Hindu proportion of India’s population less than 80%

CENSUS REVELATIONS Decadal growth rate of Muslims slowing down

NEW DELHI: The share of Hindus in India’s total population has shown a marginal decline between 2001 and 2011, while that of Muslims has increased slightly in the same period, according to census data on the country’s religious profile released by the government on Tuesday.

Hindus now make up 79.8% of India, a slight decline of 0.7 percentage points, while Muslims, the largest minority, make up 14.2% of the country, up 0.8 percentage points.

But while the Muslim share in population has increased, their 10-year growth rate has shown a sharp decline. In fact, the decadal growth rate of all communities has slowed down, suggesting a stabilising trend for fertility rates, the data showed.

The religion-based data was ready to be released in January 2014 but the then UPA government chose not to make it public ahead of the general elections that year. The NDA government’s decision to make it public comes weeks before crucial assembly elections in Bihar. Tuesday’s release came after home minister Rajnath Singh’s approval.

In absolute numbers, the country’s Hindu population stands at 96.63 crore and Muslims at 17.22 crore. There are 2.78 crore Christians, 2.08 crore Sikhs and 0.45 crore Jains.

The share of Sikhs fell by 0.2 percentage points to 1.7% of the population in the 2001-11 decade, while Buddhists showed a decline of 0.1 percentage points to 0.7% of the population. There was no significant change in the proportion of Christians and Jains, who make up 2.3% and 0.4% of the population, respectively.

Muslims have historically witnessed a higher population growth rate than other major communities. But this rate has been on the decline for the past three decades. The Muslim growth rate was 34.5% in the 1991 census, which slowed down to 29.5% in 2001 and furthermore to 24.6% in 2011.

Assam and West Bengal witnessed the sharpest increase in Muslim population in 2001-11, a change that is being linked t o illegal migration from Bangladesh.

Gujarat is the only Indian state where the Muslim population has fallen. The census data showed a decline of 34% for Muslims whereas the percentage of Hindus increased by 18.5%.

Incidentally, Tuesday’s statistics give the religious composition down to the sub-district level for all states but does not give any idea about the socio-economic status of the various communities.

“In the absence of cross-tabulation of the religion data with, say, literacy, sex ratio and work participation, the debate around this census report would be very limited,” a government official said.