Demographic features of Indian religious communities at the beginning of the 21st century

The article contains a brief overview of the religious composition of Indian population within the first decade of the twenty-first century. We experienced a known difficulty when obtaining statistics on the religious composition of the Indian public due to its irregular promulgation. Changing disparities in the proportion of the states and union territories' major religions on the basis of 2001 and 2011 National Censuses and 2005-2006 Demographic and Health Survey data are analyzed in detail. At present Hindus constitute the vast majority of the 21 states and 6 union territories' population. The Muslims are in majority in the state of Jammu and Kashmir and in the union territory of Lakshadweep. Traditionally, North-Eastern India has the highest proportion of Christians: they absolutely prevail in the states of Nagaland, Mizoram and Meghalaya and form a relative majority in the states of Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur. It is revealed that increase in absolute numbers of Hinduism (an increase of 138.7 million people from 2001 until 2011), Islam (34.1 million), Christianity (3.7 million), Sikhism (1.6 million), Buddhism (0.5 million) and Jainism (0.2 million) adherents was accompanied by an increase in the only Muslim share in total population. Currently in India a natural increase -difference between the numbers of births and deaths - makes the largest contribution to the growth of number of the major religions adherents (except perhaps Christianity). It is established that indicators of Muslim, Hindu, Christian and Buddhist fertility are sufficient to save the level of their basic reproduction. It is shown that, at the same time, the growth rate of only Muslim population exceeds the national average level. It is stated that the fall in the proportion of Hindus below the psychologically important mark of 80 % may be an additional factor of destabilization of inter-religious relations in India. That was the reason why the 2011 census data on religious affiliation of India population were published (quite possibly intentionally) only four years after parliamentary elections had been held and the central government had been formed. It is significant that while the proportion of Hindu population to the total population in 2011 had declined, the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian People's Party) came to power in 2014 and the Indian National Congress, adhered to the secular political tradition, suffered one of the most crushing defeats in its history after it had been in power for ten years.

Keywords

Authors

References