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WILL MUSLIMS ONE DAY OUTNUMBER HINDUS IN INDIA?

https://www.civilsocietyonline.com/spotlight/muslims-cant-outnumber-hindus-even-in-100-years/



WILL MUSLIMS ONE DAY OUTNUMBER HINDUS IN INDIA?


A paper that emanated from the Economic Advisory Council of the Prime Minister (EAC-PM) in May stirred up a storm with researchers, NGOs and legal experts questioning its assertions on religious minorities and accusing its authors of fear mongering during election time.

The paper, titled “Share of Religious Minorities: A cross-country analysis (1950-2015)”, examined the religious composition of populations of 167 countries since 1950 based on datasets. Countries where 50 percent or more of people belonged to a particular religion were analyzed. Thirty-five were OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries and 25 were from Europe.

In India, from 1950 to 2015, said the paper, the share of the Hindu population declined by 7.82 percent, whereas the share of the Muslim population increased from 9.84 percent to 14.09 percent. The share of the Christian population increased from 2.24 percent to 2.36 percent and the Sikh population rose from 1.24 percent to 1.85 percent. The Buddhist population went from 0.05 percent to 0.81 percent, the highest increase among minority groups. However, the share of the Jain population declined from 0.45 percent to 0.36 percent, and the Parsis from 0.03 percent to 0.0004 percent. 

 SOCIETY SPOKE TO POONAM MUTREJA

Q: You say this paper by the EAC on the share of the population of religious minorities misrepresents demographic trends.
A: Yes, because they have used data only till 2015. They haven’t used census data for the past three decades. If they had, they would have found that the decrease in the Muslim growth rate is faster than the decrease in the Hindu growth rate.

The data that they have used is nothing new. It’s been used by the Pew (Charitable) Trusts. What’s the purpose in using it again? It is global data. We don’t understand why Indian census data has not been used. The population of Hindus has in fact gone up since 1950-51 by
70 crore, while that of Muslims has gone up by 14 crore. The decline of the Muslim population started later than that of Hindus because they were far behind in all parameters, be it health, education or income, as per the Sachar Committee report. And the census hasn’t even been carried out this time.

Why create this fear psychosis is the question. That’s the reason we put out a statement countering their conclusion that Muslims have done well in India.

Of course they’re making it political. They are saying Muslims are being treated specially well with access to education, health and jobs, which is not so.

Education, jobs and good family planning services result in a decline in population. In the past decade we had a very good programme, called Mission Parivar Vikas, which went to 146 high-fertility districts in India, mostly in UP which has a large Muslim population, mostly backward. Our mission contributed to decreasing the population in these 146 districts. So not using the data after 2015 is misleading.

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