Shamika Ravi, member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister and one of the authors of the study, said that the 2015 figures are population projections based on past Census data.
Worldwide, “the share of the majority religious denomination has gone down by approximately 22%,” the study said.
So not only has India's Hindu population fallen at a rate that is not concerning, but the figures are not new, and don’t say anything different from Census figures.
He said that instead, the change in percentage points gives a fairer picture.
These numbers are well known and unsurprising, given that the growth rate of various religious groups has been slightly different, James said.
Critics have questioned the basis of the 2015 estimates of religious population used in the study, since the last decadal Census was conducted in 2011, and the next one scheduled for 2021 is yet to begin. Shamika Ravi, member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister and one of the authors of the study, said that the 2015 figures are population projections based on past Census data.
First, the paper itself shows that the percentage drop in the share of the majority religious group, Hindu, in India (7.8%) is a lot lower than the global levels. Worldwide, “the share of the majority religious denomination has gone down by approximately 22%,” the study said. So not only has India's Hindu population fallen at a rate that is not concerning, but the figures are not new, and don’t say anything different from Census figures.
“The change in religious composition of a population is a complex phenomenon because several factors contribute to it, such as migration, conversion, differences in fertility rates and variation in territorial boundaries as a result of political processes. We abstract away from the causes of this change and instead focus on the share of the minority population as a cumulative outcome measure of their well-being,” the report titled Share of Religious Minorities: A Cross-Country Analysis (1950-2015) authored by authored by EAC-PM member Shamika Ravi, consultant Apurv Kumar Mishra, and Abraham Jose says.
KS James, who served as the director of International Institute of Population Sciences (IIPS) till recently and oversaw important studies like the National Family Health Survey (NFHS), told TNM that while the EAC’s paper provides data that is in line with Census figures, computing the growth rate on the share of the population for comparison gives misleading results and will exaggerate the rise in the Muslim population and the fall in the Hindu population.
For example, if the Hindu population in the United Kingdom increased from its share of 0.3% to 1.2% over the last 70 years, speaking of it in terms of percentage growth gives us a massive growth rate of 300%, while the share still remains critically low. He said that instead, the change in percentage points gives a fairer picture.
In that case, the share of India’s Hindu population has decreased by about seven percentage points (84.1% in 1951 to 79.8% in 2011), and the share of Muslim population has gone up by about 4.4 percentage points (9.8% to 14.2%) from 1950 to 2011, as per the Census. These numbers are well known and unsurprising, given that the growth rate of various religious groups has been slightly different, James said.
