The Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Thursday asked the Muslim community in the state to adopt a “decent family planning” policy to deal with poverty and other social problems, the Hindustan Times reported.
“We want to work with the minority Muslim community to control population,” he said while speaking at a press conference to mark the completion of 30 days of his government.
“The root cause of issues such as poverty, land encroachment, etc, lies in uncontrolled population growth. I think we can put an end to a lot of social problems in Assam if the Muslim community adopts decent family planning norms.”
Sarma said that his government will work towards educating the women of the community so that the problem can be tackled effectively. The government cannot allow encroachment of temple and forest lands and members of the community have also assured the government that they do not want encroachment of these lands, he said, according to PTI.
Sarma’s comment is in consonance with a conspiracy theory propagated mainly by the right-wing, which suggests that the fertility rate among Muslims in India is much higher than that in the Hindu community. However, data and experts do not agree to this theory.
The last Census in India, held in 2011, showed that Hindus comprise 79.8% of the population while Muslims make up less than a fifth, at 14.2%. The proportion of Hindus relative to the country’s population declined by 0.7%, according to that census, while the proportion of Muslims grew by 0.8%.