A comedy of errors was played out when the Census Commission first raised the cry of spiraling Muslim growth rate and falling Hindu growth rate, only to rectify their schoolchild-like error by admitting that the growth rate was not adjusted against the 1991 census figures, when the solitary Muslim majority state was not included. So in fact now, with the adjusted figures, Muslim population was not rising at the rate of 36 per cent as declared earlier but at the rate of 29.3 per cent— down from 32.9 per cent in 1991 . Indeed the Muslim growth rate registered a decline greater than that of Hindus, which stood at 3.6 and 2.8 per cent respectively. Further, the decline in Hindu growth rate could have been possibly triggered not by falling birth rates but because several large communities who had previously been recorded as Hindus - the Jains, Veershaive/ Lingayats in Karnataka and the Sarna in Jharkhand - insisted on a separate identification this time.

But the Hindutva brigade would not be pacified. Praveen Togadia was particularly miffed at the ‘adjusted figures' and threatened to move court over the change whereby the Hindu population "jumped from 80.5 per cent to 81.4 per cent". He saw it as a conspiracy to "hoodwink" the Hindus about the actual growth in Muslim population, which was poised, according to him, to become a majority by 2111, unless checked . Venkaiah Naidu announced that high Muslim growth coupled with "demographic invasion" by Bangladeshi infiltrators should be a "cause of grave concern for all those who think of India 's unity and integrity in the long run", namely the RSS and its affiliates. For Ram Madhav, the RSS spokesperson, even the earlier unadjusted figures do not measure up adequately. According to him, "our own study has shown much higher growth [for the Muslims]".

‘Our own study'? True, the Organiser routinely lists horror stories about the rising Muslim population, but none of these lay claim to being a ‘study'. The study under question, one can hazard a guess, is Religious Demography of India by A.P Joshi, M.D. Srinivas and J.K. Bajaj (Centre for Policy Research, Chennai, 2003). With its plethora of tables and statistics on census between 1881 and 1991, it is a supreme example of how figures divorced from all socio-economic contexts may be harnessed in the service of a dangerous ideology. The basic thesis of the ‘study' is thus: The population of ‘Indian religionists' is steadily declining while that of other religionists, namely Muslims and Christians, is steadily rising, resulting in a fall of about 11 per cent points for the former. The downward graph of the Indian religionists and the upward, resurgent curve of the non-Indian religionists "will intersect at 50 per cent mark just before 2061", following which the Indian religionists will be rendered a minority. (There is obviously no consensus in the Hindutva camp about the precise date of the Doomsday: Togadia predicted 2111)

How do Messrs. Joshi, Srinivas and Bajaj arrive at this calculation? Simple. They take liberties with conceptual as well as geographical boundaries! According to them, ‘Indian religionists' include not only Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists—which were in any case defined by Article 25 of the Indian Constitution as Hindus—but much more remarkably, also, Jews, Parsees and Bahais. It is therefore only a residual category, including under its denomination all those who are not Muslims and Christians.

India , for them, is not the Indian Union but in true Akhand Bharat style, subsumes India , Pakistan and Bangladesh ! By their own calculations for the Indian Union, the fall in the population of Indian religionists is only about 2 percent—nowhere as dramatic as 11 per cent. Though by itself 2 per cent is not significant, what worries them is that while Indian religionists have been able to rebuff the advance of Islam and Christianity and continue to form an overwhelming majority in large swathes of areas, there are certain regions where the Indian religionists are under great pressure (Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal and Assam) or turning into a minority (Kerala, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, the Northeast).

The existence of pockets of Muslim and Christian influence, say the authors, "formed the demographic basis of Partition of the country in 1947", thus hinting that a rising Muslim and Christian population signals another impending partition. L.K. Advani who has written the Foreword to the book, in his own words, was a "victim" of religious demography and thus urges all to take serious note of the findings of the book.

The spectre of ‘Muslims overtaking Hindus in India ' is not of recent origin. It is as old as the census itself and the communalist mythmakers drew sustenance from it. For instance, O'Donnel, the Census Commissioner for 1891 calculated on the basis of the sluggish growth rates of the Hindus in comparison with that of Muslims the ‘exact' numbers of years it would take for the Hindus to disappear altogether. H.H. Risley, Home Secretary, Govt. of India, wondered if the figures of the last Census were a "forerunner of an Islamic and Christian revival which will threaten the citadel of Hinduism" (cited in P.K. Datta's "‘Dying Hindus': Production of Communal Commonsense in Early 20 th Century Bengal" in EPW , June 19, 1993 ). Over the years, it has become a vital component of the communal commonsense. Best encapsulated in Modi's infamous, " Hum paanch, hamaare pachchis " insinuation. (Does he even recognise the kind of sex ratios that would be required in the Muslim community for realising his fantastical ‘hum paanch'?). These canards though are easily disproved through reference to actual facts: Pune's Gokhale Institute in the 1990s had calculated that the Muslim population will remain fixed at 14.2 per cent of the total even if the same trends persist for the next 100 years. The myth of Muslim polygamy was punctured by the Survey conducted by Registrar General of India in 1961, which established the incidence of polygamy as lowest among the Muslims.