Couples should have 3 kids to maintain fertility rate at 2.1: RSS chief

Three years after he had called for a population-control law in his Vijayadashami address in October 2022, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) Sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat on Thursday asked Indians not to marry late, and urged that couples should have a maximum of three children to keep the total fertility rate (TFR) at 2.1, which is considered the replacement-level fertility rate. 

 

Bhagwat’s comments are notable with the TFR dropping below replacement levels in most states in India, and across almost all religions. India’s family-planning programme has for decades asked couples to have not more than two children. But of late, chief ministers, such as Andhra Pradesh’s N Chandrababu Naidu and Tamil Nadu’s M K Stalin, have asked people to have more children.

 

 

On the concluding day of his three-day lecture series in the national capital, which has been organised in the runup to the Sangh’s centenary celebrations, the RSS chief replied to a wide range of questions, including on religious conversions, the organisation’s relations with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Hindu-Muslim friction and the Sangh’s role in it.

 

Bhagwat defended reservations based on social and economic backwardness, and said the issue should be broached with empathy for those who had suffered discrimination for centuries. He also gave clarification on the question of 75 being the retirement age.

 

He said civilisations in which couples had fewer than three children vanished. Population could become both an asset and a burden, and needs to be managed. He said the fertility rate of Hindus had been declining for some time, and now a sharp decline was being witnessed among other religions too.

 

On the issue of languages, he said all Indian-origin languages were national languages and there should not be any dispute over it. Bhagwat’s reply to a question on languages comes in the context of protests in some states over the perceived imposition of Hindi.

 

“For communication and transaction purposes, there should be one link language but it should not be foreign,” he said.

 

“All should together decide on the common link language,” he said.

 

The RSS chief said the Sangh was not against English. It should be learnt. He also said that knowledge of the Sanskrit language was very important to understand India and its traditions.

 

On the question of retirement at 75, Bhagwat said he had never stated that either he or anyone should retire from public life after attaining that age.

 

Bhagwat turns 75 on September 11 and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on September 17.

 

“We are ready to retire anytime in life and ready to work as long as the Sangh wants us to work,” he said, and suggested that his comments quoting the late RSS leader Moropant Pingle in Nagpur recently were taken out of context. “I never said that I will retire or someone else should retire,” Bhagwat said.

 

Bhagwat rejected as “completely wrong” a common perception that his organisation decided “everything” for the BJP, saying suggestions were given to the party, who took the decisions. Bhagwat also said the RSS had no role in the selection of a new chief of the BJP.

 

“We don’t decide. If we were deciding, would it have taken this long? We don’t have to. Take your time. We don’t have to say anything,” he said. The BJP has the expertise to handle its affairs as the RSS does for running its shakhas, he said.

 

On the question of Hindu-Muslim tensions, Bhagwat said: “Hindus are insecure due to a lack of confidence. No Hindu thinks there will be no Islam. We are one nation first ... The RSS doesn’t believe in attacking anyone, including on religious lines.”

 

Bhagwat said religion was a matter of individual choice and should not involve any allurement or force.

 

Bhagwat said roads and places should not be named after “invaders”. 

 

“I am not saying they should not be named after Muslims, but they should not be named after invaders,” he said, adding that 1962 war hero Abdul Hamid or former President APJ Abdul Kalam were patriots, and the question was whether someone was a patriot or not, irrespective of their religion.

 

Bhagwat said the RSS supported constitutionally mandated reservation policies and would support them as long as they were required.

 

He said the Ram temple was the only movement that the Sangh supported, and it would not back any other such campaign, including the one for the Kashi-Mathura reclamation.

 

Bhagwat clarified that RSS volunteers were free to join such movements.

 

The RSS chief cited conversion and illegal migration as key reasons behind the demographic imbalance in the country, and said the government was trying to curb infiltration but society also needed to do its part.

 

Bhagwat also said jobs should not go to illegal migrants but to “our own people, including Muslims”.