34 Demography and religion

Dr. Vijeta

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Contents:-

 

1.      Introduction

2.      World diversity of Distribution of Religion

3.      Distribution of religion in India

3.1. Historical Background of Religious Composition of India

4.      Religious Profile of India

5.      Religious composition in India from 1881 to 1991

6.      Conclusion

7.      Summary

 

1.  Introduction

 

Demography studies the changing size and composition of a population in a quantitative way. A population (Greek: ‘demos’) is usually defined as comprising all the people in a given territory or political entity (from a city to a province to a nation to the world population). A population defined in such a way can only change through three forces: births, deaths and migration. These are called the three fundamental components of demographic change. Since the intensity of these forces differs greatly by age and gender, most demographic studies stratify the populations by these two basic demographic dimensions. This structure by age and gender is well illustrated through population pyramids which plot women on the right and men on the left side, sorted by age. Demographic models can also project populations for several decades into the future. This high predictive power in demography – as compared to many other social and economic issues – is due to the fact that the human life span is 70-80 years in most parts of the world and, if we know, e.g., the number of 10-year-old girls today, we have a good basis for projecting the number of 70-year-old women 60 years into the future. We only have to adjust for assumed future mortality and migration rates. To project the size of cohorts that have not yet been born today, we also must make assumptions about future fertility rates. Hence, to forecast total population size we need to make assumptions about likely future trends in age-and gender specific birth, death and migration rates. Populations can and should be stratified by other characteristics of humans than just age and gender. Traditionally, demographers have also distinguished by marital status, place of residence, citizenship, educational attainment level and ethnicity. Religious affiliation is another characteristic that has been included in the censuses of many countries. In some countries, however, it is not considered appropriate for the state to ask about membership in religious organizations. (Lutz and Skirbekk, 2012).

 

2. World diversity of Distribution of Religious Population

 

When it comes to the question of demographic modelling of the changing distribution of the religious composition of a population, differentials in fertility, mortality and migration can be considered. Recently, the number and proportion of Muslims in many European countries has been increasing quite rapidly. This is, in the first instance, a consequence of the fact that many immigrants to Europe have been Muslims, either from Turkey or from Northern Africa. But it is also due to the fact that in most countries, Muslim women had significantly higher birth rates. Several estimates for relative and absolute composition of religion in the world exist. The World Christian Encyclopedia (Barrett et al. 2001) suggests that in 2010, Christianity constitutes 33.2 percent of the world population, Islam 22.4 percent, Buddhism 6.8 percent, and Hinduism 13.7 percent. They also estimate that a hundred years ago in 1910 Christianity was at 34.8 percent, Islam 12.6 percent, Buddhism 7.8 percent and Hinduism 12.7 percent.

 

3. Distribution of Religion in India

 

The changing religious profile of Indian population has had a strong impact on the recent history of India, and it continues to be amongst the major determinants of strife on the Indian subcontinent.

 

Fortunately, unlike the caste and community affiliations, the religious affiliations of the people of India have always been recorded in the census operations. (Joshi et al, 2003).

 

3.1. Historical Background of Religious Composition of India

 

At the time of the first detailed census in 1881, the adherents of religions of native Indian origin constituted about 79 percent of the population, of which 95 percent were Hindus. Of the remaining about 21 percent of the population, that followed religions of alien origin, as many as 96 percent were Muslims. This religious heterogeneity of the Indian population and its division into mainly the Hindus and the Muslims was a demographic reflection of relatively recent events in Indian history. Up to about 1200 AD, India showed remarkable religious and civilisational homogeneity. Notwithstanding the great geographical expanse of India and the linguistic and cultural specificities of people living in different regions, there prevailed an almost timeless consensus on fundamental civilisational principles. These basic principles of India, which found diverse expressions in sophisticated philosophical discourse as well as in lay beliefs and practices, are collectively known by the name of sanatana dharma, the timeless discipline that forms the core of all religious doctrines of Indian origin. All those who entered India from outside soon accepted these basic civilisational principles. In fact, up to the coming of Darius of Persia in the sixth century BC and Alexander of Macedonia in the fourth century BC, there were few external incursions into India. This had partly to do with the peculiar geography of India. The Indian subcontinent enjoyed remarkable isolation from rest of the world. The land frontier in the north is blocked by the high and wide wall of the Himalaya, which is impassable except at a few points in the northwest; the long seacoasts in the south are far away from any other major lands and have few natural harbours. The land enclosed within these impregnable frontiers is one of the richest in the world. It is therefore not surprising that Indians, living securely within their vast and fertile lands for millennia, without fear of external aggression or internal scarcity, developed into a homogenous civilisational area. This homogeneity was anchored in sanatana dharma. Indians, living in their splendid and rich isolation, were at peace with themselves, with nature and the world; the sanatana dharma enshrines, at its heart, a sense of deep respect for all aspects of creation. Kanishka, the greatest of the Kushana kings, established an empire that extended from central and western India to central Asia. He is also known to have been a devoted follower of Buddhism and to have convened the fourth Bauddha Sangha in Kashmir. Starting from seventh century AD, India faced a new external incursion, this time by the adherents of Islam. Islam, as is known, arrived on the world-scene with great expansionary vigour. Prophet Mohammad was born in 570 AD. In a single decade, between 622 AD when he arrived at Madina to 632 AD when he died, he had consolidated Arabia into a powerful and unified political and religious unit. In another decade following his death, the Islamic Caliphs had expanded the boundaries of Muslim power to cover almost the whole of Byzantine and Sassanid territories, the two great powers of the time. Between 637 and 643 AD, Persia was conquered and the Islamic borders touched Afghanistan. Egypt fell in 640 AD. In 711 AD, Spain was conquered. Then southern France was annexed. Within one hundred years of the Prophet’s death, Arabs became the rulers of a vast region encompassing most of southern Europe and northern Africa, and all of west and central Asia. Islamic naval and land expeditions began exploratory incursions on Indian borders from as early as 636 AD. But Islam could obtain a foothold in India only in 713 AD, with the victory over Sind. India successfully resisted further spread of Islam into Indian territories for the next three centuries. From the beginning of eleventh century AD, India began facing rapacious Islamic invaders of Turkish origin. Mahmood Gazhni invaded India several times from 1000 to 1026 AD and annexed Punjab to his empire. The Ghur successors to the Ghazni Empire were finally able to extend Islamic conquest into the heart of India after defeating the valorous Prithvi Raj Chauhan in 1192. Thus, in contrast to the easy conquest the Islamic forces had in many other parts of the world, it took them more than five centuries to break the defences of India. From 1192 to around the end of the seventeenth century, various Islamic dynasties, derived from the Turko-Afghans and later the Central Asian Mughals, ruled over large parts of India. These about five centuries of Islamic rule constitute the first period in the long and unbroken history of India, when India was ruled by a group that did not subscribe to the fundamental civilisational and religious principles of India. Islamic rulers, even those who were relatively tolerant of the Indian beliefs and practices and did not attempt to forcibly propagate Islam, were committed to retaining a distinct Islamic identity and presence within the larger and otherwise homogenous civilisation of India. Unlike all those who came into India before them, the Islamic rulers, consciously and perhaps conscientiously, resisted acculturation into the timeless civilisational and religious milieu of India. This thus became the first source of heterogeneity in India, dividing the Indian population mainly into two distinct religious communities, Hindus and Muslims, as reflected in the 1881 census cited above. In time, this demographic heterogeneity led to the Partition of the country into Indian Union and two separate Islamic enclaves. Peninsular India, consisting of the southern Malayalam, Kannada, Tamil and Telugu regions, had largely escaped Islamic domination. Islamic incursions into this part of India in the early fourteenth century led to a powerful consolidation under the mighty Vijayanagara Empire that was emphatically committed to the defence of sanatana dharma. From about the middle of the seventeenth century, people all over India, under several charismatic leaders, began to rise in revolt against the Mughal rule in almost all parts of India. The Marathas under Samartha Ramdas and his great disciple Shivaji, the Jats under Gokula, and the Sikhs under Guru Gobind Singh, created powerful military organisations that shook the Mughal Empire. By the end of the century, the Empire had more or less collapsed, and indigenous rulers were in the process of establishing themselves everywhere in India. In 1881, after about a century of British rule, Christians were just beginning to make their presence felt in India and constituted about 0.7 percent of the population, but the proportion of Muslims had risen to about 20 percent from about 16 percent indicated at the pinnacle of Mughal rule (Joshi et al, 2003).

 

4. Religious Profile of India

 

The part of India that came to form Indian Union after Partition has a substantial majority of Indian Religionists; but their proportion has been declining throughout the twentieth century, except for the rise associated with the abnormal and traumatic event of Partition. In the pre-Partition period, the proportion of Indian Religionists in this part of India declined from 86.6 percent in 1901 to 84.4 percent in 1941. Between 1941 and 1951, their proportion rose by about 2.8 percentage points as a result of the forced and violent transfer of populations that occurred at the time of Partition. And in the following four decades the proportion of Indian Religionists in Indian Union has declined by the same 2.2 percentage points as in the four decades prior to Partition for which we have the data. Consequently, there has been a net decline of 1.6 percentage points in the proportion of Indian Religionists in Indian Union between 1901 and 1991 (Joshi et al, 2003).

 

5. Religious composition in India from 1881 to 1991

 

The proportion of Indian Religionists in the population of India has declined by 11 percentage points during the period of 110 years for which census information is available. Indian Religionists formed 79.32 percent of the population in 1881 and 68.03 percent in 1991. Correspondingly, the proportion of Muslims in India has increased by almost 10 percentage points, from about 20 percent to 30 percent. The proportion of Christians during the same period has risen from 0.7 percent to 2 percent. The decline in the share of Indian 

 

Religionists and the corresponding rise in that of Muslims has been a continuous process throughout the period, and the phenomenon does not seem to have abated yet. The proportion of Christians, however, seems to have reached a plateau after having risen continuously for 90 years between 1881 and 1971. A decline of 11 percentage points in the share of the majority community in a compact geographical and civilisational region like India is an extraordinary occurrence to happen in the course of just about a century. At the peak of Mughal rule at the time of Akbar, after nearly four hundred years of Islamic domination, the proportion of Muslims in India was said to have reached no more than one-sixth of the population (Joshi et al, 2003).

 

Table-1: Religious composition of India from 1881 -1991

Source: Joshi et al (2003). http://www.cpsindia.org/dl/religious/summary3c.pdf Note: Population in Thousands.

 

Population Growth rate of various religion has come down in the last decade (2001-2011). Hindu Population Growth rate slowed down to 16.76 % from previous decade figure of 19.92% while Muslim witness sharp fall in growth rate to 24.60% (2001-2011) from the previous figure of 29.52 % (1991-2001). Such sharp fall in population growth rate for Muslims didn’t happened in the last 6 decades. Christian Population growth was at 15.5% while Sikh population growth rate stood at 8.4%. The most educated and wealthily community of Jains registered least growth rate in 2001-2011 with figure of just 5.4% (Census, 2011).

 

Table-2: All India Religion Census Data 2011

Source: Census, 2011

 

Table-3: Urban India Religion Census Data 2011

Source: Census, 2011

Table-4: Rural India Religion Census Data 2011

Source: Census, 2011

 

5. Conclusion

 

Thus, seen in the perspective of the changing religious demography of the world during the twentieth century, Indian situation does not seem too alarming. Christianity and Islam have both made substantial gains in the world. But it is Africa and some relatively smaller countries of Asia that have experienced the impact of growth of these religions the most. Africa has comprehensively lost its Native Religionist moorings during the twentieth century. And in Asia, countries like Indonesia and South Korea have seen their religious complexion change fairly thoroughly. On the other hand, an ancient civilisation like that of China has countenanced no change in its religious profile, nor have the relatively more recent civilisational regions of the world like West Asia, North Africa and Europe swayed from their adopted faiths. India, however, has not remained unaffected. Between 1900 and 1990, Muslim share in the population of India has increased by about 8 percentage points to reach nearly 30 percent; and the share of Christians has increased by more than 1 percentage point to reach 2 percent of the population. Growth of Christianity in India during the twentieth century has also been concentrated in specific geographical pockets, in some of which Christians now form a predominant majority (Joshi et al, 2003).

 

6. Summary

 

A population defined in such a way can only change through three forces: births, deaths and migration. These are called the three fundamental components of demographic change. Since the intensity of these forces differs greatly by age and gender, most demographic studies stratify the populations by these two basic demographic dimensions. Religious affiliation is another characteristic that has been included in the censuses of many countries. When it comes to the question of demographic modelling of the changing distribution of the religious composition of a population, differentials in fertility, mortality and migration can be considered. Recently, the number and proportion of Muslims in many European countries has been increasing quite rapidly. The changing religious profile of Indian population has had a strong impact on the recent history of India, and it continues to be amongst the major determinants of strife on the Indian subcontinent. Fortunately, unlike the caste and community affiliations, the religious affiliations of the people of India have always been recorded in the census operations. At the time of the first detailed census in 1881, the adherents of religions of native Indian origin constituted about 79 percent of the population, of which 95 percent were Hindus. Of the remaining about 21 percent of the population, that followed religions of alien origin, as many as 96 percent were Muslims. This religious heterogeneity of the Indian population and its division into mainly the Hindus and the Muslims was a demographic reflection of relatively recent events in Indian history. The proportion of Indian Religionists in the population of India has declined by 11 percentage points during the period of 110 years for which census information is available. Indian Religionists formed 79.32 percent of the population in 1881 and 68.03 percent in 1991. Correspondingly, the proportion of Muslims in India has increased by almost 10 percentage points, from about 20 percent to 30 percent. The proportion of Christians during the same period has risen from 0.7 percent to 2 percent. Thus, seen in the perspective of the changing religious demography of the world during the twentieth century, Indian situation does not seem too alarming.

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    References

  • Lutz, W., & Skirbekk, V. E. G. A. R. D. (2012). The demography of religions and their changing distribution in the world. Universal Rights in a World of Diversity, 91.
  • Barrett, David B., George T. Kurian and Todd M. Johnson. 2001. World Christian Encyclopedia: A Comparative Survey of Churches and Religions in the Modern World. 2 volumes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Joshi, A. P., Srinivas, M. D., & Bajaj, J. (2003). Religious demography of India. Chennai: Centre for Policy Studies. http://www.cpsindia.org/dl/religious/summary3c.pdf
  • http://www.census2011.co.in/religion.php
  • Barrier, N. G. (1981). The census in British India: new perspectives.
  • Kulkarni, P. M., & Alagarajan, M. (2005). Population growth, fertility, and religion in India. Economic and Political weekly, 403-410.

    Suggesting Readings

  • Bhende, A. A., & Kanitkar, T. (1982). Principles of population studies (demography). 2nd rev.
  • Joshi, A. P., Srinivas, M. D., & Bajaj, J. (2003). Religious demography of India. Chennai: Centre for Policy Studies.
  • Census of India. Religious Profile
  • Madan, T. N. (Ed.). (1992). Religion in India. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
  • Tuck, D. R. (1976). Religion in India.