Numbering others: Religious demography, identity, and fertility management experiences in contemporary India

Demographers have carefully analyzed intersecting aspects of identity beyond religious category that influence fertility patterns in India, such as region, access to wealth, sex ratios, and gender dynamics (Padmanabhan, 2015). Drawing on interviews and participant-observation conducted during 15 months of field research on infertility in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, north India, between 2005-07 and 2016-17, this study shows how nuances of demographic change categorized by religion, such as changes in fertility and mortality rates, ripple through public discourse and imagination less powerfully than overall shifts in population percentages. This paper connects media and political discourse about religion, demography, and fertility in large-scale reports, such as the 2011 Census of India and the Sachar Committee Report on status of Muslims in India (Sachar et al., 2006), to the health care services and advice provided to Muslim women and children. While the Sachar Report drew attention to economic and social disadvantage among Muslims, political discourse in response to the 2011 Census continues a trend of labeling disparities in fertility rates across religious categories as a social problem. Such discourse renders individual fertility and infertility experiences invisible and reinforces longstanding negative representations of Muslims' fertility, with important implications for health, identity, and ultimately, governance (Sangamoorthy and Benton, 2012). Ethnographic data from health outreach efforts led by and serving Muslim women in Lucknow demonstrate the diversity of Muslim women's positions relative to health and fertility services as well as the intersections of various aspects of identity with fertility management experiences. By bringing these perspectives together, the paper shows how ethnographic work matters for making sense of quantitative population data. The political uses of large-scale quantitative data demonstrate how social science analysis can be used both to create "Others" and argue for neo-eugenics, and to bolster arguments for resources and reform that benefit the disadvantaged.