Minority reports

Book review of The Population Myth: Islam, Family Planning and Politics in India

Former Election Commissioner S Y Quraishi takes a calm, reasonable approach to debunking a core Hindutva thesis: Namely, the Muslim population is growing so fast it will overtake the Hindu population. The trope is buttressed with allusions to polygamy (along with the “love jihad” corollary) and assertions of Muslims driven by religious fervour to have many children.

To put it mildly, this is a politically explosive subject. The author has tackled this squarely and taken the logic apart. Population growth (and decline) is driven by biological and socio-economic imperatives  and the trends are subject to mathematical laws.

Many scholars have examined global