Hindus to the total population has fallen in 30 years from 74 to 69 percent, but this is partly due to the inclusion at each succeeding Census of new areas in which Hindus, if they are found at all, are a minority. Bengal contributes 24 millions or 36 per cent to the total number of Muhammadans in India. They are found chiefly in the Eastern and Northern Districts. In this tract there was a vigorious and highly successful propaganda in the days of the Pathan Kings of Bengal. The inhabitants had never been fully Hinduised, and at the time of the first Muhamadan invasions most of them probably professed a debased form of Buddhism. They were spurned by the high class Hindus as unclean and so listened readily to the preachings of the Mullahs who proclaimed that all men are equal in the sight of Allah, backed as it often was by a varying amount of compulsion. "Another less notable exception is found in Malabar, where the Mappillas are the descendants of local converts, the earliest of whom were made by the Arabs who began to frequent the coast in the 8th century. A certain number of new converts are still being made." "It should be added that even in Northern India the Muhammadan population is by no means wholly of foreign origin. Of the 12 million followers of Islam in the Punjab, 10 millions showed by the caste entry (such as Rajputs, Jat, Arain, Gujar, Mochi, Turkhan, and Teli) that they were originally Hindus. The number who described themselves as belonging to foreign races such as Pathan, Biloch, Sheikh, Saiyad and Moghal was less than 2 millions, and some even of these have very little foreign blood in their veins.” "The number of Muhammadans has risen during the decade by 6.7% as compared with only 5% in the case of Hindus. There is a small but continuous accession of converts from Hinduism and other religions, but the main reason for the relatively more rapid growth of the followers of the Prophet is that they are more prolific. This may possibly be due to their more nourishing dietery, but the main reason is that their social customs are more favour able to a high birth rate them those of The Hindus. They have fewer marriage restrictions, early marriage is uncommon and widows remarry more freely. "The greater reproductive capacity of the Muhammadans is shown by the fact that the proportion of married females to the total number of females aged 15- 40 exceeds corresponding proportion for Hindus. The result is that Muhammadans have 37 childrens aged 0—5 to every person aged 15—40 while the Hindus have only 33. Since 1881 the number of Muhammadans in the areas then enumerated has risen by 26.4 per cent while the corresponding increase for Hindus is only 15. 1 per cent." Writing on the comparative increase of the two communities in Burmah the census report proceeds in para 173:— "We have seen that in Burmah the Hindu settlers have a tendency to become absorbed in the Buddhist population around them, but this is not so with the Muhammadans. There are scattered communities of Muhammadans who have been settled in Burmah for several generations and still retain their faith unimpaired. When a Muhammadan marries a Burmese wife he brings up his children in his own religion. The offsprings of these mixed marriages are known as Zerbadis."
"In six decades (1881-1941)… at no census have the Muslims failed to improve their percentage and the Hindus failed to lose…” [It is due not only to the] “proportion of Muslim women married, but those who are married also have a higher fertility.”"
"The population of India in the present day is over three hundred millions, and every sixth man is a Muslim. Nine hundred years ago there were no Mohammedans east of the Indus..."
"However, the seed of the debate on the differential population growth rates of the Hindus and Muslims was planted in the undivided India itself. Kingsley Davis, an eminent demographer, was one of the first to raise a debate on the Hindu-Muslim population growth rates in the sub- continent. In his famous book “The Population of India and Pakistan” (1951), he presented before the world the fact that Muslim fertility was higher than the Hindu fertility. For instance, the decline in the proportion of the Hindus from 75.1 per cent to 72.9 per cent in between the censuses of 1881 and 1901 (Davis, 1951) created strong reaction and fear among the Hindus that the Muslims would become the majority population in India in the future. Numerous research and review studies have been done on this area since then. But there seems to be no end to this highly debated topic and it still remains a very popular area for research studies among the research scholars and population scientists."
"It was in February 1912, while standing in the spacious hall of the Arya Samaj in Calcutta, that a Bengali gentleman, dressed in European habits, was introduced as Colonel U. Mukerji of the I. M. S. to me. His dress at first prejudiced me against him, but when he spoke to me of the pamphlet on which he was engaged and worked out mathematically how within the next 420 years the Indo-Aryan race would be wiped off the face of the earth unless steps were taken to save it. I learnt to respect his patriotism and resolved mentally that I would never be led away by mere appearance in judging of the worth of a man in future."
"In Scrafton, for example, the Muslim population consists of foreign conquerors as opposed to native Indians, and it is broken down into Arabs, Pathans, Afghans, Mongol Tartars, and Persians, plus slaves. There is no recognition of indigenous Muslims other than "slaves," and the numbers are hugely underrated: The Moors are not "the hundredth part of the natives". Rural Bengal's millions of Muslims are not yet visible."
"Ever since 1951, "the proportion of Muslims has been gradually but steadily increasing every decade by roughly one percentage point"."
"Some commentators have drawn attention to the divergent courses of the fertility rates in the two parts of Bengal. In Indian West Bengal, which is three quarters Hindu, the fertility rate is 2.07, below the re- placement level. The contrast with Muslim Bangladesh, where the transition has been blocked, is striking. A shared language should have led to a convergence through cultural contagion, but a pietistic Islam seems to have frozen changes in patterns of thought in Bangladesh and, as a repercussion, provoked a halt to the transition. But a consideration of educational patterns leads to a rejection of the hypothesis of a direct effect of the religious variable on fertility."
"The Muslim population of the Indian subcontinent would reach 820 million by 2050 against 1200 million non-Muslims. Equal numbers with and even bypassing of the non-Muslim would be possible by century’s end."
"Official census data show that the Hindu percentage has declined, and the Muslim percentage increased, in every single successive census in British India, free India, Pakistan and Bangladesh... Ever since regular census operations were started, the percentage of Muslims has grown every decade in British India, independent India, Pakistan and Bangladesh... The Muslim percentage has not only increased, but the rate of increase itself has increased... The one general prediction to which the data certainly compel us, is that the Muslim percentage will be increasing at an accelerating rate for at least another generation; and also beyond that, unless the present generation of young adult Muslims brings it procreation rate down to the average Indian level...So, every decade the Muslim percentage in the Subcontinent increases by more than 1%, with the rate of increase itself increasing. In India, the rate of increase in the Muslim percentage is considerable, though lower than the subcontinental total, but is rising faster due to the differential in the use of birth control and the increasing Muslim immigration... And why stop our conclusion with finding the Hindu position right? The data just surveyed also teach us something about the secularists who have ridiculed and thoroughly blackened the said Hindu position: they are wrong. We have not used any esoteric figures inaccessible to the common man; all these data were at the disposal of the secularists. Yet, some of them insist that the Muslim percentage will remain constant, or that the Muslim increase is proportionate to relative Muslim poverty. The fact deserves to be noted: a whole class of leading intellectuals brutally denies easily verifiable facts, i.c. the accelerating increase of the Muslim and the decrease of the Hindu percentage..."
"When you consider the population trends in the Indian Subcontinent, it seems inevitable that Muslims will make up 50% of its population in less than eighty years. Extrapolating the trends within India, it will be less than fifty years until the Muslims are again 24% of the population, the percentage which in the forties was enough to enforce Partition. Add to that the millions- strong illegal Muslim immigration into India, which will only accelerate as population pressure increases in Pakistan and Bangla Desh. So, the majority status of the Hindus is by no means guaranteed. Moreover, the so- called minority is in fact the Indian department of a world-wide movement, from which it effectively gets moral and financial support."
"In fact, the migration figures are the best refutation of the "Hindu bully, Muslim victim" myth: as against the constant trickle of Hindu refugees out of Pakistan and Bangladesh, there is no Muslim flight out of India, but on the contrary a massive Muslim influx into India."
"Immigration from Bangladesh is of two types. Firstly there are members of the minority communities fleeing occasional waves of persecution or the more general sense of being second-class citizens under the Islamic dispensation. Few Hindus would dispute their right to settle down in India. Secondly, there are Muslims seeking economic opportunities or sheer living space, which dirt-poor and intensely overcrowded Bangladesh cannot offer to the ever-larger numbers of newcomers on the housing and labour market... The BJP argues that refugees from persecution and illegal economic migrants merit a different treatment, as is assumed in the arrangements for refugee relief of most countries... Terminology is a part of the problem here, with secularists systematically describing Hindu refugees as "migrants" if not "infiltrators", and Muslim illegal immigrants as "refugees"."
"The Hindu population in East Bengal had declined from 33% in 1901 to 28% in 1941. It fell to 22% by 1951 due to the Partition and the post-Partition exodus, and to 18.5% in 1961. By 1971, it had fallen to 13.5%, partly due to the 1971 massacre by the Pakistani Army, partly due to intermittent waves of emigration. The 1981 figure was 12.1%. In 1989 and 1990, due to "large-scale destruction, desecration and damage inflicted on Hindu temples and religious institutions", "clandestine migration by the Hindus to India went up"."
"Contrary to the noise in several quarters, careful analyses of the data show that minorities are not just protected but indeed thriving in India. This is particularly remarkable given the wider context within the South Asian neighbourhood where the share of the majority religious denomination has increased and minority populations have shrunk alarmingly across countries like Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, and Afghanistan... By way of illustration, India is one of the few countries that has a legal definition of minorities and provides constitutionally protected rights for them. The outcomes of these progressive policies and inclusive institutions are reflected in the growing number of minority populations within India."
"In Asia, a prominent example of immigration-driven ethnic change is taking place in the north-eastern Indian state of Assam. A Hindu-majority tongue of Indian territory lying north of Muslim Bangladesh, Assam has long been host to large-scale illegal, but peaceful, Bengali immigration. Bengali Muslims grew 30 to 50 percent over the period 1971 to 1991. They now constitute more than 30 percent of Assam’s population and are believed to control the electoral verdict in 60 of Assam’s 126 Assembly constituencies. Numerous battles have taken place over whether large numbers of Muslims have the legal status necessary to add their name to the electoral rolls. Muslim growth has been the catalyst for ugly Assamese attacks against unarmed Bengali workers since the 1980s, and an Assamese political movement demands the deportation of illegal immigrants. This conflict is regional, but on the wider Indian level, the growth of the Muslim population through higher fertility and an often exaggerated degree of illegal immigration has been a red flag for Hindu nationalism. The Muslim population’s fertility advantage over Hindus was 10 percent at partition in 1947, but is now 25–35 percent. Only a fraction of this gap can be explained by relative Muslim poverty. Muslims grew from roughly 8 percent of the Indian total in 1947 to 14 percent today, and are projected to rise to 17 percent by 2050. These are not staggering numbers, yet have proven useful tinder for Hindu nationalists and sparked sporadic violent reprisals against Indian Muslims."
"At first glance, Muslims seem more resistant to family planning than others. Research on Muslim fertility in India, for instance, concludes that Indian Muslims have been more reluctant to adopt contraception and family planning than Hindus or Christians, despite equal access. Muslims tend to have an especially large fertility advantage when they are in the minority. In Europe, India, Thailand, Russia, China and the Philippines, the Muslim fertility advantage is greatest. This is particularly true of zones of conflict like Israel–Palestine. One could argue that minorities in general, not merely Muslim ones, tend to have higher fertility rates than majorities. Yet in Muslim-majority Indonesia and Malaysia, Muslims outbirth most Hindu, Christian and Chinese minorities, while in the Arab world, Muslim fertility is higher than that of the minority Christians and Druze."
"Any law against population control will be a conspiracy against Muslims... The rise in the country’s population is due to Dalits and tribals and not because of Muslims."
"It's roughly a 40/60 split. We have more large concentrations of people than we've ever had before. That is new. And those concentrations themselves, they have momentum."
"Thus, we encounter a scenario of ‘missing Hindu population’ in the successive census periods. The extent of this missing population was about 1.22 million during the period of 1974-1981, and about 1.73 million during the last intercensual period 1981-91. As many as 475 Hindus are ‘disappearing’ every day from the soil of Bangladesh on an average since 1974. How this phenomenon would be interpreted in terms of demography? The relevant parameter is obviously ‘migration’ which provides a clue to the missing link."
"In 1951, after the dust of Partition-era transfers settled, the ratio of Muslims to Hindus in East Bengal was about three and a half to one. Three years after Bangladesh won its independence, the ratio of Muslims to Hindus was still only a little higher than six to one,. By 2001, Muslims outnumbered Hindus by a ratio of almost eleven and a half to one. Bangladesh's Hindu population is dying. ... A the time of India's partition in 1947, they made up a little less than a third of East Pakistan's population. When East Pakistan became Bangladesh in 1971, Hindus were less than a fifth; thirty years later, less than one in ten; and several estimates put the Hindu population at less than eight percent today. (30)"
"The most severe anti-minority activity, however, has been directed at Hindus, in part because they are the largest religious minority, in part because of the larger Hindu-Muslim conflict that so characterizes South Asia. Hindus are not safe in Bangladesh; not from radicals, not from their government. They were almost a third of the population after the population transfers that accompanied the Indian subcontinent’s 1947 partition. After Bangladesh gained its independence, they were less than a fifth; thirty years later, less than one in ten; and several estimates put the Hindu population at less than 8 percent today... Professor Sachi Dastidar (2008) of the State University of New York estimates that about 49 million Hindus are missing from the Bangladeshi census. This is not a phenomenon, as apologists try to assert, that is a mere consequence of demography or the actions of a small group of radicals. Rather, as Samir Kalra (2012), Senior Director and Senior Human Rights Fellow of the Hindu American Foundation, notes, there have been “nearly 1,200 incidents of violence directed against religious minorities (mostly Hindus) between 2008 and 2011.”"
"What may cut short all denials of this continued pestering of Hindus in Muslim states, are the resulting migration figures: in 1948, Hindus formed 23% of the population of Bangladesh (then East Pakistan), in 1971 the figure was down to 15%, and today it stands at about 8%. No journalist or human rights body goes in to ask the minority Hindus for their opinion about the treatment they get from the Muslim authorities and populations..."
"That this natalist position has struck roots among ordinary Muslims may be illustrated with the case of Mohammed Tofazzal Mollah: he was sacked as Imam at the village mosque of Bahipara (northern Bangladesh) because his wife had been sterilized after having given birth to six children. The village population rallied behind the two Maulanas who had issued the fatwa condemning the poor Imam."
"In Pakistan and Bangladesh, the Muslim percentage has continually increased, partly by pestering the non-Muslims out, partly by conversions under pressure (pressurizing people to marry their daughters off to Muslims, allocating jobs on condition of conversion, etc.), and partly by higher birth-rates. Bangladeshi Muslim expansion has already destroyed the Chakmas and other non-Muslim populations in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, with the ethnically cleansed minorities fleeing to India's North-East, there to create friction with the host population. But the most worrying from the Indian viewpoint is not the rise in percentage but the rise in absolute figures: in parts of Pakistan and in the whole of Bangladesh, sheer living space is becoming extremely scarce, and these countries may pursue a policy of pushing their surplus population into India."
"Immigration from Bangladesh is of two types. Firstly there are members of the minority communities fleeing occasional waves of persecution or the more general sense of being second-class citizens under the Islamic dispensation. Few Hindus would dispute their right to settle down in India. Secondly, there are Muslims seeking economic opportunities or sheer living space, which dirt-poor and intensely overcrowded Bangladesh cannot offer to the ever-larger numbers of newcomers on the housing and labour market... The BJP argues that refugees from persecution and illegal economic migrants merit a different treatment, as is assumed in the arrangements for refugee relief of most countries. But secularists see it differently, for "unlike the BJP, the Congress (I) views both Hindus and Muslim from Bangladesh as infiltrators". Terminology is a part of the problem here, with secularists systematically describing Hindu refugees as "migrants" if not "infiltrators", and Muslim illegal immigrants as "refugees"... The Hindu population in East Bengal had declined from 33% in 1901 to 28% in 1941. It fell to 22% by 1951 due to the Partition and the post-Partition exodus, and to 18.5% in 1961. By 1971, it had fallen to 13.5%, partly due to the 1971 massacre by the Pakistani Army, partly due to intermittent waves of emigration. The 1981 figure was 12.1%. In 1989 and 1990, due to "large-scale destruction, desecration and damage inflicted on Hindu temples and religious institutions", "clandestine migration by the Hindus to India went up"."
"A 1992 report prepared by B.B. Dutta for the North-Eastern Congress Coordination Committee meeting in Guwahati looked into both types of immigration and notes: "Between 1971 and 1981, Bangladesh census records show a reduction of 39 lakhs in the minority population. "Between 1981-89, 36 lakh religious minorities were missing from that country."
"“You know, the worst thing is that a mass exodus from the country has begun. There seems to be no way to stop it. The government always says that the Hindus are not leaving the country, but this is not true. Maybe you've read about itin the Desh magazine published in Calcutta. Apparently at least 150,000 Bangladeshis have infiltrated into Indian territory, and the majority of this number have not returned. In the last two decades more than half-a-million people belonging to minority communities have been forced to leave the country. Note what has been said in six census reports. In 1941, the Muslims were 70.3 per cent of the population, while the Hindus were 28.3 per cent. In 1951, the Muslims were 76.9 per cent and Hindus were 22.0 per cent. In 1961, the Muslims constituted 80.4 per cent, Hindus 18.5 per cent. In 1974, there were 85.4 per cent Muslims and 12.1 per cent Hindus. In 1991, the Muslims were 87.4 per cent, and the Hindus approximately 12.6 per cent. What do we understand from this? That every year the number of Muslims is increasing, while that of the Hindus is decreasing. What is happening to the Hindus? Where are they going? If the government insists that they are not migrating, then how will they explain away the figures of the census? Do you know the latest about the new census? Apparently Hindus and Muslims will not be counted separately.’ “Why not?’ “Because, the Hindus are dwindling so rapidly they may as well be clubbed with the Muslims, instead of being considered a separate entity,’ Kajal Debnath said sarcastically. “This government is very shrewd, what do you say, Kajal-da?’ Suranjan said."
"The clearest eye-opener is the birth-rate in the relatively affluent Muslim-majority district of Malappuram in highly-literate Kerala; at 75.22%, the female literacy rate in Malappuram is twice as high as for most Hindu communities in the Hindi belt. In the decade 1981-91 its population grew by 28.74%, well above the national average of 23.50% and more than twice the Kerala average of 13.98%. This disproves the usual excuse that the birth-rate automatically follows the poverty rate and the illiteracy rate. Most Hindu Scheduled Caste people whom I know have settled for smaller families, but by and large, Muslims have not changed their appetite for large families. Ever since the propagation of birth control among the Hindu masses, rich and literate Muslims have more children than poor and illiterate Hindus."
"Baljit Rai, a retired police officer who was a personal witness to India's failure in containing the rising tide of illegal immigration from Bangladesh, refutes this argument by pointing to the birth rate among Kerala Muslims, who have a high level of education and a relatively high standard of living. Mani Shankar Aiyar had claimed on the basis of statewise figures for the southern states that "Muslim birth rates in all these enlightened states are very much lower than Hindu birth rates in unenlightened states like Uttar Pradesh". However, Rai's closer analysis of the figures shows that the Kerala Muslims have a higher birth-rate than the national Hindu average and even than the Hindu average in poor and backward states like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan: the population growth (+28.74% for 1981-91) in the Muslim-majority district of Malappuram (with female literacy at 75.22%, far higher than among Hindus in the Hindi belt) is more than twice as high as the average for Kerala (+13.98), and well above the Hindu national average (+23.50). A secularist journalist confirms: "In spite of this 'near total literacy' the population growth rate of Muslims who constitute one-fourth of Kerala's population is as high as 2.3 per cent per year, which is more than even the national PGR [= population growth rate] of 2.11 per annum and is almost double the PGR of Hindus in Kerala itself.""
"A dynamic and evolved care model focused on body literacy, cycle tracking, and individualized women’s health markers, [Restorative Reproductive Medicine (RRM]) practitioners work to restore a woman’s reproductive health to conceive naturally. Several large groups and clinics have formed over the years to support and expand this version of care, describing it as the superior option for women and couples. RRM practitioners typically identify treatable underlying causes for infertility, such as low estrogen and progesterone, insulin resistance, thyroid disease or dysfunction, and endometriosis, resulting in improved fertility and healthier patients."
"Fertility meant nothing to us in our twenties; it was something to be secured in the dungeon and left there to molder. In our early thirties, we remembered it existed and wondered if we should check on it, and then—abruptly, horrifyingly—it became urgent: Somebody find that dragon! It was time to rouse it, get it ready for action. But the beast had not grown stronger during the decades of hibernation. By the time we tried to wake it, the dragon was weakened, wizened. Old."
"Fertility, sexuality, strength, and the ability to create and nurture life: These were the powers of women ... It was a ripening, yes, but not just for the purpose of bearing children, or being a wife. It represented a claiming of one's self..."
"The ultimate measure of human success is not production but reproduction. Economic productivity and profit are means to reproductive ends, not ends in themselves."
"On a farm, a child is an investment—an extra pair of hands to milk the cow, or shoulders to work the fields. But in a city a child is a liability, just another mouth to feed."
"With populations aging and declining almost everywhere, countries may one day be competing for immigrants."
"In the 1990s, as the consequences of a chronically low birth rate begin to sink in, Ottawa opened the floodgates, inviting 250,000 immigrants a year to come to Canada."
"Among millennials, especially, the fertility rate is very low. Between 2007 and 2012, the birth rate among Americans who came of age after 2000 dropped by 15 percent, to the lowest birth rate ever recorded in the United States: 0.95, less than one baby for every mother."
"All of this is completely, utterly wrong. The great defining event of the twenty-first century—one of the great defining events in human history—will occur in three decades, give or take, when the global population starts to decline. Once that decline begins, it will never end. We do not face the challenge of a population bomb but of a population bust—a relentless, generation-after-generation culling of the human herd. Nothing like this has ever happened before."
"There are more forty-year-old women than there are thirty-year-old women, who outnumber twenty-year-old women. That's what makes population decline so implacable; once it sets in, it’s virtually impossible to stop, because every year there are fewer women of child-bearing age than there were the year before."
"The low-fertility trap, once in place, is irreversible."
"[The world] population may shrink for multiple reasons, including poor nutrition and epidemics."
"We cannot know in advance exactly how the economy will [reduce] its energy consumption, besides regionalization and pushing the US dollar (at least partially) out of being the reserve currency. Some other areas where the physics of the economy might force cutbacks include the following: Vacation travel; Banks, insurance companies, pension programs (much less needed); The use of financial leverage of all kinds; Governmental programs providing payments to those not actively in the workforce (such as pensions, unemployment insurance, disability payments); Higher education programs (many graduates today cannot get jobs that pay for the high cost of their educations); Extensive healthcare programs, especially for people who have no hope of ever re-entering the workforce. In fact, the population may start to [decline due to] epidemics, poor health, or even [insufficient] food. With fewer people, [the] limited energy supply will go further."
"In nature, population overshoot is usually remedied by a higher die-off rate, not a lower birth rate."
"A lot of technologies have been utilised in storing food or growing more of it. And we know that increased access to food increases population size. The reverse is also true, of course, so we should expect population to fall as harvests come under stress from the effects of climate change. […] At every possible fork in the path of the future, humans, generally, will always choose the route that gives them more convenience or more comfort. Only when none of the possible routes provide that option will humans start down the contraction and lower energy path."
"The first dramatic effect of food shortage is upon fertility."
"Detritus ecosystems are not uncommon. When nutrients from decaying autumn leaves on land are carried by runoff from melting snows into a pond, their consumption by algae in the pond may be checked until springtime by the low winter temperatures that keep the algae from growing. When warm weather arrives, the inflow of nutrients may already be largely complete for the year. The algal population, unable to plan ahead, explodes in the halcyon days of spring in an irruption or bloom that soon exhausts the finite legacy of sustenance materials. This algal Age of Exuberance lasts only a few weeks. Long before the seasonal cycle can bring in more detritus, there is a massive die-off of these innocently incautious and exuberant organisms. Their "age of overpopulation" is very brief, and its sequel is swift and inescapable."
"… the coming century contains a population problem that should be of great concern because of the ongoing momentum that will cause global population to crest just as global population growth hits its nadir. This means that the resource scarcity problem foreseen by Malthus will become most severe just as the technological solutions provided in the past become most costly to produce. Ironically, the population problem foreseen by Malthus is one where declining population growth rates may be the primary reason for substantial increases in global resource scarcity."
"The attrition of global populations by disease may be unavoidable. Some readers may regard it as the inevitable revenge of nature against the hubris of a human species arrogantly exceeding the carrying capacity of its habitat. Some may regard it as a moral victory against wickedness. Some may view it in the therapeutic mode as a positive development for the health of the planet. Many self-conscious "humanists" have militated for the goal of reducing population growth—though most of them would have probably preferred widespread birth control to a die-off. But that kind of thinking might have been just another product of the narcotic comfort of cheap oil, as merely stabilizing the earth's population at current levels (or even 1968 levels) would arguably still have left humanity beyond the earth's carrying capacity. Apart from these issues of attitude and ethics, however, a major decline in world population, or [a] change in demographic profiles, is apt to have profound and strange repercussions on everyday life."
"One doesn’t even need a model to put the main pieces together: [the] human population has been significantly inflated by [the] extensive exploitation of a non-renewable finite resource. Because the declining availability/use of that resource is inevitable (and likely near-at-hand), it stands to reason that present levels of population will be unsustainable—and that the necessary transition down from an overstuffed population will be very difficult to bear. The world left in the wake of our binge will be less able to support us than the one we inherited, exacerbating the hardship."
"Humans, like many mammals, have hormonal and genetic mechanisms that help control procreation. In good times females reach puberty earlier, and their chances of getting pregnant are a bit higher. In bad times puberty is late and fertility decreases."
"A basic understanding of overshoot reveals that our modern industrial way of life is unsustainable at anything like its current scale and intensity. Whether as a result of pollution or resource depletion, human population and per-capita consumption will peak and start to decline, most likely during the next decade or two. But it gets worse: during our brief binge of industrialism we humans have found strategies (including corporate globalization and the proliferation of credit and debt in a widening variety of forms) to maximize consumption in the short term; when these strategies inevitably falter, the result will likely be an even faster decline in population and consumption than might be expected on the basis of ecological factors alone."
"… technology use harnesses far more energy and materials than we could ever manage without it, and while doing so may make our lives much easier and more comfortable, it comes at the cost of increasing ecological overshoot. As we increase overshoot, we concomitantly increase all the symptom predicaments that overshoot causes. Technology use also has another nasty side effect. It reduces and/or eliminates negative feedbacks which once kept our numbers in check. Many diseases we once suffered from like smallpox, measles, whooping cough, tetanus, etc. have been temporarily eliminated by the technological development of vaccines. Our medical industry has also wiped out many other diseases through proper sanitation, use of antiseptics, anesthetics (allowing surgeries to correct most internal ailments), antibiotics, antifungals, and antivirals to kill or prevent many diseases, and many other innovations that allow us to live better, more comfortable lives. The development of indoor plumbing, electrical systems, heating and air conditioning systems, insulation, refrigerators and freezers, and cooking devices all allow us to accomplish daily tasks either much easier or provide more comfort to us by regulating temperature and humidity levels in our living spaces. Therefore, technology use reduces or removes negative feedback, thereby promoting population growth, which also promotes technology growth. However, in terms of reducing overshoot (and symptom predicaments such as climate change, energy and resource decline, pollution loading, and biodiversity decline), technology use is maladaptive. This will become painfully clear as time moves forward when more or different technology does not actually solve overshoot. Population decline is what will actually work to reduce overshoot, caused by the failure of our agricultural systems, increased disease caused by antimicrobial resistance and new viruses emerging, and increased failures of infrastructural systems caused by extreme weather events. Reduced technology use will be facilitated by this mechanism, and all species [will ultimately experience] die-off..."
"Peak [living] human population will… lag… peak [extraction of] oil and peak [extraction of other] mineral resources until these conditions express themselves as food shortages. This means that the human population will continue to rise for a while, even as we begin to encounter these… limits. It’s not possible to estimate how much the [living] population will increase because the relationship between energy and mineral resources and food production is a very fragile equation, subject to any number of discontinuities. To these, add the complications of weather disasters arising from climate change, including drought, the spread of plant diseases, and so forth. This lagging further rise in [the living] human population will only make the inevitable contraction more acute once food shortages begin. […] We're putting a strain on everything the earth has to offer us. While the combination of peak stuff and… billion[s of] [living] humans is forcing the issue, ...the truth is that circumstances will now determine what happens, not policies or personalities. […] Population overshoot is therefore unlikely to yield to management. Rather, the usual suspects will enter the scene and do their thing: starvation, disease, […] violence […] [and] death […]."
"People who believe that a stable population can live in balance with the productive capacity of the environment may see a slowdown in the growth of population and energy consumption as evidence of approaching equilibrium. But when one understands the process that has been responsible for population growth [the extraction and use of fossil fuels], it becomes clear that an end to growth is the beginning of collapse."
"[The operative] mechanisms [leading to] the collapse of the human population will be starvation, social strife, and disease. These major disasters were recognized long before Malthus and have been represented in western culture as horsemen of the apocalypse. They are all consequences of scarce resources and dense population."
"Starvation, social strife, and disease interact in complex ways. If famine were the sole mechanism of collapse, the species might become extinct quite suddenly. A population that grows in response to abundant but finite resources, like the reindeer of St. Matthew Island, tends to exhaust these resources completely. By the time individuals discover that remaining resources will not be adequate for the next generation, the next generation has already been born. And in its struggle to survive, the last generation uses up every scrap, so that nothing remains that would sustain even a small population. But famine seldom acts alone. It is exacerbated by social strife, which [hinders] the production and [distribution] of food. And it weakens the natural defenses by which organisms fight off disease."
"Cancer is the only thing in nature that grows indefinitely at the same pace as the human economy. It is no surprise[,] then, that there have been a host of consequences from our political leaders’ endless pursuit of growth. Global warming is the best known, least deadly, and most over-hyped of the fallout crises – resource shortages, soil depletion, deforestation, desertification, species extinctions, agricultural run-off, toxic water courses, are just a few of the less publicised environmental crises that threaten to wipe out billions of humans long before the temperature really starts to heat up."
"The sudden — and surprising — end of the fossil fuel age will stun everyone — and kill billions."
"[It's] likely that, within the lifetimes of many people alive today, widespread breadbasket and supply chain failures will rapidly cause horrific famines and migrational chaos for billions, rapidly leading to societal and cultural breakdown..."
"Decline does not have to be sudden to be devastating. Instead of a dramatic crash, the world may experience a stair-step descent: recessions leading to energy shocks; energy shocks leading to more recessions; recessions leading to financial crises; each one stripping away another layer of security. Social services erode. Infrastructure decays. Trust in government evaporates. Life [becomes] simpler [and] more local [in] smaller communities. Desperate humans may [exacerbate] environmental destruction for a time, until [their own] populations collapse, too."
"[Eight] billion people will die. The bigger question is: will millions still live?"
"Degrowth will happen, but it will do so involuntarily due to energy and resource decline."
"… any plan to mitigate the effects of human overshoot like climate change, species extinction, pollution, or resource scarcity, with population reduction policies, or a steady-state economy using a full-reserve asset-backed monetary system, or voluntary degrowth, or balanced budgets, will cause a reduction of complexity, and therefore the population and its lifestyle that depends on growing complexity for resources will collapse, possibly quite quickly due to the many self-reinforcing feedback loops in supply chains, and the extreme level of current human complexity and overshoot."
"What we think of as national boundaries can be expected to change, while countries themselves will generally become smaller. With less energy per capita, the quantity of government services provided can be expected to fall. Government organizations can be expected to become smaller and simpler. It is unlikely that democracies can continue; single rulers with a support staff are more likely. Plagues may cause the overall population to fall."
"Food supply has been made heavily dependent on fossil fuels, whose inevitable decline very likely partners with a population decline."
"Assam has been a big victim of demographic change. In 2021, the Muslim population crossed 38 per cent, and as we speak, it is about 39.5 per cent of the state population"
"If people from other parts and communities are excluded, Assamese Hindus are not more than 40 per cent today."