NEW DELHI: The All-India Democratic Women's Association (AIDWA) on Friday criticised Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh chief K.S. Sudarshan's call to Hindus to produce more children and reject the two-child norm.

Referring to Mr. Sudarshan's statement that the 2001 census data showed a decline in Hindu population in certain States including in the northeast and his call to "perform the sacred duty of contributing to the cause of maintaining a Hindu majority in the country", the AIDWA said he was totally regardless of the fact that reproductive choice had to do with a woman's right over her body, well-being and health and economic capacity to provide for her children.

"She cannot be seen as a reproductive machine serving the Hindu nationalist agenda. At the same time, Mr. Sudarshan has deliberately confused the rate of population growth with population strength to promote communal paranoia in the psyche of the Hindu majority fanning the fear of being swamped by religious minorities in the coming years," AIDWA president Subhashini Ali said in a statement here.

"False arithmetic"

For quite some time now the false arithmetic about Muslims producing more children because they had the legal sanction to marry more than once was flaunted by the likes of Mr. Sudarshan, in spite of the statistically established fact that the percentage of polygamous Hindus was slightly higher than the percentage of polygamous Muslims. "This mischievous propaganda will not only help to fan communal hatred but [also] Hindu women not able to produce the desired number of children will be seen as not having fulfilled her duty towards her community."

Further, which Hindus was Mr. Sudarshan talking about? Was it about urban affluent Hindus who accepted the small family norm? Did he not know that the size of the family was determined by comparative affluence, access to education and other basic civil rights and not by the community one belonged to? "If he was at all talking about the millions of economically deprived, caste-oppressed, hunger-ridden `Hindus' who have no access to the basic necessities of life and are no different from the poor of other communities in that respect, he would not be raising the slogan of bigger families but [be] talking about the need to provide them with the basic necessities of life."

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