New Delhi: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) on Friday urged the government to revise its population control policy in wake of expanding number of Muslims and Christians in the country.
An RSS leader, Alok Joshi, outlined the reasons for exponential growth of the two communities and asked the government to implement the policy effectively.
“We have estimated that there are three reasons for it. One reason is continuous encroachment by Bangladesh, second reason is conversion and third reason is that we have not able to make everybody accept the population control policy in equal measure. That is why we have made two demands. The population policy should be reformulated and efforts should be made to make everybody accept it in equal measures and encroachment should be stopped,” Joshi said.
Hindus have dropped below 80 percent of the population for the first time since independence, data showed. The RSS expressed growing concern about it.
“In 1950, Muslim population was 9.8 percent in the country. It has crossed more than 14 percent in 2011. In provinces such as border state of Arunachal (Pradesh) and Manipur Christian population has expanded manifold,” Joshi added.
The census data shows that Hindus declined to 79.8 percent of the country’s 1.2 billion people in 2011, from 80.5 percent a decade earlier.
The share of Muslims rose to 14.2 percent from 13.4 percent in 2001 – the only major religious group to record a rise. Christians stayed at 2.3 percent and Sikhs fell to 1.7 percent from 1.9 percent.
ANI