Assam CM’s two-child will impact all communities, not only Muslims: Qureshi

New Delhi: Singling out Muslims on the issue of family planning is not a wise thing, as the issue of population growth is a matter of concern for the entire nation, says Dr SY Qureshi, former Chief Election Commissioner of India.

Talking to India News Stream on Assam Chief Minister Hemant Biswa Srama’s proposal of the two-child norm, Dr Qureshi emphasized that stabilisation of population is a matter of priority for the country and it should be discussed rising above ”Hindu-Muslim” narrative.

“The intention is important in introducing such a policy anywhere in the country,” he said.

Referring to the recent remark of Sarma, about population control at a Muslim camp, Dr Qureshi said that any such policy, if implemented, would impact every community. And the backlash will come from every community.

“The biggest impact of this will be on the women. After having two kids with a woman, people will start divorcing their wives. This has happened before. In some states when a norm came that a person with more than two kids can’t contest elections people started divorcing their wives. This will have a damaging social impact,” he said..

“Female foeticide will also increase. Although, it is illegal in India, people will still opt for abortions if they knew that a girl child is due to come. We should also keep this in mind.”

“These issues with serious ramifications can’t be used for political or electoral gains,” he said.

Dr Qureshi also gave an example of China where there was a one-child norm.

“Some Indians used to hail the one-child norm of China. But it did not work out and China had to discontinue it. They started a two-child norm even though that could not work. Now, recently they have introduced the three-child norm.

“Young and productive population became declined sharply and the population dependent on them rose to 75 per cent. This led to economic and social disaster because of the non-productive aging population,” he said.

Dr Qureshi also sought to bust several myths about Hindu and Muslim population in India. He supported his statements government data, some of which he has included in his latest book, ‘Population Myth: Islam, Family Planning and Politics in India’.

He said that such myths don’t have any substance and don’t impact reality in any given way.

”The Hindu right wing is exhorting the majority community to produce a large number of children to avoid being outnumbered by Muslims, but I would still appeal to Muslims not to be provoked by this call, and take to family planning. We in India cannot afford a procreation war,” he said.

When asked whether there was acceptance of family planning among Muslims as there was a general perception that Islam was against the practice, Quraishi said that at present if Muslims are having lowest level of family planning ((45.3 per cent), Hindus too have the second lowest percentage of family planning among other communities.

But it was also a fact that Muslims had now started taking to family planning faster than Hindus despite many of them believing that Islam was against the concept of family planning, which is not the case going by the Quranic injunctions.

Dr Qureshi reminded that there’s a bill pending in the parliament regarding the two-child norm and this issue is raised time and again for political gains.

During the emergency, family planning was forced on people. This resulted in Indira Gandhi losing the elections. Even today the politicians are not comfortable talking about family planning, said Dr Qureshi.

“We have done an analysis to find out the awareness of family planning among the politicians. We found out in four parliaments, between 13th and 16th parliament up to what extent this matter was discussed. We found out that out of the thousands of questions asked during the period, only 0.15% questions were asked on the issue of family planning.”

–INDIA NEWS STREAM