The IIPS research says polygyny is still prevalent among non-Muslims in various parts of the country even though the practice is illegal for all others except Muslims.
Team Clarion
NEW DELHI — Polygamy is highest among the country’s Christian community, followed by Muslims and Hindus, a recent research report of the Mumbai-based International Institute of Population Sciences (IIPS) has said.
The report, uploaded on the IIPS website, comes amidst raging debate on Uniform Civil Code (UCC) in the country, with many right-wingers throwing their weight behind the measure. Their particular concern is to ban polygamy among Muslims, as they believe that every Muslim man has four wives. They also hold the Muslim community responsible for the growing population in the country, but the new research has exposed the hollowness of their claims.
Interestingly, the report shattering the myth that only Muslims are polygynous has been readied by an institute which works under the aegis of the Central government.
IIPS, a deemed-to-be-university, and autonomous organisation under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has concluded that the Christian community is the most polygamous in the country, followed by Muslims and Hindus.
The researchers who conducted the study are Harihar Sahoo, R. Nagarajan and Chaitali Mandal.
The researchers based their report on the data collected from the fifth round of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) conducted between 2019 and 2021. The NFHS data relies upon the statements of married women who stated that their husbands had other wife or wives besides themselves.
According to the IIPS data, the rate of polygyny among Christians, as per the NFHS-5, is 2.1 per cent against 1.9 per cent among Muslims and 1.3 per cent among Hindus. Thus, the difference between Muslims’ and Hindus’ polygyny rate is just 0.6 per cent. Likewise, the polygyny rate was found to be 0.5 per cent among Sikhs during the period covered by NFHS-5, 1.3 per cent among Buddhists and 2.5 per cent among unspecified “others”.
The national polygyny average, as per the research, is 1.4 per cent, indicating a declining trend. The average was 1.9 per cent during NHFS-3 (2006-2006) and 1.6 per cent during NHFS-4 (2015-16). The research says that polygyny decreased in almost every state from 2015-16 to 2019-21, with the exception of nine states (Chandigarh, Delhi, Punjab, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Meghalaya, Tripura, Maharashtra, and Puducherry).
The IIPS research says polygyny is still prevalent among non-Muslims in various parts of the country even though the practice is illegal for all others except Muslims.
It is more prevalent in northeastern and southern states, as well as Sikkim bordering Nepal. Meghalaya with 6.1 per cent tops the list, followed by Mizoram (4.1 per cent) and Arunachal Pradesh (3.7 per cent). In Sikkim, the current rate of polygyny is 3.9 per cent.
In southern states, the highest prevalence of polygyny is in Telangana (2.9 per cent), Karnataka (2.4 per cent), Puducherry (2.4 per cent) and Tamil Nadu (2 per cent). Members of the Hindu community are the general practitioners of polygyny in south India.
What shatters the politically-motivated myth about wide-scale polygamy among Muslims is that the states or regions with Muslim dominance have the least prevalence of polygyny. For instance, Lakshadweep with almost 100 per cent of the Muslim population and Jammu & Kashmir with an overwhelming majority of Muslims have only 0.5 per cent and 0.4 per cent of polygyny, respectively.
The rate of polygyny among Christians, as per the NFHS-5, is 2.1 per cent against 1.9 per cent among Muslims and 1.3 per cent among Hindus. The study indicates that polygynous marriages are more prevalent among women who had no formal education (2.4 per cent) than among those who had higher educational (0.3 per cent) qualifications.
Polygamy was most prevalent among the poorest women and those who had no formal education. It is also most prevalent in rural areas (1.6 per cent) than in urban areas (0.6 per cent). Polygyny is also more prevalent among poorer people (2.4 per cent) and very less (0.5 per cent) among rich people.
