The clearest eye-opener is the birth-rate in the relatively affluent Muslim-majority district of Malappuram in highly-literate Kerala; at 75.22%, the female literacy rate in Malappuram is twice as high as for most Hindu communities in the Hindi belt. In the decade 1981-91 its population grew by 28.74%, well above the national average of 23.50% and more than twice the Kerala average of 13.98%. This disproves the usual excuse that the birth-rate automatically follows the poverty rate and the illiteracy rate. Most Hindu Scheduled Caste people whom I know have settled for smaller families, but by and large, Muslims have not changed their appetite for large families. Ever since the propagation of birth control among the Hindu masses, rich and literate Muslims have more children than poor and illiterate Hindus.

Women from Kerala work throughout India and the world earning money to send back home. And yet they'll pay a dowry to get married, and they'll have the most bizarrely subservient relationships with their husbands. I grew up in a little village in Kerala. It was a nightmare for me. All I wanted to do was to escape, to get out, to never have to marry somebody there. Of course, they were not dying to marry me [laughs]. I was the worst thing a girl could be: thin, black, and clever.

Baljit Rai, a retired police officer who was a personal witness to India's failure in con­tain­ing the rising tide of il­legal im­migration from Bangladesh, refu­tes this ar­gument by poin­ting to the birth rate among Kerala Muslims, who have a high level of education and a relativ­ely high stan­dard of living. Mani Shankar Aiyar had clai­med on the basis of statewise figures for the south­ern states that "Muslim birth rates in all these en­light­ened states are very much lower than Hindu birth rates in unen­lightened states like Uttar Prad­esh". However, Rai's clos­­er­­ analy­s­is of the figur­­­­­­­­­­­­­­es­ shows that the Kerala Mus­lims have a higher birth-rate than the natio­nal Hindu average and even than the Hindu average in poor and back­ward states like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan: the population growth (+28.74% for 1981-91) in the Muslim-majority district of Malappuram (with female liter­acy at 75.22%, far higher than among Hindus in the Hindi belt) is more than twice as high as the aver­age for Kerala (+13.98), and well above the Hindu national aver­age (+23.50).

When we started in 1947, I think 18% or something was the literacy rate in India. Now it is 52%. It is not a disastrous performance but it is not sufficient, certainly. But some parts of India have done better, my own State of Kerala has done remarkably well. Tamil Nadu is achieving greater success in literacy, so is Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. The State of Himachal, is more or less reaching 100% literacy. Some of the states of the North-East have full literacy today. So, the movement of literacy has been uneven, but progressive.

[In] Kerala, where the Muslims constitute 25% of the total state population, 99% are classified as OBCs and are claiming reservation quota;

A secularist journalist confirms: "In spite of this 'near total literac­y' the popula­tion growth rate of Muslims who constitute one-fourth of Kerala's population is as high as 2.3 per cent per year, which is more than even the natio­nal PGR [= population growth rate] of 2.11 per annum and is almost double the PGR of Hindus in Kerala it­se­lf."

My thoughts and prayers are with the people of Kerala and their loved ones.

Islamic sleeper cells exist in Kerala... According to [intelligence] inputs, Kerala is a recruiting ground for Islamic State as the people here are educated and the IS requires professionals like engineers and doctors. But we have dealt with it in a systematic way.

Islamic radicalisation is not a new phenomenon in Kerala, where Muslims account for 26.56 per cent of the total population or around 9 million people," says Dr N.P. Hafis Mohamad, a sociologist and author based in Kozhikode. "When the Students' Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) was established in 1977, a few students in Kerala joined it and the organisation had units in many campuses in the state. However, during the past four decades, only a tiny section within the community has opted for a radical path, while 99 per cent of Muslims in Kerala remained secular and contributed to the social-cultural-economic development of the state.

The Kerala Story is a film depicting the truth of how terrorism is being spread without using arms and ammunition. I think everyone should see the film.

Kerala has given a lead in carving out Muslim majority districts, leaving the local Hindu population at the mercy of Mullahs and Muslim hooligans. Bengal under anti-national Communists and U.P. under a crumbling Congress edifice are most likely to walk into this Islamic trap before long. Several enquiry commissions or their reports have been suppressed because the verdict was likely to go or had gone against the Muslims in fixing the responsibility for riots.

Every day when she wakes up, she claims she was raped. A woman who says she was raped across the state, she’s dressed up and made to stand behind the curtain. She keeps asking when she should come out. Chief Minister, your game will not work here. This blackmail politics will not work here. The people of Kerala can understand it. As you (CM) drown and die, if you thought you can bring a prostitute and make her cook stories, Kerala is tired of hearing it…we can understand if a woman says she was raped once. Any woman with self-respect will either die or prevent being raped again. But, she keeps crying she was raped again and again all over the state. Senior police officers told me that you are planning to play politics by keeping such a woman in front.

Population in India is widely differentiated in ethnic composition, geographical and climatic conditions, social and cultural stratification, as well as by differences in economic status. Differential fertility therefore assumes a far more complex picture in India than anywhere in the world. Ethnic. geographical. socio-cultural and economic dilferences give a four-fold patterning with many complicated interactions. It is essential therefore to study different population groups separately.

Rajasthan is bigger than Germany and has more people than France. Being India’s biggest state without much water is a huge challenge. And having a young demographic profile (34 per cent of our population is between 18 and 39 years) means we need to create eight lakh new jobs every year. All this is complicated by the fact that for many decades after Independence, we lagged behind other states in investments and outcomes in most industrial, economic, education and social development indicators.