According to the census data released on 25 August, the share of Hindus in India’s population has come down from 80.5% in 2001 to 79.8% in 2011, while the share of Muslims has risen from 13.4% to 14.2%.
The data also showed that, among other religious communities in the country, the Christians has remained at 2.3% of the population and the Jains at 0.4%, while Sikhs dropped slightly from 1.9% to 1.7% and Buddhists from 0.8% to 0.7%.
Fall in the Growth Rate
- The overall growth rate of India’s population has been decreased in 2001-2011 as compared to the previous decade.
- All religious communities have also seen the growth rates of their populations declining sharply in the 2001-11 period compared to the rates in the earlier decade.
- The lowest decline has been observed by the Hindus which is from 19.9% to 16.8%.
Sizeable Change in the Muslim Population of some States
The change in the religious population can be seen distinctly in case of certain states like Assam, West Bengal, Kerala, Punjab, Uttarakhand and some states in the northeast.
Assam
In Assam, the share of the Muslims in the total population has increased from 30.9% in 2001 to 34.2% in 2011.
Bangladeshi Migrants
One of the major reason behind this is the illegal migration from Bangladesh. It is also evident from the the fact that nine of 27 districts of Assam are now Muslim-majority as compared to six of 23 earlier. All of these districts are in the areas bordering Bangladesh.
West Bengal
In West Bengal Muslims’ share in the population has been increased to 27% from that of 25.2% a decade earlier.
Now Uttar Dinajpur district has joined Malda and Murshidabad in the list of districts where Muslims outnumber Hindus where Muslims stands at 49% of total population of districts
Kerala and Uttarakhand
Kerala and Uttarakhand have also seen a significant rise in the share of Muslims.
Kerala and UttarakK hand have also registered significant increase in the share of the Muslims in their population, while in many other states there is a small increase in the share of Muslims.
Other Religious Communities
Hindus
In Punjab, the share of Hindus has increased from 36.9% to 38.5%, with the share of Sikhs dropping from 59.9% to 57.7%.
The Sikhs have also declined from 16.1% to 13.1% of Chandigarh’s population and from 4.0% to 3.4% of Delhi.
The Hindu share of population has also risen by one percentage point in Nagaland, and more marginally in Karnataka and Goa and in some of the union territories like.
Christians
In Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur, the Christians formed a significantly larger share of the population in 2011 than they did in 2001.
In Arunachal, their share rose from 18.7% to 30.3% while in Manipur it rose from 34% to 41.3%, which is just a little lower than the 41.4% share of population that Hindus have in the state
