Improbability ratio

Ashok Singhal of the VHP is reported to have said that owing to the “rapid growth” of the Muslim population, Hindus will be reduce...

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Ashok Singhal of the VHP is reported to have said that owing to the “rapid growth” of the Muslim population, Hindus will be reduced to a minority by 2060. I have made some simple calculations based on the figures contained in the 2001 census. Being mathematically challenged, I request Ashok Singhal to kindly check them.

If India’s Hindu population is to grow constantly until 2060 at its decadal growth rate of 1991-2001, it will become 182 crore. If Muslims have by then reduced Hindus to a minority, they will outnumber Hindus by at least one individual. The Hindu population will have become over twice as large as it is, while the Muslim population will have become over 13 times as large. I assume here that the numerically insignificant religious communities will have grown, like the Hindus, at their 1991-2001 rates.

The 2001 census recorded 138,188,240 individual Muslims in India. In order to grow to 182 crore in 60 years so as to meet Ashok Singhal’s target, they will need to maintain a growth rate of 203 per cent. Every Muslim in India, including infants, must produce roughly one fifth of a child every year, for 60 years without a break.

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What are the numerical implications for this of the fact that human reproduction typically involves two co-operating persons? Should I have said two fifths of a child per person per year? Or one tenth, perhaps? Nor can I see how the absence of physiological capacities so far considered essential might be overcome. But I am content to accept Ashok Singhal’s prediction, for it must have been based on a profound knowledge of Vedic arithmetic and Vedic biology. However, breeding on the prodigious scale that is predicted for India’s Muslims has not been seen anywhere in the world at any time.

Going by the calculations above, India’s population in 2060 will have become 3.7 times what it is today; but they assume a mere 20 per cent decadal growth rate for Hindus. If Hindus, who were 81.4 per cent of the population in 2001, are to heed the VHP’s call to adopt the 8 sons norm, and if they can refrain from bumping off the probably equal number of daughters who will be born to them, their population — and that of India — will grow by 2060 to a size with which my computer cannot cope. All I can say is that we must look forward to turning into aquatic creatures. In anticipation I have begun to sprout gills.

Finally, the all-important matter of divinity. Those who are capable of procreation of this order cannot but be super-human. They must be inducted with honour into the Hindu pantheon.