Centre for Policy Studies, a Chennai-based think tank specialising in research and advanced studies in demography, national security, religious extremism and science and technology has come out in the open substantiating the observations made by former Kerala Police chief TP Senkumar about the unprecedented increase in Muslim population in his State.

The Kerala Government has registered criminal cases against Senkumar on charges ranging from creating animosity between various religions. The crime branch of the Kerala Police has ‘grilled’ the former IPS officer who retired from service in June 2017.

Senkumar, while speaking to a Malayalam journal, had said that the increase in Muslim population in the State was a matter of concern. “Every 42 out of the 100 new-children in Kerala belong to the Muslim community. This is a serious issue which needs to be studied,” said the former IPS officer, who was also the intelligence chief of the Stted. He also said that the incidents of ‘love jehad’ are not fictions and are here to stay.

Senkumar’s observations that 42 out of every 100 children born in Kerala belong to the Muslim community opened a Pandora’s Box with prominent Muslim political, social and community leaders joining issue with him for making a “serious allegation”.

Dr Jatinder K Bajaj, Prof M D Srinivas and Dr AP Joshi, the three lead faculties in CPS who are the products of IIT Madras and IISc Bangalore in a recently published research paper substantiated the observations of Senkumar with scientific proof. The trio thoroughly analysed the data offered by the Department of Economics and Statistics, Government of Kerala and studied the demographic changes in the State’s population since 1901.

“The steep spurt in Muslim population in Kerala is surprising as well as shocking. It is a matter of concern which has to be studied seriously,” said  Dr Jatinder K Bajaj, one of the scientists who studied the Kerala phenomenon. “We analysed all available data on the vital statistics of 2008 to 2015 and the census figures of 2001 and 2011. The analysis clearly establishes that the share of Muslims in live births in the State and in the 0-6 year  population is far above their share in the total population. And Muslim share in both the live births and in the 0-6 year population has been rising sharply in the recent years and decades,” said the CPS findings.

Dr Bajaj fully ratified the 42 per cent increase in Muslim population as made out by Senkumar. All the three scientists were unanimous on their finding that Kertala is facing a very high imbalance in the number of children born to different communities.

The scientists described their findings as startling. “Vital statistics for the last several years show that the share of Muslims in the total live birthsrecorded in the State has been rising rapidly at least since 2008. In that year, of all live births in Kerala, 36.3 per cent belonged to Muslim families. That proportion has been steadily rising and has reached 41.5 per cent in 2015. Meanwhile the share of Hindu families in the total live births has declined from 45 to 42.9 per cent and of Christian families from 17.6 to 15.5 per cent,” said the research paper published by CPS , which was comprehensively studied by The Pioneer.

But the scientists had an interesting observation to make. “The data provided by the Census Department and the Kerala government suggest that the imbalance in the growth of Muslims and others in the State is likely to keep rising sharply rather than subsiding in the foreseeable future,” said Dr Bajaj, Dr Joshi and Dr Srinivas.

According to the 2011 Census, the Hindus constitute 55 per cent of the population while the Muslims and Christians form 26. 6 and 18.4 pent respectively. The Census figures of  Hindus, Muslims and Christians for the year 1901 were 68.9, 17.2 and 13.82 per cent respectively.