What is the change in Hindu & Muslim population share between 2001 & 2011?﻿
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
September 3, 2019
There is a perception
that the Muslim population has grown exponentially resulting in a significant change in the share of Hindu & Muslim population across the country. What do the numbers say?
India’spopulation growth rate has shown a declining trend over the past few decades asnoted in one of Factly’s
earlier stories. However, data also reveals that the population growth rates are noteven across the country. The Hindi speaking states of North India have apopulation growth rate more than that of India, while the southern statesperform better with lower rate of population growth.
An earlier review
of the highly populated districts in India, showed that many of thesedistricts are urban districts and the increase in their population over thedecade (2001-2011) is largely due to the migration into the major urbancenters.
At the sametime, it is also true that the population growth rate in India is different fordifferent religious communities. We explore this in this story, especially withrespect to Hinduism and Islam, which happen to be the largest religiouscommunities in India.
Marginal
increase in share of Muslim population across the states
As per the 2001 census, the share of Hindu population in India was 80.4% while by 2011 it decreased marginally to 79.8%. The share of Muslim population in 2001 was 13.4% while it increased to 14.2% by 2011. The share of other religions in the population of India is significantly lower, with Christianity, the larger of the other religions accounting for 2.34% of the population in 2001 and 2.30% as per 2011 census.
The change inthe share of population for both Hindu and Muslim communities in India has beenmarginal across the states. The share of Hindu population dropped by 0.65%whereas the share of Muslim population has increased by 0.8%.
The share ofHindu population within the states has marginally declined across the stateswhile Muslim population share has registered a marginal increase acrossmultiple states during the 2001-11 period. This reflects the marginal decreaseand increase of Hindu and Muslim population share respectively at the nationallevel.
The Unionterritories and states including Nagaland and Punjab have a positive growth inshare of Hindu population. However, the Hindu community in these states is aminority and hence the base figures are less. The majority community isChristian and Sikh respectively in these states.
Assam, WestBengal, Chhattisgarh and Kerala are the larger states which has seen a decreasein share of Hindu population by more than 1%.  The decrease in the share of Hindu populationwas less than 1% in the other big states. In Assam, the share of Muslimsincreased by around 3.31% whereas the share of Hindus decreased by 3.42%. Inthe case of West Bengal, the share of Hindu population decreased by 1.93% whilethe Muslim population share increased by 1.77% during 2001-11.
The Muslimpopulation growth rate is more than the Hindu population across most of thestates. Assam, Uttarakhand, West Bengal, Kerala, J&K, Haryana and Delhi areamong the larger states where the share of Muslim population increased by morethan 1%. Assam recorded the highest change with increase by 3.31% followed byUttarakhand with 2.03%.
What about
change in share in Districts?
Out of the 593districts as per 2001 census (new districts of 2011 census are consolidatedinto the older districts for better comparison), 20 districts have a populationof over 50 Lakhs as noted in one of Factly’s
earlier stories.
The share on Hindupopulation in these 20 districts has gone down by 0.77%. It was 79.26% in 2001and is 78.49% as per 2011 census. Correspondingly, the share of Muslimpopulation has grown from 17% to 17.85 % i.e. an increase by 0.85% during thesame period in these 20 districts.
Further, thereare 35 districts which have population between 40-50 Lakhs. The share of Hindupopulation in these districts during 2001 census was 81.47% which fell by 0.78%to 80.69% in 2011.
The share ofMuslim population in these districts increased by 0.76% from 16.2% in 2001 to16.96% in 2011. The fall in Hindu population share is comparatively lower inthe districts with 30-40 lakh population with a decrease of 0.57%. On otherhand, the increase in Muslim population for these districts is 0.81%.
The overall share of Hindu population in all these highly populated districts (more than 30 Lakhs) as per 2011 census is 79.26% and that of Muslim population is 16.73% there by impacting the overall change in the share of population at national level. This also means that the Muslim population is concentrated in highly populated districts.
The change inshare of Hindu Population in districts with population of 20-30 lakhs and 10-20lakhs is the least among the population size groups with a reduction of 0.22%and 0.23% respectively. The increase in Muslim population share is also theleast with 0.53% and 0.48% respectively in these two population groups. A totalof 307 districts i.e., more than half of the total districts fall under thesetwo population size groups. The share of Muslim population in these districtsis only 11.98% which is less than the national share of 14.2%.
Larger variancein the population is observed in the group of districts with less than 10 Lakhspopulation (there are 157 districts). Hindu population share has decreased by1.16% in these districts while the share of Muslim population increased by1.03% during 2001-11.
Districts with
extreme population share change distributed across various population sizes.
A total of 192districts of the 593 have witnessed a change in the share of Hindu populationby more than 1%. Of these, share of Hindu population in 150 districts reducedby more than 1% in the 2001-11 period. In the rest of 42 districts, the shareof Hindu population increase by more than 1%.  Around 110 of the 150 districts with fall in populationshare of Hindus by more than 1% are those with a population of less than 30 lakhs.
In 16 out ofthe 24 districts in Assam, the share of Hindu population decreased by more than2%. In Nalabri and Barpeta districts of Assam, both with population of morethan 10 lakhs, the share of Hindu population decreased by a whopping 12.39% and11.05% respectively, while the Muslim population in these districts has increasedby 13.87% and 11.37% respectively. In Nagaon and Kamprup districts of Assamwith more than 23 lakh population, the share of Hindu population has reduced by4.41% and 2.7% respectively while the share of Muslim population increased by4.37% and 2.39% respectively in the 2001-11 period.
South Twenty-FourParaganas and Murshidabad districts of West Bengal, with population of 69 Lakhsand 58 Lakhs respectively, have seen a drop in the share of Hindu population by2.69% and 2.71% respectively. The share of Muslim population in these districtsgrew by 2.33% and 2.6%.
Ranchi withpopulation of 27 Lakhs has a seen an increase in the share of Hindu populationby 5% and even Muslim population share in this district has increased by 1.57%.Ranchi has seen a decline in Christian population during 2001-11. The share ofHindu population increased by 3.21% in Ludhiana district of Punjab that has 30lakh population as per 2011 census.
The share ofMuslim population changed by more than 1% in only 98 districts out of 593districts. Of these, the share increased by more than 1% in 89 districts whileit decreased in the rest of districts.
Of thedistricts with more than 30 lakhs population, Muzaffarnagar (3.22%), Saharanpur(2.84%), Murshidabad (2.6%), Uttar Dinajpur (2.56%), South Twenty-FourParaganas (2.33%), Hyderabad (2.28%) and Aligarh (2.07%) have registered thehighest increase in the share of Muslim population between 2001-11.
Is there an
exponential growth in the share of Muslim population?
The increase inthe share of Muslim population across the country was less than 1% i.e. 0.8%over a decade. Considering that the overall share of Muslim population is only14.2% in comparison to Hindu population (79.8%), the growth in  the share of Muslim population is marginal contraryto the perception of exponential growth in Muslim Population. However, as notedearlier, in certain districts of the country, the share of Muslim populationhas grown exponentially.
Featured Image: Hindu & Muslim population