KAUAI, HAWAII, August 4, 2007: (HPI note: a reader asked about the relative fate of Muslims in post-partition India compared to Hindus in Bangladesh, where the percentage of Hindus fell from 37% at Independence to 11% now. This is from the Wikipedia article, “Muslim Population Growth in India.”)
South Asia has three large nation states that constituted the former British India (now India, Pakistan and Bangladesh). Combined with Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Maldives, it is home to over 450 million Muslims or about one-third of total world Muslim population. Islam is the second largest religion in India after Hinduism. India has the second largest Muslim population in the world after Indonesia.
High population growth for Indian Muslims has been raised as an issue. There appears to have been a tendency on part of the nationalist parties to raise an alarm by exaggerating the trend, while the left and the Congress often dismiss the whole issue as propaganda. As detailed below, the annual growth rate of Muslim population in India has been about half a percentage point higher than that for the the general population. Over a long period of time this does show up as a significant change.
India has conducted a decennial census since 1881, and has always tracked religious affiliation as part of the census, thus leaving little room for controversy about the underlying facts. The Census of India is generally seen as one of the more reliable regularly conducted censuses outside of the developed world.
Since neither the first census after the independence in 1951 nor the latest census in 2001 had any major omissions, it is possible to take a look at the issue of relative population growth during the 50-year period. The population of India in 2001 was 2.84 times its 1951 population. The proportion of Muslims was 10.36% in 1951 and it increased to 13.4% by 2001.