On Wednesday, Bharatiya Janata Party leader Giriraj Singh became the latest Hindutva leader to weigh in on just how many children Indian mothers should bear in order to be counted as well-regarded nationalists.
"Everybody must have one or two children," said the Minister of State for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises. "The voting rights of those who don't follow should be revoked."
This limit, he emphasised, should apply to all Indians. "Hindus should have two sons, Muslims, too, should have two sons," the member of Parliment told his audience of Hindu holy men and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh workers at a cultural event in Bihar's Champaran district.
Then he came to the crux of his argument: "Our population is coming down," he claimed. "Bihar has seven such districts where our population has gone down."
Like so many Hindutva adherents, Singh was using a dog-whistle to play to the fallacy that India's Muslim population is rising so quickly, the community (who form 14.2% of the country's population) will soon outnumber their Hindu neighbours (who form 80.5% of the population).
As this article shows, that anxiety is quite misplaced. But that hasn't stopped Sangh leaders over the past few months to keep urging Hindus to go forth and procreate in order to save the nation.
Here's a quick look the number of offspring individual leaders have deemed essential to keep the community intact.
Other Sangh members too have had strong opinions in the matter of how many children Indian Hindu women should produce.
In January 2015, the BJP Member of Parliament from Unnao, Swami Sachidanand Hari, better known as Sakshi Maharaj, declared that women should produce at least four children all for the sake of protecting Hinduism.
Vishva Hindu Parishad leader Sadhvi Prachi backed Maharaj's statement. "A lion doesn't have just one child... we also need four children in each family," she said. "One will fight the enemies on the border, give one to saints, give another to VHP for social work." On another occasion, though Prachi suggested that people (presumably Muslim) with more than two children should be stripped of their voting rights.
Pravin Togadia, a VHP working president, also justified Maharaj's remarks. "What is wrong in suggesting that every Hindu couple should produce four children?" he asked. "Nobody raises any question when other people produce up to ten children, then why is this noise in case of the Hindus?"
Shyamal Goswami, a BJP leader from West Bengal, jumped in to say that five is the magic number. "I want to tell my Hindu mothers and sisters that if they don’t have five children, there will be no equilibrium in India in future," Goswami said. "Don’t misunderstand me. To protect Hinduism and Sanatan Dharma, it is necessary for all Hindus to give birth to five children."
Other VHP associates believe in an even higher number. "Each Hindu family should have at least eight children," said Kanhaiya Das, a priest from Ayodhya who is associated with the organisation.
For Vasudevanand Saraswati, the Shankaracharya of Badrikashram, ten is the golden number. "It is because of Hindus unity that Modi has become the Prime Minister," he said during a Magh Mela in Allahabad in 2015. "In order to maintain their majority status, every Hindu family should give birth to ten kids."
Strangely, none of them have come anywhere near the figure suggested in the traditional greeting: May you be the mother of a hundred sons.
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