During our first research in Jhakri, an exclusively Muslim village in Bijnor district (north-western Uttar Pradesh), the sterilization drive associated with the Emergency of 1975–1977 was a recent memory. Our field-notes, then and subsequently, have repeatedly registered the conviction that using contraceptive techniques, especially sterilization [nasbandī or ‘tube closing’], is contrary to Islam.Footnote 1 Recent surveys elsewhere in India indicate that 9% of currently married Muslim women—but only 1% of Hindu and Christian women—say that their main reason for not intending to use contraception is because it is ‘against their religion’. For Bhat and Zavier, these figures reflect Muslims' slavish obedience to ignorant mullahs and account for most of the differences in contraceptive use between members of the three communities (Bhat and Zavier Reference Bhat and Zavier2005: 400). Islamic doctrines are widely presumed to be central to Muslims' everyday lives. Superficially, Jhakri residents might seem to endorse this rarely examined or substantiated assumption, but leaving matters there would fall far short of adequately accounting for their fertility behaviour.
First we outline how several aspects of Muslim reformers' agendas might seem consistent with fertility limitation, yet the historical record provides no clear impression of their views on contraception. Further, the idea that Muslims slavishly follow a monolithic ‘Islamic doctrine’ ignores the contested and shifting understandings of contraception yielded by the same authoritative Islamic sources. With this backdrop, we outline how most women in Jhakri assert that sterilization is contrary to Islam—yet almost in the same breath also complain about poverty and their inability to rear and educate numerous children properly. Moreover, whilst teachers at village madrasahs and senior clerics at the influential Daru'l ‘Ulūm seminary at Deoband generally take a restrictive view of contraception, Muslim villagers who oppose contraception (especially sterilization) take a harder line still. Nevertheless, we must situate the fertility behaviour of rural Muslims in north India in the wider social, political and economic contexts within which they are struggling to make their way in the world—the standard demographic practice for people of other faith communities. ‘Islamic doctrine’ and clerical pronouncements alone provide a poor basis for interpreting Muslims' fertility behaviour in contemporary India.
Muslim reform and contraception
Muslim reformers in South Asia have long debated what Islamic doctrine decrees for its adherents and what practices constitute un-Islamic accretions. A succinct account is virtually impossible, for the debates were often heated and the conclusions reached were diverse (Metcalf Reference Metcalf1982; Reetz Reference Reetz2006; Robinson Reference Robinson2001; Sanyal Reference Sanyal1996). One recurrent theme, however, is individual responsibility for salvation, which can be ensured through the performance of good actions in this world. Thus Muslim reformers have exhorted ordinary Muslims to learn what is required and to ‘rationalize’ their everyday behaviour (Daechsel Reference Daechsel, Fischer-Tiné and Mann2004; Metcalf Reference Metcalf1984, Reference Metcalf1993, Reference Metcalf, Marty and Appleby1994b, Reference Metcalf and Crook1996, Reference Metcalf and Metcalf2004; Zaman Reference Zaman1999). For reformers, education was key to eradicating the ‘backwardness’ to which many élite Muslims considered their brethren were prone (Seth Reference Seth and Bates2006). And, whether with respect to bodily discipline, manners, clothing and speech, moral purification and domestic cleanliness, or living according to a strict daily schedule, women as homemakers, wives and mothers are central in Muslim reform agendas (Daechsel Reference Daechsel2006; Jeffery et al. Reference Jeffery, Jeffery and Jeffrey2004, Reference Jeffery, Jeffery, Jeffrey, Hasan and Menon2005, Reference Jeffery, Jeffery, Jeffrey, Hartung and Reifeld2006; Metcalf Reference Metcalf1990, Reference Metcalf and Hasan1994a, Reference Metcalf, Jeffery and Basu1999; Minault Reference Minault1998; Winkelmann Reference Winkelmann, Chopra and Jeffery2005a, Reference Winkelmann2005b). Tablighī writers are not alone in seeing this ‘inner struggle to discipline and moral purification’ as the greater jihād (Metcalf Reference Metcalf and Metcalf2004: 274).Footnote 2 These efforts, moreover, strikingly parallel the class projects of non-Muslim reformers attempting to ‘gentrify’ poor illiterates by purging their ignorant habits; the view that education was the means of achieving this; and educated women's responsibility to create domestic orderliness and rear children for whom bodily discipline and ‘civility’ was second-nature (Gooptu Reference Gooptu2001; Gupta Reference Gupta1998, Reference Gupta2002; Joshi Reference Joshi2001; Walsh Reference Walsh2004).
At the very least, contraception might seem to have an elective affinity for the reform agenda and ‘rationalized’ everyday life, especially as Muslim reformists' disciplining regimes did not include sexual abstinence within marriage. Szreter et al. characterize a demographic orthodoxy in which ‘the planning of families is somehow umbilically tied to the modernization of society’ (Szreter et al. Reference Szreter, Nye and van Poppel2003: 145) and widespread contraceptive usage occurs only when people's lives approximate to ‘modernity’. Before that, people tend to say that conception is ‘up to God’ or a matter of ‘fate’, something that is not (and should not be) subject to human intervention. With ‘modernity’, people's views and behaviour shift from fatalism to imagining the possibility of family planning. And what demographers generally see as quintessential trademarks of ‘modernity’—disciplined bodies, regulated domestic life and so forth—find their echoes in Muslim reform. Would not the good Muslim life be more attainable if women's devotion to domestic and religious duties, attention to their children's educational progress, and investment in their children's education and wellbeing are not undermined by repeated childbearing? Rather surprisingly, however, Muslim reformers do not seem to have recommended fertility limitation or birth spacing. Historians of Muslim reform in the late colonial period rarely even mention contraception, whilst historians working on contraceptive debates have generally not examined documents written by Muslim reformists. Yet, we would contend, viewing Muslim reform in South Asia through the lens of contraception would give new leverage over our puzzles in this paper.
The Qur'ān Sharīf contains no more than implicit discussion of contraception and hadīs do not provide a consistent view. In the pre-modern period, judgements were reached through ijtihād [interpretive thinking] by religious experts, based on ijmā [consensus] and qiyās [analogical reasoning]. Human fallibility in interpreting God's will provided scope for legitimate disagreement and for reaching different conclusions in good faith. Over time, schools of jurisprudence and individual Muslim scholars reached differing conclusions about contraception (Omran Reference Omran1992; Sachedina Reference Sachedina1990). Yet the main schools of jurisprudence all considered contraception permissible, if sometimes blameworthy and disapproved [makrūh]. A person's motives [nīyat] are crucial for gauging the permissibility of their actions (Katz Reference Katz and Brockopp2003: 43, 45): conflicting yet apparently inviolable principles required compromises and ‘necessity’ could be the trump card (Bowen Reference Bowen and Brockopp2003: 57).
Musallam's survey of legal, medical and erotic literatures in Muslim west Asia up to the 19th century lists suppositories, ointments, coitus interruptus or ‘azl, but not surgical contraceptive techniques (Musallam Reference Musallam1983). As Musallam comments, this presumes neither efficacy nor widespread use of contraceptive techniques.Footnote 3 Nevertheless, Muslim reformers in 19th and 20th century South Asia had access to an array of textual materials discussing contraception, some of which featured in yūnān-ī tibb curricula in South Asia (Guy Attewell, personal communication 7 June 2006; Zillurrahman Reference Zillurrahman1994). But were they taught in full (and why, then, is the secondary literature so silent about them)? Or had they been abridged to exclude references to contraception (and if so why)? Or had they been bypassed by reformers intent on returning to (supposedly) authenticated texts dating from an earlier period than the material Musallam cites?
Maulana Ashraf ‘Ali Thanawi (1864–1943), for instance, is renowned within the reform literature because of his advice manual Bihishtī Zewar (Metcalf Reference Metcalf1990). He did not discuss contraception there, but in a collection of fatwā he said that the use of contraception is permissible only if there is a ‘legitimate excuse’ [‘uzr sahih], as when a woman is weakened by repeated childbearing.Footnote 4 Although the ‘legitimate excuse’ gives some interpretive flexibility, contraception is generally not permissible—in other words, hardly an enthusiastic endorsement.
On the other hand, as Islam moved towards increasingly narrow views of the shari‘a as invariant and exact, new artefacts and ideas considered of western origin could be deemed unacceptable, because they were not legitimized by the shari‘a and other authoritative texts (Zaman Reference Zaman2002).Footnote 5 Hostility to contraception might reflect that change (Muhammad Qasim Zaman, personal communication, 22 May 2006). Certainly, Muslim clerics, among many others, often perceived aspects of contemporary western gender politics—such as women's entry into paid employment—as profoundly immoral. For Syed Abul A'lā Maudūdī (1903–1979), contraception and freely available abortion were a western plot to spawn sexual promiscuity and social disorder in which women's focus on domestic duties would be undermined (Maudūdī Reference Maudūdī, Ahmed and Faruqi1968; Maudūdī Reference Maudūdī and Al-Ash'ari1972; both originally published in Urdu).Footnote 6
The arithmetic of communal politics and Muslim anxiety about minority status could also mesh with hostility to contraception (Justin Jones, personal communication, 27 May 2006). By the 1920s, a ‘common wisdom’ about Muslim fertility was already in play (Jeffery and Jeffery Reference Jeffery and Jeffery2006). Proto-Hindutva writers insistently made shrill claims that Hindus would soon be outnumbered by Muslims (see Cohn Reference Cohn and Cohn1987; Datta Reference Datta1999; Gupta Reference Gupta2002). It would be puzzling if Muslim reformers made no equally vociferous replies: in other debates, Muslim élites intervened on the representation of different religious communities in public bodies, trying to preserve or restore their earlier over-representation; Muslim theologians also resisted shuddhī campaigns [‘purification’, or ‘re-conversions’ to Hinduism] (Dietrich Reetz, personal communication, 11 May 2006; cf. Reetz Reference Reetz2006: 148–151).Footnote 7
The ‘rationalizing’ tendencies of Muslim reform—domestic order and cleanliness—might have pointed towards contraception. Horror at western immorality or the communal numbers game, though, might have pushed in another direction. Quite probably, Muslim élites in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries adopted diverse positions on the subject (Sanjam Ahluwalia, personal communication 20 May 2006).Footnote 8 The relative silence of the historical record is intriguing, though, given how politically contentious contraception is in India today. In the contemporary period, few Muslim clerics have advocated family planning and Khan suggests that sterilization is not actively endorsed by any school of Islamic jurisprudence (Khan Reference Khan1979: 184–191). Yet there are diverse views about when contraception may be permissible.
For instance, the late Qadi Mujahid al-Islam Qasimi (once chief qāzī of the Muslim Personal Law Body in Bihar and Orissa and executive member of the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board) asserted that contraception is not normally permissible. It should be adopted only under very stringent conditions, including the mother's health and spacing children so that they could be reared properly, but excluding women's professional or social concerns and fear of being unable to feed one's children. Sterilization is almost always forbidden, because it ‘destroys the power of reproduction’ and ‘renders a woman incapable of conceiving’ (Qasimi Reference Qasimi2003–2004). Shaykh Faraz Rabbani, a Deobandi sympathizer of South Asian descent who works in Amman, argues that having children is important in Islam, but also that modern kinds of contraception are akin to ‘azl [coitus interruptus]. They may be used if there are ‘sound reasons’—including wanting a manageable family size, lacking support of extended families in childrearing, wanting to give children the attention, education, and support they need in difficult times, genuine health reasons etc., all providing that the spouses agree: a broader set of conditions than those specified by Qasimi (Rabbani Reference Rabbani2005). Like Qasimi, Rabbani excludes sterilization, but ‘because of the general impermissibility of “changing” the human body’, noting that this opinion derives from the same texts that render cosmetic surgery generally impermissible.Footnote 9
Tahir Mahmood's starkly contrasting argument is an extended critique of Maudūdī and clerics adopting a similar stance (Mahmood Reference Mahmood1977).Footnote 10 A verse in Sura 17 in the Qur'ān Sharīf [Bānī Isrāīl or Children of Israel] commands Muslims not to slay their children out of fear of want: infanticide is a great sin and Allah will provide for all. Some readings equate contraception with killing the unborn children whom Allah has written into one's fate. Mahmood contends that Muslims should interpret the Qur'ān Sharīf in light of contemporary concerns: this verse, he insists, forbids murder (not contraception) and ‘azl should include all pre-conception contraceptive techniques.Footnote 11 People's livelihoods are divine gifts that require effort, not idle submission to nature. Contrary to Maudūdī, contraception is not a western imposition and it is better to rear small numbers of ‘good Muslims’ than numerous ill-kempt children. Mahmood also discusses several prominent Indian Muslims—clerics, lawyers, politicians—who advocated family planning and saw no contradictions with Islamic precepts, including Maulana Azad and Dr Zakir Husain (Mahmood Reference Mahmood1977: 70ff.). Similarly, Asghar Ali Engineer considers that Muslims should subject contraception to the same searching interrogation or ijtihād [interpretative thinking] that enables them to respond to any social change. He defines ‘azl as contraception in general, rather than coitus interruptus, and concludes that contraception is usually permissible (Engineer Reference Engineer2005: 98–110). Advocating contraception, however, is extremely controversial, as witness the spat between leading figures in the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board. In late 2004, Maulana Kalbe Sadiq, vice-president of the AIMPLB made a statement in favour of family planning: he was roundly contradicted by Sayyid Muhammad Rabe Hasani Nadvi, the AIMPLB President, and contributors to the subsequent debate in the Urdu newspaper Rashtriya Sahara (Sikand Reference Sikand2005a). Sadiq re-entered the fray by insisting that Islam requires Muslims to be ‘rational’ and that family planning is not contrary to Islamic principles (Times of India, 4 December 2005).
In other words, the same theological sources can lead to diametrically opposed conclusions about the permissibility of contraception in Islam. But how do these matters play out on the ground?
The Bijnor context
Bijnor district in north-western Uttar Pradesh rates relatively highly on most economic indicators, but its social indicators—such as literacy—are more modest: it ranked 57th of the 63 districts in UP (Singh Reference Singh2001 Table 8.3), with a literacy rate of 47% for females over 7 and of 70% for males (Registrar General & Census Commissioner of India 2002). Literacy levels in rural areas and amongst the poor are generally lower than the aggregate figures.
At nearly 42% of the total, the district's Muslim population is unusually sizeable (comprising about a third of the district's rural population and over two–thirds of its urban population) (Registrar General & Census Commissioner of India 2004). Some villages have exclusively Hindu or Muslim populations, others are mixed. Jhakri, for instance, has an all-Muslim population (663 in 2002). Muslims are underrepresented in formal schooling in Bijnor district (Jeffery et al. Reference Jeffery, Jeffery, Jeffrey, Chopra and Jeffery2005; Jeffery and Jeffery Reference Jeffery and Jeffery2006; Jeffery et al. Reference Jeffery, Jeffery, Jeffrey and Hasan2007), and, as elsewhere in UP, Muslims in Bijnor district have lower literacy rates than the aggregate figures and they are disproportionately concentrated towards the bottom of the urban and rural economic hierarchies (Ali and Sikand Reference Ali and Sikand2006; Khalidi Reference Khalidi2006; Sachar Reference Sachar2006; Shariff Reference Shariff1995). Moreover, Muslims are not as politically influential in Bijnor district as their numbers might suggest (Jeffery and Jeffery Reference Jeffery and Jeffery2006: 13ff).
The overwhelming majority of Muslims in the district are Sunni. Moreover, the Daru'l ‘Ulūm seminary in Deoband, in neighbouring Saharanpur district, exercises a decisive influence: the current vice-chancellor is from a prominent family in Bijnor town and there are many links between Bijnor and the seminary. There is a negligible presence of Barelwis. Local madrasahs have direct links to Deoband: inspections by Deoband staff, despatching some senior pupils there to study, or recruiting teaching staff [maulwīs] from Deoband itself or from other madrasahs within its ambit. For instance, the imām in Jhakri runs a small madrasah: he studied at the Mazāhir-i ‘Ulūm in Saharanpur, an offshoot of Daru'l ‘Ulūm. Many maulwīs originate from Bijnor district itself, some from relatively poor urban backgrounds, others from rural households (usually ones owning small amounts of land). A few are from impoverished families in places such as eastern UP and Bihar and have studied in boarding madrasahs since childhood. Like the Muslim villagers we talked to, the maulwīs are convinced that Muslim ambitions in the wider world are routinely thwarted. Most could not have afforded to obtain high educational qualifications in the Hindi-medium schooling system: the madrasah sector had provided a cheap or even free route to respectable—though rarely lucrative—employment that they believe would otherwise have eluded them.Footnote 12
The numbers of rural girls and boys attending local madrasahs have risen substantially since the early 1990s, although most have ceased attending by the age of 12 or so. In Begawala, about a kilometre from Jhakri, pupil numbers exceed 1000, and several smaller madrasahs serve other nearby villages. Maulwīs play a conspicuous role in the ‘civilizing mission’ with respect to their pupils—bodily cleanliness, refined speech and punctuality, so familiar from accounts of reform movements in north India (cf. Jeffery et al. Reference Jeffrey, Jeffery and Jeffery2004, Reference Jeffery, Jeffery, Jeffrey, Hasan and Menon2005, Reference Jeffery, Jeffery, Jeffrey, Hartung and Reifeld2006). Madrasah curricula do not explicitly address family planning. Some maulwīs, however, are also imāms in village mosques, and are often asked to answer moral problems. Further, the Tablighī Jama‘at was hardly a presence in rural Bijnor until the early 1990s: nowadays, though, tablighī parties make periodic tours to villages—including Jhakri—and adult Muslim villagers have increasingly been exposed to their instruction.
Nevertheless, despite the increased reach of such educational activities, few adults in Jhakri can read Urdu or Hindi with facility, let alone Arabic. And, aside from creating problems for accessing employment, low literacy compromises the reform agenda, which rests so heavily on individual self-improvement. So what is the relationship between Islamic teachings and fertility behaviour? How do Jhakri residents’ views on contraception relate to all this clerical outreach?
A recent commentary on the demographic transition notes that contraceptive behaviour at the grassroots has often been conspicuously adrift from élite debates (Szreter et al. Reference Szreter, Nye and van Poppel2003). Further, Obermeyer argues that ‘we do not clearly understand . . . how changes in ideology affect the choices women make—or do not make—and how alternatives are translated into the behaviours of individual women’ (Obermeyer Reference Obermeyer, Sen and Snow1994: 71). The case of Taranam and Talib provides a vista from which to begin exploring these questions.Footnote 13
Talib and Taranam
Talib's 0.16 hectares of land provides little income, and the household basically relies upon his wood trading business. He earns around Rs 6,000–7,000 each month, a good sum for an uneducated village man. In the first nine years of their marriage, Taranam had had eight conceptions, including three miscarriages. In 1998, her eighth pregnancy resulted in obstructed labour: she was taken to hospital, where Talib instructed the doctor to sterilize her—and the girl born by caesarean section survived only a few hours. The medical costs had amounted to Rs16,000.
When we first asked Taranam about the nasbandī [sterilization], her response seemed surprisingly casual. ‘If it is forbidden, what then? My health was bad and the doctor was saying there was no chance that I'd survive another delivery. My health in general was bad and when I became pregnant I had a cough and fever. And I'd also had several miscarriages.’ Yet when we met them both later, a much more complex picture emerged. Shaila and Patricia were talking to Taranam and to Talib's married niece [eBD] about family planning when Talib came in and sat down beside Taranam.Footnote 14 He immediately joined in the conversation. According to Talib, most villagers are boorish [gawār] and illiterate people [jāhil log], who believe that having more children will generate more income:
Talib: But that's not true. Earnings are getting less and the eaters are becoming more. You've heard about my niece's children. One is ‘making beards’ [barbering], another is riding a rickshaw and another is ‘digging grass’ [doing nothing useful]. If there were fewer children, they wouldn't be doing this useless work . . . . How will a mazdūr [labourer] feed 10–12 children? People here don't think that chhotā parivār sukhā parivār hogā [‘a small family will be a contented family’, the Indian family planning slogan].
Patricia: But people in the village say that children are Allah's gift [Allah kī den] and that they shouldn't stop them coming.
Talib burst out laughing: Children aren't Allah's gift! People are saying incorrect things! They [children] are a man's gift [ādmī kī den] and if a person wishes, then he won't make any children.Footnote 15 However many children he wishes, those he can make. If there are few children, then you can do everything. But villagers don't think of this comfort. Bas, they close their eyes and keep on making children and don't do anything else!
Being sterilized is a great sin, Talib continued, because it is not permitted according to hadis: when a sterilized woman dies, he asserted, her funeral prayers cannot be said and she will not be blessed when she goes ‘above’. We asked what would happen to Taranam, since Talib had agreed to her sterilization whilst she was under an anaesthetic. Taranam said she would not have agreed if she had been conscious and Talib butted in to say that Taranam had done nothing wrong and the sin would all rest on him. Nevertheless, he insisted, it was the correct decision for them. They had few children and were living peacefully. ‘I'm thankful to Allah that we're living very well, the children and the two of us. Whatever the children need, I bring immediately. If the children have asked for Rs50 shoes, then I'll bring them and they'll last for 6 months and then I bring some more. And if I had 10–12 children, I'd be bringing shoes for Rs2–4 that break the very moment they arrive at the house! So having few children gives this benefit.’ In any case, the doctor told him that any future children would have to be delivered by ‘operation’ [caesarean section]. ‘I thought that her [Taranam's] health would be damaged and where would I get so much money from? I thought, “today I have Rs16,000, but tomorrow if I don't, then she'll die.” That's why I agreed to the [nasbandī] operation.’ Certainly, he admitted, other people in the village had criticized him for the decision, but his riposte was robust:
Why should I listen to what anyone says? I have to bring the children up and if she [Taranam] were to die like Razia did, what would happen to my house? . . . Women don't understand that this [childbirth] is women's death. Just look at Razia. She herself died in giving birth. And behind her, her children are worried and her husband is also worried. She'd had 11–12 children and there was no life in her body. She'd become weak. There's a great advantage in having few children. Razia from my village died because of poverty. There were only the women of the house beside her and they had called a dāī [traditional birth attendant]. But if they had taken Razia to town sooner, then she, bichārī [poor thing], wouldn't have died.
Taranam, however, was not convinced by Talib's argument: people who are sterilized have made a calculation that is ‘correct for this world but not correct for that world. In that world, we shall have to answer questions about why we closed off having children . . . . Razia saw nothing of this world, but she'll be very happy in that world. She'll be in paradise [jannat].’
Shaila was startled: Razia will be in jannat, but where will her children be?
Taranam: You and we are just sinners thinking that. This world is only for a short time, so what is there to think about it?
Patricia: But don't people have to think about it a bit?
Talib: That's right. You have to think about this world. You should also think about what will happen to your children after you're gone. Allah Miyān has also sent us to this world to live a good life here. So, bhai, we also think about this world.
Taranam: I think about that world and you are all thinking about this world.
Shaila: Which thinking is more correct?
Taranam: Look, ji, you should think about both worlds. But after you die, what will happen? You should think of that first of all. Like you're writing: if there's some mistake in what you're writing, then you ask again. You correct your error. Our calculation is in the same manner, that Allah is writing everything up above and if we've done anything wrong, then he'll ask why we've done this wrong thing. So that's why we think about that world more. When a child does something wrong, then its mother will punish it. Allah's calculation is like that too. If we do anything wrong, Allah will certainly punish us.
Talib: But Allah also looks at necessity [majbūrī]. If someone's throat is being cut and if their life can be saved by our telling one lie, then Allah will forgive that lie. And if we've just lied for no reason, that won't be forgiven.
Taranam: Everything is calculated in Allah's house and sinful people will go to hell [dozāq] and women like Razia will go to paradise [jannat]. That poor thing finished off her life, and she's become ‘beloved of Allah’ [because he summoned her].
Talib: She has become ‘beloved of Allah’ but she's left her children behind crying.
Ambiguities of village voices
Talib and Taranam's concerns parallel ones that have echoed through our conversations about childbearing over two decades in Jhakri and rural Bijnor more generally: the impossibility of rearing numerous children properly, and the damage to women's health of repeated childbearing, fears about maternal mortality, the costs of medical interventions in childbearing—all jostling with anxieties about what counts as ‘necessity’ and how behaviour in this world affects a person's destiny in the afterlife.
Razia's death in childbirth in 2002 provided a focal point to which women's thoughts repeatedly returned. One day in 2003, Irfana, with 7 living children from 10 pregnancies, told us:
My spirit is filled up [‘fed up’] with children. I have lots of distress [giving birth] and now I'm also becoming afraid in case some other ailment comes up. Recently, Razia died. Just half of her child's arm had appeared outside. She had a great deal of trouble and the poor thing died. That's why I'm very fearful . . . . Thinking about Razia, I become very sad, because the poor thing never saw any of the celebrations for her children [their marriages, the birth of their children]. In giving birth to that child, she must be ‘beloved of Allah’, poor thing.
Her neighbour Nargis chipped in scornfully: ‘Women here don't think about whether they'll live or die. They just need children, no matter what happens. Razia died and even so the women haven't learnt a lesson [sabaq].’ One young woman complained disgustedly about the short gaps between her children [‘sab tale-ūpar ke hain’: they were all born pell-mell]. Another mentioned her sister, who was pregnant again, yet her oldest daughter was already due to be married:
Her husband is like a maulānā.Footnote 16 That's why there's a paltan [platoon] of children in the house! I don't like having many children. It's not within my capacity to bring up many children.
Yet another expressed her views like this:
Everyone in the village has 8–10 children. They have to do all the work for them. With ten children, if you wash the face of one, another remains dirty. If you wash the second one's face, the third one remains dirty. With so many children, there is a lot of food to be cooked, there are lots of clothes to be washed and the house will also be dirty all the time . . . . There's no benefit at all from 10–12 children.
And, during her 12th pregnancy, another woman delivered this spirited commentary:
Here they get people married at 14–15 years and then you have ‘vile hardship’ [āfat gandī ho jā]. There are 10–10, 12–12 children. You can neither look after yourself nor the children. You can't flourish. Just as you've cared for one, another is born. The ‘vile hardship’ continues. How can a person flourish?
Several women begged Allah to prevent further pregnancies [band karā-de] or talked about intending to make some ‘arrangements’ or said they had ‘caught hold of their ears’ [vowed not to have another child]. Yet women's comments about excessive childbearing and childrearing have not translated into high levels of contraceptive use, which rose from around 1% in the 1980s to around 6% in the late 1990s.Footnote 17 Jhakri women rarely adopt ‘modern’ contraceptive methods and sterilization, in particular, remains very uncommon—aside from Taranam, just two Jhakri women were sterilized during the 1990s.Footnote 18
One was Najma, who had nine pregnancies but only four surviving children. By 1990, her supportive mother-in-law had died, an eye injury had badly affected her eyesight and she was in poor general health. She had nasbandī ‘just because I was angry’. Nevertheless, she had to endure the scorn of neighbours and relatives (Jeffery and Jeffery Reference Jeffery and Jeffery1996: 53–68). In 2003, Najma claimed that some women nowadays are being sterilized ‘chup ke se’ [secretly]. Shaila asked if this was not pointless, since Allah knows everything. Najma's sister's daughter Mehmuna agreed, saying that women seemed more afraid of people than of Allah. And she confirmed that her mother had indeed been angry with Najma, because ‘nasbandī is considered bad’, ‘there will not be any forgiveness [bakhshish] and their funeral prayers will not be recited.’ Najma retorted ‘what would I have done with so many children? If there had been more children, there would have been nothing to eat and nothing to wear!’ Mehmuna agreed:
There's no benefit in having many children. Nowadays it's said that “a small family is a contented family and a large family is troubled” . . . . If there's a small family, there will be less dukh-taklīf [misery-distress] . . . . With a small family, there's money in the hand and good food and drink. In a small family, there is complete peace.
Despite endorsing small families, however, Mehmuna then provided an elaborate account of the sinfulness of being sterilized:
One time some village woman went on hajj . . . . Afterwards, a voice comes from above to say if the hajj has been accepted or not. This time, the voice said that the hajj hadn't been accepted . . . . The hajj of all the people there wasn't accepted. So then they all started saying that their pilgrimage hadn't been accepted because of someone amongst them and everyone was searched. Then one woman was found who had done nasbandī and everyone said that their hajj hadn't taken place because of this woman. So someone told that woman to go and lick a large stone there with her tongue. That woman went and licked the stone and three grubs emerged from her tongue. And everyone said that these grubs are the souls of three children. If she hadn't had the operation done, she'd have had three more children. So this woman had killed three children and that was why the hajj didn't take place.
A few women said all contraception is against Islam. More often, though, Jhakri women said only sterilization is forbidden and that other methods—pills, injections, IUCDs—are permitted. Jamila, for instance, had used ‘Mala-D’ oral contraceptives and currently has a Copper-T [IUCD].Footnote 19 She had 8 living children. In large families, she argued, the plight of the youngest children is bleak, especially once the parents have died, because no one (including their older siblings) would look after them properly:
But we're Muslims and that's why we couldn't do nasbandī . . . . You'll know that when someone has nasbandī, the funeral prayers can't be said. Hindus have one or two children and then have nasbandī. They educate those two children properly, and feed them well. But with us, this thing is completely forbidden and that's why there are many children . . . . But just see, we have no matlab [interest] in this world. We shouldn't be thinking about it . . . . We are just like a guest in someone's house: no matter how long guests stay in your house, one day they'll have to go to their own homes . . . . Life here is only for a few days. At the very most it will be 100 years . . . . Then we have to show our faces to Allah. In the next life, this life will seem like a dream. The life there will be for eternity.
Just a handful of women thought otherwise. The third woman sterilized during the 1990s was embarrassed to be pregnant when her oldest children were already young adults. After a failed abortion attempt, she had nasbandī. ‘People say that their funeral prayers won't be accepted,’ she said, ‘but really it isn't forbidden. There's no prohibition. If you want to do it, you can. We thought, “Allah will do just what he was going to do—but what would I do being so embarrassed?”’ And when we commented to one young woman that many people consider that sterilization is against Islam, she promptly retorted: ‘And if you've produced 10–12 children and you haven't made even one of them dīn-dār [religious], then what's the benefit of 10–12 children? That's why, if there are 2–3 children you can look after them properly.’
Like Talib, then, many Jhakri women voiced opposition to large families. But Talib's ‘this-worldly’ calculations about providing adequate food, clothes and education for his children led to his unusual decision to permit Taranam's nasbandī. And he was scornful about jāhil [ignorant] people unwilling to do likewise. But Taranam's worries about ‘that world’ find their echoes in other women's views of sterilization.
Authoritative voices of local Islam
During conversations with Muslim clerics in Bijnor town, its rural hinterland and in Daru'l ‘Ulūm in Deoband, we explained that village women often lament the strain that childbearing puts on household budgets and their own health, yet feared the consequences of using contraception. We asked if contraception is always sinful or sometimes permissible, what happened to people in the afterlife if they adopted contraception, and whether Allah accepts the funeral prayers of the sterilized.
All the clerics said that Muslims should not normally limit their fertility. Several referred us to Sura 17 in the Qur'ān Sharīf (see above). The manager of the Begawala madrasah explained it this way:
It's like murder! Look, it's completely forbidden, because the person who gives us our daily bread [rizq] is Allah. It isn't true that those who have many children are poor and those who have one or two children are rich, they are also very poor. I could show you so many examples in the neighbouring villages of people with 1–2 children who are poor. So whatever daily income Allāh-ta‘ālā has written, that much will be received. If we kill our children because of fear of daily bread, this will be very wrong, because Allah is the giver of daily bread.
People can beg forgiveness for a wrong of their own doing, he said, but destroying something that God has made is unforgivable: ‘God gives breath to humanity and later he takes it back to himself. So now you understand this: humanity hasn't made humanity and therefore humanity hasn't been given the right to kill it.’
Likewise, the senior Muftī at Deoband asserted:
It is written in Islam that however many children you have is a matter of good fortune [khush nasībī]. However many descendants are born will be correct [savāb], because the master of our daily bread is Allah, who made both you and me . . . . He alone feeds us here and you as well. He nourishes the whole world. So what's the need to worry? Don't destroy your offspring for fear of daily bread . . . . If you don't sow seeds, how will there be a crop? . . . And if there are no children, how will the world flourish? People are the world's lustre.
Several clerics also linked contraception with unwelcome social changes. In terms reminiscent of Maudūdī, the qāzī in Bijnor town lamented that people are freer now than previously and dissoluteness [āvāragī] has spread:
Ever since people took these precautions, society has taken the wrong path. From that, religious faith has also gone wrong. And from the society's point of view, people do wrong because they know nothing will happen since they have taken precautions.
Similarly, the Deoband Muftī denounced contemporary society: the illegitimate children born because of people's wrong-thinking [ghalat soch], who will have the same faults as their parents, today's men who just need pleasure [lazzat] and bodily enjoyment [jismānī maza] and indulge in relationships for which Islam has no place: ‘Behaving like that is a very serious sin [sakht gunāh] . . . . Marriages have been laid down in the sharīat so that . . . you will not think about some other man or woman.’
Several clerics, however, added a rider to their comments: family planning would not be sinful in situations of majbūrī [compulsion, helplessness, constraint, powerlessness]. In real life, favouring one Islamic principle may necessarily infringe another equally significant one. If people are majbūr, contraception can be permitted—when there are mitigating circumstances, Thanawi's ‘legitimate excuse’ or Rabbani's ‘sound reasons’. And precisely how majbūrī is delimited leaves some space for interpretative and behavioural flexibility. The Deoband Muftī, for instance, gave several guidelines for judging when contraception (including sterilization) is permissible:
Our Gracious Prophet says that children are God's exceptionally valuable [besh-qīmatī] gifts. But for the sake of a woman's health or for some other majbūrī it is better that a further child not be born . . . . Many people come, saying that a doctor has told them that there is a danger to life and so they should have the operation . . . . I ask them to bring the written opinion of the doctor, and when I see that I give permission.
In his view, however, straitened circumstances and food shortage, whether actual or feared, could not justify contraceptive use. Yet, apparently contradicting this, he said contraception would be permissible if the government orders people to limit their fertility, and if a man would lose his employment unless he or his wife is sterilized: ‘Because if he loses his job, what will he eat, how will he look after his wife and children?’ If the government tries to enforce the slogan ‘ham do, hamāre do’ [we two, our two], Muslims should mobilize and try to delay it as much as possible. ‘But, if ham do, hamāre do became compulsory [majbūr],’ the Muftī continued, ‘Muslims would have to obey the government. They can be sterilized if there is majbūrī, when there is no other remedy [chāra] . . . . Please understand that in our Islam if something is understood as majbūr, if there is majbūrī, then things that are not permitted can become permitted.’ How, then, did the clerics interpret villagers' beliefs that funeral prayers cannot be recited for people who have been sterilized? A maulwī at the Begawala madrasah commented:
Look, if there is majbūrī and no option except the operation, then in those circumstances the operation is allowed. And the funeral prayers can certainly be recited, because people commit very big sins and even so their funeral prayers are said . . . . Whether the funeral prayers are acceptable or not, that has not been written. In the Qur'ān Sharīf it has been written that if there is some necessity those things that are not permitted become permitted—like the operation is not permitted. But if there is some necessity, then that forbidden thing becomes permitted.
Similarly, the Deoband Mufti emphasized repentance and forgiveness whilst contradicting the villagers' beliefs:
It isn't written anywhere in the Qur'ān Sharīf that any man or woman cannot have their funeral prayers recited if they have had nasbandī. If someone has had nasbandī and they beg forgiveness it will certainly be accepted. Bas, the Shariat states that before you die, you should repent your sins [tauba karnā] . . . . But ignorance spreads in the world. People who are ignorant say things about funeral prayers being unacceptable. They have no knowledge about whether it is true or not. They don't have the learning about this. So from ignorance these people say these topsy-turvy things. Look, no maulwī or muftī, no-one who knows about Islam, could have told them such things. People place their trust in rumours [sunī-sunāī]. Then they wander about and send these rumours wandering even further.
Clerics in Deoband and Bijnor do not speak with a single voice about contraception, any more than villagers do. Yet the clerics' understanding that people sometimes face majbūrī, and that Allah is merciful to those who have repented present a contrast with the uncompromisingly harsh views of many villagers about the sterilized person's fate. This mismatch undermines assumptions that the rural masses are slavish followers of their religious leaders. Despite Tablighī tours in rural Bijnor, much of the reform agenda has not taken an effective hold there. Indeed, calm domestic order and cleanliness are not readily compatible with everyday rural life (cf. Jeffery et al. Reference Jeffery, Jeffery and Jeffrey2004). Rural children usually attend madrasahs for only a few years (at most): madrasah staff often lament that the fragile impression they make on their pupils' self-discipline in cleanliness, speech, routine and punctuality is liable to reversal once pupils return to the village atmosphere (Jeffery et al. Reference Jeffery, Jeffery, Jeffrey, Chopra and Jeffery2005, Reference Jeffery, Jeffery, Jeffrey, Hartung and Reifeld2006). Thus, we should question how central the reform agenda is in the mundane lives of rural Muslims in Bijnor.
Situating fertility
Greenhalgh emphasizes the importance of showing how fertility ‘makes sense given the socio-cultural and political economic context in which it is embedded’ and of seeing fertility transitions as ‘products of changes in class-specific opportunity structures in response to transformations of global and regional political economies’ (Greenhalgh Reference Greenhalgh and Greenhalgh1995: 17, 21). Similarly, for Obermeyer ‘the political context is a key factor for understanding the way in which [Islamic] religious doctrine is interpreted’ (Obermeyer Reference Obermeyer, Sen and Snow1994: 59).
These insights are germane here. Muslim villagers' contraceptive practice is certainly coloured by what they believe to be ‘Islamic doctrine’. But, as we have shown, ‘Islamic doctrine’ on contraception is not monolithic. Consequently, privileging apparently theological issues will lead us astray. Rather, a more compelling account is yielded by focusing on rural Muslims' ‘secular’ concerns: economic and social marginalization, the Indian government's family planning programme and communal politics, and the political economy of hopelessness (cf. Jeffery and Jeffery Reference Jeffery and Jeffery2006).
Social and economic marginalization
Despite their numerical strength in Bijnor district, Muslims do not dominate the local economy or politics. Crucially, moreover, Muslims in rural Bijnor also perceive themselves as economically and socially marginalized (Jeffery et al. Reference Jeffery, Jeffery, Jeffrey and Hasan2007; Jeffrey et al. Reference Jeffery, Jeffery and Jeffrey2004). Jamila, for instance, explained the lack of Muslim doctors this way:
You see, Muslims are poor and no one gives them any help. But the government helps Hindus. Even if Muslims educate their children, they still won't get ‘service’. A Hindu will get ‘service’ and will have earnings, so he'll give his children food on time, he'll cook good food to eat and he'll educate them in a good school and pay out money for the books. Since the ‘service’ is good, they'll make expenditures. And when children receive education, then they may become doctors. But Muslim children don't get their food on time and the government doesn't help Muslims. So tell me, how can Muslim children become doctors? . . . Whoever has money is making their children into doctors, whether the children have the capability [qābilīyat] inside them or not.
Similarly, Latifan commented that Muslims do not benefit from education because they do not obtain ‘service’ afterwards. Her neighbour added that this is why Muslim boys do not study, and ‘you spend so much money on education and even the money that you have saved will also be spent—and still you will not get ‘service’. Rather than that, you should spend the money that you have saved on starting some business.’ A widespread view is that without social contacts to exert influence [‘source’ or sifārish] or money to bribe the personnel making appointments [‘force’], employment will not materialize—even for someone with educational credentials. Jabruddin asserted:
No one values Muslims. Hindus obtain employment in a single breath, but not Muslims . . . . That's why Muslims aren't educating their children. They know that they won't get employment—and there is this damage, that a boy won't be willing to do farm work. He won't want to pick up the sickle. So the unfortunate Muslim is worried just about this: he's poor. Should he feed his children or spend money on educating them?
By contrast, madrasah teachers generally saw inherent value in education, yet they too perceived discrimination against even well-educated Muslims and the need to bribe officials when seeking employment. Whilst some madrasah teachers felt called to perform work that brings religious merit, others had turned to madrasah teaching because of financial distress and frustrated ambitions—and because madrasah employment can be obtained without bribes. One Begawala madrasah teacher said he had been unable to study further because of financial worries:
I had already tried to get other ‘service’, but to no benefit. So then I took the ‘service’ here [in the madrasah] . . . . Enough! There were worries in the house—our situation [hālāt] was not good. I had to give daily bread to my wife and children. I had to show them consideration.
One of his colleagues turned to madrasah teaching because his older brother failed to fulfil their father's ambition to have a son highly educated in religious matters. Only after we pressed him did he comment:
Listen! With respect to worldly matters, I'm not happy . . . . I don't have money because in this ‘line’ there isn't much money. Now I have just one job: to please Allah. If there's nothing for me here, then I pray to Allah that I will receive my reward up there. Look, as far as worldly matters are concerned, I'm certainly not happy . . . . Today, if I were doing something else—for example ‘service’—then I'd have more money. When I consider my financial position, I'm not happy.
Population, the Indian state and communal politics
During the political Emergency (1975–1977), the government's population programme took a markedly coercive turn after health workers and other government employees were disciplined if they failed to meet family planning ‘targets’, particularly sterilization. There was unparalleled public debate—and widespread distrust of government health workers. Nearly 30 years later, the Deoband Muftī commented:
Sanjay [Gandhi] captured people and did nasbandī on them. People were on journeys by bus and they were dragged out and sterilized. There was great tyranny [zulm] then.
Throughout our Bijnor research, Muslims have believed they were the particular targets of family planning workers and they especially resented the pressure to adopt a technique they believe is contrary to Islam. For Muslims, high caste Hindu domination of health care provision, government and private alike, undermines the state's legitimacy and some even suggested there was a government initiative to eradicate Muslims. Furthermore, the hate-speech of Hindutva ideologues has a long and infamous genealogy: building on the ‘common wisdom’ about Muslims' untrustworthiness and lack of patriotism, family planning issues have been increasingly politicized along communal lines (Basu Reference Basu, Basu and Subrahmanyam1996, Reference Basu1997; Jeffery and Jeffery Reference Jeffery and Jeffery2006). In September 2003, the release of (uncorrected) statistics from the 2001 census created a furore over Muslim fertility, which the corrected statistics released later did little to quieten (Bhat and Zavier Reference Bhat and Zavier2005; Jeffery and Jeffery Reference Jeffery and Jeffery2006; Jeffery and Jeffery Reference Jeffery and Jeffery2000, Reference Jeffery and Jeffery2005; Rajan Reference Rajan2005).
Moreover, Muslims' sense of economic insecurity is compounded by the rise of Hindutva politics during the 1990s. In 1990, there were serious disturbances in Bijnor town related to the Babri mosque dispute (Basu 1995; Jeffery and Jeffery 1994), whilst the anti-Muslim pogroms in Gujarat in 2002 (Varadarajan Reference Varadarajan2002) generated fearful commentaries from villagers and madrasah staff alike. In March 2002, Patricia asked a Begawala maulwī about the on-going communal violence in Gujarat. After commenting on rumours that madrasahs are weapons arsenals and that Muslims are traitors, he continued:
You have come here several times. You come without warning. Have you ever seen any work of this sort going on? Where are we giving training in shooting guns? Here there is not the money for food to eat, so where shall we get bullets? Those people who say that there are arms in madrasahs, that there are ISI agents [Pakistani spies]—they should go just once and catch them and bring them forward. To this day, not a single recovery of arms has been made in any mosque or madrasah. No one has been caught. Our reputation is being destroyed. But we remain silent. These are false accusations. People talk. Let them talk. We cannot reply. We are weak. We remain quiet and silent . . . . These people are getting us killed. Straight off, they are getting us ‘fried’ by bullets. The PAC [Provincial Armed Constabulary] is pursuing Muslims tenaciously . . . . They want to finish Muslims off. But they can't finish us off by firing 100–50 bullets.
Political economy of hopelessness
The Indian state's complicity with Hindutva-inspired anti-Muslim violence—active participation by some officials, incitement by others—has seriously compromised rural Muslims' willingness to rely on state protection. Communal biases in health care provision (especially family planning) and problems accessing secure employment amplify their mistrust. It is, then, unremarkable that Muslim parents in rural Bijnor sense their powerlessness to plan their futures—a condition that is captured by the notion of a political economy of hopelessness, in which people at the bottom of extremely inequitable social systems realistically believe that they cannot exert much control over their lives (Appadurai Reference Appadurai, Rao and Walton2004; Jeffery and Jeffery Reference Jeffery and Jeffery2006: 128ff; Popkin Reference Popkin1980; Scott Reference Scott1985). Implicit here, however, is a presumption that social and economic changes could provide Muslim parents with incentives to invest in the education of a small number of children. It is instructive here to consider countries where Muslim clerics have been involved—in various ways and to different extents—in government-sponsored population programmes.
Sometimes we commented on how family planning is actively promoted in Bangladesh. Jamila was adamant:
Such people can't be Muslims . . . . Just calling yourself a Muslim doesn't make you a Muslim. We're certainly uneducated. We don't know which child was born on which date. But we do know what is in our Islam and what is forbidden.
Similarly, the Deoband Muftī said Bangladesh had been incorrect to normalize sterilization:
Islam is the same everywhere. It cannot be changed . . . . If someone gives me Rs 10 lakhs and I sell myself—that is a sinful matter. If because of greed for money, I give a false fatwa, then the punishment [‘azāb] will be upon me.
By contrast, however, one of his colleagues commented (out of his hearing):
People must change with the times. For example, it used not to be allowed to use a microphone for the azān. On many matters, Egypt is ahead and allows different things. People should have the children they can rear, but [in the past] they did not.
Muslim fertility rates in different countries vary widely, however, and there are no consistent differentials between Muslims and their non-Muslim neighbours. Consequently, Jones and Karim argue, presumptions about monolithic religious ideologies, or about ‘Islamic contraceptive practice’, divert attention from the diverse contexts to which Muslim clerics and others are responding (Jones and Karim Reference Jones, Karim, Jones and Karim2005). In Bangladesh, Muslim clerics have not opposed family planning and sterilization to the same extent as in India. Indeed, their stances shifted very rapidly when social and economic conditions changed (Amin and Basu Reference Amin and Basu2000; Amin et al. Reference Amin, Diamond and Steele1996; Caldwell et al. Reference Caldwell, Khuda, Caldwell, Pieris and Caldwell1999). By the late 1980s, Bangladeshi Muslims generally believed that family planning, including sterilization, was not contrary to Islam (Bernhart and Uddin Reference Bernhart and Uddin1990), whilst clerical support for the state's family planning programme was crucial in the unprecedented and dramatic decline (by 44%) in the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) between 1980–1985 and 1995–2000 (Khuda Reference Khuda, Jones and Karim2005). In Pakistan, by contrast, erratic government policy on family planning, the political influence of Maudūdī and the failure to co-opt Muslim clerics, accompany much smaller declines in TFR than in Bangladesh (Hakim Reference Hakim, Jones and Karim2005). Popular perceptions of religious leaders' views on contraception are that they are hostile (Ali and Ushijima Reference Ali and Ushijima2005). In other Muslim-majority countries, notable changes in fertility have occurred, sometimes with clerical endorsement of contraception, sometimes without their playing a central role (see, for example, papers in Jones and Karim Reference Jones, Karim, Jones and Karim2005).
Of course, these are places where Muslims hold the reins of government. By contrast, Muslims in rural Bijnor highlight the role of Hindutva interests and the Indian state in their physical vulnerability and social and economic marginalization. Since the early 1990s, moreover, Muslims in rural UP have been affected by changes wrought by economic liberalization: squeezed household budgets, rising consumerism reflected in dowry demands, the burgeoning market for private education and health care provision and moribund state provision. Further, high fertility and declining mortality since the 1960s have led to land fragmentation: those whose land once provisioned their families now describe themselves as ‘neither farmer nor labourer’ [nā kissān, nā mazdūr] or as people just ‘managing to survive’ [guzar-basar karnewale], whilst the landless or land-poor can no longer rely on agricultural labouring. Young men increasingly seek employment in Bijnor town, Delhi, Punjab, Kashmir or Surat, generally in sectors where Muslims are already well placed (e.g. machine embroidery, tailoring, house construction and painting, barbering, vehicle maintenance and rickshaw pulling). Some—especially craft work—have been particularly badly hit by economic liberalization (Ali and Sikand Reference Ali and Sikand2006) and may not provide long-term employment for rural migrants. Young women are still usually married and experiencing childbearing in their mid-teens. There are signs that young men are being married at later ages, however, and some continue working outside Jhakri (probably with unintended consequences for fertility). Whether these developments might trigger intentional fertility limitation is an open question, though.
Hopelessness may persist, whether because of continuing economic marginalization or communal unrest—and urban employment might increase young men's contact with clerical hostility to contraception. And, if hopelessness about life in this world predisposes people to avoid behaviour they believe is sinful to guarantee a good life in Paradise, declines in fertility may be slow and halting. Yet privileging supposedly doctrinal views on contraception both obscures the diversity of Muslim opinion and side-steps how ordinary Muslims handle the exigencies of daily life in a liberalizing and globalizing economy. Further, despite interventions by prominent Muslim clerics and Hindutva ideologues, Muslim fertility in UP, and India overall, has declined markedly since the early 1990s. Tellingly, TFRs for Muslims in south India are often lower even than for Hindus, leave aside Muslims, in UP (Jeffery and Jeffery Reference Jeffery and Jeffery2006: 33–35). The depressed social and economic conditions of UP Muslims are undoubtedly significant in this regional contrast. The Sachar report (Reference Sachar2006) advocated numerous policy interventions to ameliorate Muslims' position and the UP and central governments alike have pledged to implement the report's proposals. If Muslims' situations improve, if hopefulness were to become imaginable, Muslim fertility levels in UP would almost certainly decline—not least because clerical hostility to contraception is not buttressed by effective surveillance within the household. As people say, miyān bīwī rāzī, kyā karegā qāzī (husband and wife agree, so what will the qāzī do)?
Addendum:
As this paper was going to press, the ifta department at Deoband issued a fatwa saying that it is permissible for Muslims to use temporary contraceptives to space children and ensure that they are properly nourished. The fatwa does not mention sterilisation, and several press reports comment that Muslim clerics consider it forbidden to make permanent changes to the body, unless the mother's life is in danger. (See, for instance, The Indian Express 16 January 2008 and the Times of India 17 January 2008.)
