I've read two different analyses on the social impact of Babri Masjid demolition by the BJP on Indian Muslims. I wouldn't say they are opposite views as both could be true under certain conditions. I would call them the Bleak view and the Sunny view.
According to the Bleak view:
By late 80s Muslims were slowly opening up to mainstream India. They had started showing great interest in education. But Babri Masjid demolition in 1992 changed all that. They again became inward-looking and more conservative.
According to the Sunny view:
Muslims felt betrayed and disillusioned with their leaders. They started questioning them, their backwardness and poverty and tried to find new ways to achieve progress.
With the Sunny view, I would guess, Muslims would have become more mainstream and with the Bleak view, they should have regressed further.
I wanted to check if there was any measure for these two views.
In my opinion, this should reflect in their population growth. Any progress in a group should reflect in their women's extended education, later marriage and smaller family size.
To observe this, I needed to compare the population growth of Indian Muslims relative to other groups with a similar background but which weren't exposed to majoritarian communalism. The Indian Muslims who weren't exposed to Hindu communalism were Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. Even though, both Pakistan and Bangladesh have non-Muslim minorities, I would consider them as 100% Muslim as the Muslim population make up nearly 90% or more in those regions. Even otherwise, it wouldn't make much of a difference as Muslim population growth has always been higher than the Hindu population growth.
Here is their population in absolute numbers (million):
According to the Bleak view:
By late 80s Muslims were slowly opening up to mainstream India. They had started showing great interest in education. But Babri Masjid demolition in 1992 changed all that. They again became inward-looking and more conservative.
According to the Sunny view:
Muslims felt betrayed and disillusioned with their leaders. They started questioning them, their backwardness and poverty and tried to find new ways to achieve progress.
With the Sunny view, I would guess, Muslims would have become more mainstream and with the Bleak view, they should have regressed further.
I wanted to check if there was any measure for these two views.
In my opinion, this should reflect in their population growth. Any progress in a group should reflect in their women's extended education, later marriage and smaller family size.
To observe this, I needed to compare the population growth of Indian Muslims relative to other groups with a similar background but which weren't exposed to majoritarian communalism. The Indian Muslims who weren't exposed to Hindu communalism were Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. Even though, both Pakistan and Bangladesh have non-Muslim minorities, I would consider them as 100% Muslim as the Muslim population make up nearly 90% or more in those regions. Even otherwise, it wouldn't make much of a difference as Muslim population growth has always been higher than the Hindu population growth.
Here is their population in absolute numbers (million):
| India(Muslims) | Pakistan | Bangladesh | |
| 1981 | 80.3 | 91 | 89.9 |
| 1991 | 106.7 | 122.2 | 111.5 |
| 2001 | 138.2 | 156.8 | 130.5 |
| 2011 | 172.2 | 187.3 | 152.5 |
Pakistan and Bangladesh had similar population size in 1981 whereas Indian Muslims population was 10million(1 crore) smaller in size compared to these two countries.
The percentage growth in each decade would be:
| I | P | B | |
| 81-91 | 33% | 34% | 24% |
| 91-01 | 30% | 28% | 17% |
| 01-11 | 25% | 19% | 17% |
As I understand, until the 70s-80s, the population growth of all these countries increased as the maternal and infant mortality reduced without the corresponding decrease in fertility rate. So, it's not surprising that the decade of 1981-91 shows very high growth rate. Relatively, while Indian Muslims and Pakistanis show similar growth, Bangladeshis show remarkably lower growth. The growth starts slowing down in the decades following that.
Our interest is in the decades after 1991, when the Hindutva movement reached its pinnacle with the destruction of the Babri Masjid. Here, we see some surprising results. Let's consider the drop in population growth rate in all three regions.
| I | P | B | |
| '91-'01 | -10% | -17% | -29% |
| '01-'11 | -17% | -31% | -1% |
Bangladesh shows dramatic drop between the decade of 81 and the decade of 91. Pakistan comes next. We need to remember while Bangladesh had continued the trend, Pakistan with a higher growth rate than India, showed a relatively greater drop. This trend continued in the decade after that as well. However, it appears Bangladesh growth rate drop has stabilized. Even though Pakistan shows a bigger drop percentage-wise, it still has the biggest Muslim population because of its higher starting number. By 2001, Indian Muslims had overtaken Bangladeshi Muslims in sheer numbers though they had started with a smaller size.
Does this say anything?
In my opinion, it shows the Bleak view is correct. Indian Muslims became more inward-looking and conservative. Pakistan with its fundamentalist outlook would have had higher population growth whatever might be the social situation. But the Indian outlook wasn't the same. However, let's consider that all Indian Muslims have the typical outlook of Pakistanis. In this case, let's consider the Indian Muslim population in absolute numbers with Pakistani decadal percentage growth.
Pessimistic case scenario:
| 2001 | 136.911293 |
| 2011 | 163.542635 |
That's in 2011, by pessimistic estimation, the Indian Muslim population would have been 9 million (90 lakh) smaller than the actual population(See above).
Let's take Bangladesh as the best case, and consider Indian Muslims having the typical outlook of Bangladeshi Muslims. Then the population growth in absolute numbers would be:
Best case scenario:
| 2001 124.8820628 |
| 2011 145.9349776 |
In the best case scenario, there would have been 26 million (2.6 crores)fewer Muslims in India by 2011.
But in my opinion, the better model would be that the Indian Muslim outlook is somewhere between the best case and the pessimistic case. I would consider all Hindi speaking Muslims making nearly 75% of the Indian Muslim population as culturally closer to Pakistanis and the rest to Bangladeshis. So, with 0.75P + 0.25B, the decadal growth and the absolute numbers would be:
| 2001 25% | 133.904 |
| 2011 19% | 159.0822 |
The Indian Muslim population would have been 13 million(1.3 crores) smaller in 2011 than the actual number.
What we need to observe here is that the Indian Muslim population increased more than the pessimistic expectation in the decades after 1991.
This affirmation of the Bleak view gives an ironical twist to the Hindutva movement's goals. They typically try to polarize the population by invoking the bogey of Muslim population growth and how it's going to make Hindus a minority in India. However, the BJP with its core Hindutva ideology might have indirectly responsible for an additional 10 million Muslim population in India. The BJP also wants to project itself as a liberator of Indian Muslim women by implementing the Uniform Civil Code. But with their communal movements, they might have ruined the dreams of many Muslim women by indirectly forcing them to stop education, marry early and have more children.
