‘Saffron Demography

is a set of pernicious myths aboutclaimed differences between Hindu and Muslim popula-tions.1 It has been repeated so often, and with so much authority, by right-wing Hindu politicians and the mass media, that it has become part of a ‘common wisdom’. Yet in creating a demonised ‘other ’ (the over-sexed Muslim man and his over-fertile Muslim wife/wives) it has contributed to the very phenomenon that it (superficially, at least) wishes to control, more rapid population growth among Muslims. In this paper we set out the contours of this common wisdom and assess its relationship to India’s contemporary demo-graphic reality. We then look at how the differences between core and marginalised groups can be understood as one result of incomplete and uneven governmentality (one that is changing its nature under the pressures of globalised neoliberalism). Finally we briefly address ways of ‘strengthening the capacity to aspire ’ so that poor Muslims (among other socially exclude