RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat expressed concern over “rising population” and “population imbalance” India on Friday. He asserted the need to review population policy and highlighted Sangh’s belief that disproportionate growths among various religious groups could threaten the “unity, integrity and cultural identity of the country”.
Making a specific reference to Bengal, Bhagwat claimed that the violence after this year’s Assembly polls owed to “the appeasement of barbarous elements by the government and population imbalance”.
Bhagwat speaking at annual Dussehra celebrations in Nagpur claimed that the proponents of population control bore no “ill will” towards any community, but in the same breath talked about the “persecution of native Hindus” in areas of “imbalanced population growth” and pointed to the threat posed by the ascent of Afghanistan’s Taliban.
The way population can become a problem, similarly imbalances in population too can be a problem; it’s becoming so in the country and the world,” the RSS chief said in Hindi, adding that there is no ill will towards anybody in this.
Bhagwat further read a resolution passed by the RSS’s top decision-making body in 2015 that laid down the crux of what the Sangh outfit, the ideological parent of the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party, was aiming at.
The resolution read; “Steps taken to control population of the country have yielded adequate results during the last decade. But in this regard… severe demographic changes brought forth by analysis of the religious data of Census 2011 highlight the necessity (to) review… the population policy.”
“Vast differences in growth rates of different religious groups, infiltration and conversion resulting in religious imbalance of the population ratio, especially in border areas, may emerge as a threat to the unity, integrity and cultural identity of the country,” it added.
The RSS chief also sought to make a distinction between people belonging to religions of “Bharatiya origin” and Muslims.
Pointing data which shows that the total fertility rate and child ratio were unequal across religions, Bhagwat’s written speech said: “This is reflected in the fact that the share of the population of religions of Bharatiya origin which was 88 per cent has come down to 83.8 per cent, while the Muslim population, which was 9.8 per cent, has increased to 14.23 per cent during the period 1951-2011.”
Several people felt that RSS Chief’s move to flag the population issue in his annual speech shows it could be the next policy push of the Modi’s regime.
The insiders of BJP indicated that discussions were underway to prepare a new population policy in the run-up to the next general polls scheduled in 2024 to sway the majority Hindu community.
(Inputs from The Telegraph)
