Birth Control in Chars?
Recent reports suggest that the Muslim population living in the chars (riverine areas) of Assam have taken enthusiastically to the idea of family planning. This is not easy to accept for several reasons. In the first place, the men of the char areas, who are largely Bangladeshis, have long been polygamous, and many are known to have as many as 25 to 30 children, as though they were raising large families with a vengeance in order to increase their numbers very fast. In this respect they are quite different from the indigenous Assamese Muslims who are monogamous and have few children. Secondly, they have long been led to believe that family planning is a result of western influences and is “anti-Islamic”. Thirdly, contrary to common belief, the large-scale illegal migration from Bangladesh to Assam is not solely for economic reasons or a move by asylum-seekers, but is a carefully planned ‘‘migration industry’’ at work. The ultimate objective is an annexation bid on Assam and a few other States of India. This migration industry capitalizes on the greed of unscrupulous Indian political leaders for sustained electoral success without any performance merely on the strength of the illegal votes of foreign nationals, and involves a well-organized network of dalals or middlemen in Bangladesh and India, manpower agencies, recruiters, touts, travel agents and so on. These three factors naturally combine to motivate a preference for large families regardless of the poverty that such an option also inevitably implies. For the migrant from Bangladesh, any level of poverty that is not as stark as what prevails in Bangladesh represents a slightly better life abroad than at home. However, there is no denying that in the 21st century, with a very rapid shrinking of the earth’s resources and the infrastructure that it is possible to create, large families spell extended poverty.
This is a fact of life that has been acknowledged willingly or unwillingly by both Muslims and Roman Catholics — both faiths with a long tradition opposing any kind of family planning measures. The defiance of the Roman Catholic population all over the world of the anti-contraception directives of the church has been in evidence for quite some time now. They have obviously not managed to keep their families small through abstinence or celibacy but rather through the use of contraceptive methods. In advanced Muslim countries like Turkey, Syria, Iraq and the oil-rich Gulf countries, family planning practices have been used for quite some time. Muslim countries with smaller families are clearly more prosperous than those that do not follow family planning methods. So Iran is the latest of the Islamic countries that has gone all out to convince conservative families that they should adopt family planning. In fact, Iran has even enlisted the help of the clergy to tell people that for years they have gone along with myths on birth control arising from wrong interpretations of the Qur’ân and the Hadiths.
According to official data, Muslims living in the char areas have taken enthusiastically to birth control and birth sterilization methods such as no-scalpel vasectomy and tubectomy. The Assam Government has set a target of one lakh women and 26,000 men for sterilization procedures in 2010-11. However, the same government also provides incentives to mothers who have their babies delivered in government hospitals or health centres. They are rewarded with a sum of Rs 1,400. So, whether the talk about men in the char areas adopting birth control methods is just so much pre-election hype or whether this is really happening remains to be seen. However, the men have a strong motivation for adopting birth control methods. The responsibility of feeding and educating huge families falls on the male shoulders, and the burden of the poverty that they are inflicting on themselves by having huge families is probably getting too heavy to bear.
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