Minister of State Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju, who found himself in a tough spot after his tweets on decline in Hindu population, has found support in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Backing his statement, BJP leader Subramanian Swamy on Tuesday said India has democracy just because Hindus are in the majority.
"As Hindus are in majority, there is democracy in our country. As we see in Islamic countries where Muslims are in majority, there is no democracy. For the sake of democracy, we have to make sure the overwhelming majority of population remains of Hindus and the question is how to do it. If Muslims also took to family planning as Hindus then this problem would not be there," Swamy said.
Supporting his claim with evidence, Swamy also asserted that Census of 2001 and 2011 indicated the slump in the proportion of Hindus which was a question of alarm.
"His statement is taken out of context as he was basically talking about the decline in population percentage of the Hindus as a ratio of the total population. This is a continuing civilisation of Hindus and we don't want to lose that," he added.
A controversy erupted over a tweet by Rijiju, in reaction to the Congress' charge that the BJP was turning Arunachal Pradesh into a 'Hindu state', that India's Hindu population was reducing as they didn't 'convert' people. This was seen as a bid to woo voters for the ongoing assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh where the BJP, the Samajwadi Party, the Congress and the Bahujan Samaj Party have all accused each other of trying to polarise the polls.