BJP leader Navneet Rana recently said that Hindus should have four children to save the country. He also targeted the Muslim community through gestures and said that some people are conspiring to turn India into Pakistan by producing more children. This statement gave rise to political controversy. Opposition parties called it inflammatory and baseless, and the general public also reacted strongly to it. Let us examine the facts and understand who among Hindus and Muslims has more children.
What do the facts say?
Keeping political rhetoric aside, if we look at this question based on facts, the answer is found in government data. The most reliable means of measuring population and fertility rates in India is the National Family Health Survey (NFHS), which is conducted by the International Institute for Population Sciences under the Ministry of Health.
What does NFHS-6 say?
The data from NFHS-6 (2023-24) made public so far clearly shows that India’s total fertility rate is continuously declining, and the country has reached below replacement level. This means that on average a woman is now giving birth to less than two children. However, it is also important to note that the NFHS-6 report released so far has not provided detailed data of fertility rate on the basis of religion. Therefore, no direct claim of Hindu-Muslim comparison based on NFHS-6 is officially possible at this time.
How then can we understand the comparison?
The last official picture of fertility rates by religion was from NFHS-5 (2019-21). According to that survey, the total fertility rate of Muslim women was about 2.36, while that of Hindu women was about 1.94. This means that at that time the birth rate in the Muslim community was slightly higher than that of Hindus, but this difference was not very big.
The gap is narrowing rapidly
According to experts, the most important thing is that the fertility rate is declining rapidly in both Hindu and Muslim communities. Factors such as education, urbanization, women empowerment, health facilities and family planning have steadily reduced this gap. In many states, the fertility rate of the Muslim community has now reached near replacement level.
