Demography is Destiny: Why India’s population trends matter

MR Lalu

“Demography is destiny.” The French philosopher Auguste Comte made this self-revealing and convincingly memorable statement on demography centuries ago. You will rarely find a statement that so clearly defines and meticulously attributes significance to the human population, taking it beyond a merely numerical count of people. It consciously maintains its position on what population means for humanity and for countries that have faced disproportionate demographic trends and their resultant elimination of cultural ancestry and civilizational heritage.

Country after country has experienced this dangerous trend of demographic transition, ultimately affecting political representation, national security, cultural continuity, and economic orientation and progress. These slipping sand dunes of demographic trends in a country like India, with its 1.4 billion people, are a subject of serious study.

And that is how the Government of India’s recently constituted High-Level Committee on Demographic Changes brings a wake-up call for each one of us. The committee, headed by Justice Prakash Prabhakar Naolekar, a retired Supreme Court judge, is to examine demographic changes in India, which has already surpassed China in population.

The Government’s announcement has triggered criticism on multiple platforms, with selected possible angles being curiously examined with unnatural suspicion. Though Hindus constitute the majority of India’s population, their shrinking representation in numbers is considered a huge concern. Mostly driven by aspirational families with one or two children, Hindus have thus been forced to compete with Muslims, who are religiously permitted to have larger families. The birth rates among the religious communities in India show that Muslims are consistently maintaining an upward trend. This trend and the reasons behind it are being calculatedly justified as a consequence of higher fertility rates.

Does demography really mean destiny? Population transitions in various parts of the world staggeringly substantiate this theory. Demography can easily be altered by various means. The history of Islam and Christianity across the world testifies to this unquestionably.

Before the Arab conquest, the overwhelming majority of Egypt’s population was Christian. Its demography was deliberately altered by the religious expansion of Islam over the passage of time. Syria, once one of the earliest centers of Christianity, saw its demography altered following the Arab conquests in the seventh century. Ancient Mesopotamia bore great civilizational imprints and was predominantly Christian, but Iraq, as it is known today, is largely Muslim.

To name a few more, similar was the case with countries such as Jordan, Lebanon, Tunisia, Libya, and Turkey. A combination of conquest, conversion, and many other factors might have contributed to these Christian lands adopting Islam. Wherever Islam grew in power, forcefully dismantling the ancestral practices of other religions such as Christianity and Judaism, the latter, having been reduced to minorities, had to pay a special tax called jizya .

These examples are enough to establish the fact that demography alters the destiny of countries and societies. Of course, the entire process of this religious transition to Islam in these countries must have taken centuries for its ultimate dominance to take shape, mostly as it is alleged, through barbarian conquests, forced conversions, or persecution.

This is how religions with exclusionary audacity continued to outnumber the native inhabitants, while their intolerant interventions ensured the complete eradication of cultures that had survived for generations.

What was it like in India before, and how is it catching up today at a competing pace?

Centuries of Islamic invasions and the subsequent British cultural conquest had a devastating impact on India, especially on its Hindu population and other Indic traditions. It was, again, the same demography that gave rise to the “Two-Nation Theory” propounded by its proponents, ultimately leading to India’s bifurcation.

The Muslim League, under its leader Muhammad Ali Jinnah, adopted the Lahore Resolution in 1940, demanding independent states in the Muslim-majority areas. It had inherited this provocative theory from Dr. Muhammad Iqbal, who articulated it in his presidential address at the Annual Muslim League session held at Allahabad in 1930. The land, they thought, would be named with the best of Islamic sobriquets – “Pakistan,” meaning “the Land of the Pure.”

The land in which Muslims had lived for generations, and where their Hindu ancestors had been converted to Islam centuries ago, had, for them, turned into an impure space. It was the same demography, and the communal arrogance it stimulated, that ultimately catapulted the Muslim League into surgically separating a civilizational landscape called Bharat into two nations.

The demographic might of Muslims drove the non-Muslim population out of their so-called “Land of the Pure” through a campaign of pillage, murder, and indisputable callousness. Indeed, demography matters when your neighbor turns a sharp weapon against your neck, forcing you to abandon your homeland, farmland, and everything that once belonged to you. The exodus of Kashmiri Hindus from the Valley in 1989-90, following targeted killings, intimidation, and militant violence, remains one of independent India’s most significant instances of forced displacement.

At present, with the constitution of the High-Level Committee on Demographic Changes, the government’s intention is to examine the reasons behind the significant growth of certain religions in some parts of India, which, according to its terms of reference, have witnessed demographic changes requiring detailed study. The Committee will examine demographic changes and study the factors contributing to them, including migration, urbanization, proslytization, and illegal immigration. It is also expected to assess the implications of these demographic changes for national security. Countries across Europe, Asia, and the United States have remained vigilant about international migration resulting from wars and strategic conflicts in different parts of the world, which have led to large-scale refugee movements. India has likewise faced the persistent challenge of illegal infiltration from neighboring countries for decades. With nearly 15,000 kilometres of land borders shared with its neighbors, and what I view as politically motivated encouragement of huge influx by parties such as the Congress in Assam and the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in West Bengal, India has compelling reasons to exercise caution.

According to the 1941 Census of British India, the population was approximately 389 million. Hindus constituted about 70 percent of the population, while Muslims accounted for roughly 25 percent. The remaining population comprised various religious minorities. A high concentration of Muslims in Punjab, Bengal, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Baluchistan ultimately lent strength to the Muslim League’s Two-Nation Theory. This demand, closely linked to demographic distribution, not only partitioned India but also divided its resources and collective prosperity. According to this interpretation, religious intolerance was reinforced by the dominance of Muslim-majority regions. The Modi Government deserves appreciation for not relying on simplistic conclusions, and its initiative to undertake a detailed study of demographic changes may not be well received by its detractors.

History once again reinforces Auguste Comte’s famous observation that “Demography is Destiny.” For India, this is more than a mere aphorism; it is a reality – a truth written in red letters.

(Author is freelance journalist and social worker based in Kerala. The views expressed are personal opinion of the author.)