NEW DELHI: Unlike in India, where the majority’s share has gone down, Muslim majority countries in the neighbourhood have witnessed an increase in share.
Amidst years of unfounded criticism, attacks and concerns expressed by Western organisations on the state of minorities in India and the ongoing political slugfest and debate over minority rights, researchers with the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister have found that contrary to “popular” perception, the share of the majority Hindu population in India decreased by 7.82% between 1950 and 2015 (from 84.68% to 78.06%), while the share of Muslim population witnessed a 43.15% increase, moving from 9.84% in 1950 to 14.09% in 2015.
Similarly, the number of followers of other minority religions in India too, just like that of Islam, witnessed a rising curve in the 65 years’ time period that was covered in the study.
While the share of Christian population rose from 2.24% to 2.36%—an increase of 5.38% between 1950 and 2015, the share of Sikh population increased from 1.24% in 1950 to 1.85% in 2015—a 6.58% rise in their share. Even the share of the Buddhist population witnessed a noticeable increase from 0.05% in 1950 to 0.81%.
However, the share of Jains decreased from 0.45% in 1950 to 0.36% in 2015. A trend that was also observed in the case of the Parsi population, which witnessed a stark 85% decline, reducing from 0.03% share in 1950 to 0.004% in 2015.
The said study, “Share of Religious Minorities A Cross-Country Analysis”, done by members of the EAC, Shamika Ravi, Apurv Kumar Mishra and Abraham Jose, is likely to bust the narrative that was for long being spread including by representatives of global bodies like the United Nations, claiming that India was not a conducive place for minority population to thrive.
“Contrary to the noise in several quarters, careful analysis of the data shows that minorities are not just protected but indeed thriving in India. This is particularly remarkable given the wider context within the South Asian neighborhood where the share of the majority religious denomination has increased and minority populations have shrunk alarmingly across countries like Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Afghanistan. India’s performance suggests that there is a conducive environment to foster diversity in the society. It is not possible to promote better life outcomes for the disadvantaged sections of society without providing a nurturing environment and societal support through a bottom-up approach. By way of illustration, India is one of the few countries which has a legal definition of minorities and provides constitutionally protected rights for them. The outcomes of these progressive policies and inclusive institutions are reflected in the growing number of minority populations within India,” the 65-page report has stated while backing their assertions with hard numbers.
Apurv Kumar Mishra, who co-authored the report, while speaking to The Sunday Guardian said that the report brings out a broader picture of the policies that have been executed in the world and in India that have impacted, in India at least, the minorities in a positive manner.
“The empirical results in this study make the limited but critical point that religious demographics have experienced substantial changes in most societies around the world between 1950 and 2015, and these changes are an important indicator of the overall policy environment affecting minorities within the countries,” Mishra said.
The Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India is a non-constitutional, non-permanent and independent body constituted to give economic advice to the Government of India, specifically the Prime Minister and has been in existence for a long time, aiding the PM and his ministers in taking prudent decisions.
The paper by Ravi, Mishra and Jose provided a detailed cross-country descriptive analysis of the status of minorities in 167 countries and they found that in these 65 years, the share of the majority religious denomination has gone down by approximately 22%, leading to a more heterogeneous world.
Of the 40 countries that experienced the biggest religious changes, more than half are in Africa. Animism (referred to the belief that objects, places, and creatures possess a distinct spiritual essence which is mostly followed by indigenous people) was the majority religious denomination in 24 countries in 1950. By 2015, it was no longer the majority in any of these countries.
Similarly, of the 94 countries that reported being Christian majority in 1950, 77 saw a decrease in the share of the majority religious denomination.
In contrast, in the same period, 25 out of the 38 countries that reported being Muslim majority, saw an increase in the share of the majority religious denomination.
Significantly, changes have also taken place in the 38 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a group of democracies and market economies that are considered as high-income/developed countries, account for three-fifths of global GDP, three-quarters of international trade, over 90% of global official development assistance, half of the world’s energy consumption and 18% of the world’s population.
Of the 35 OECD countries that were analysed by the trio, all except two (Turkey and Japan), were Christian majority in 1950. The study found that 33 out of 35 countries have witnessed a decrease in the share of the majority religious denomination, of which 30 have witnessed a significant decline.
According to them, this is in consonance with the global trends of declining religious majority, which is also being witnessed in India where the share of the majority religious denomination (Hinduism) has decreased.
“This is particularly remarkable given the wider context within the South Asian neighborhood where the share of the majority religious denomination has increased and minority populations have shrunk alarmingly across countries like Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Afghanistan. It is not surprising, therefore, that minority populations from across the neighborhood come to India during times of duress,” the study stated.
In India’s neighbourhood, all the Muslim majority countries witnessed an increase in the share of the majority religious denomination except Maldives where the share of the majority group (Shafi’i Sunnis) declined by 1.47%. In Bangladesh, there was an 18% increase in the share of the majority religious group (Muslim), which is the largest such increase in the Indian subcontinent. Pakistan witnessed an increase of 3.75% in the share of the majority religious denomination (Hanafi Muslim) and a 10% increase in the share of total Muslim population despite the creation of Bangladesh in 1971.
In contrast, among non-Muslim majority countries, Myanmar, India and Nepal saw a decline in the share of the majority religious denomination. Myanmar witnessed the steepest decline of the majority religious group in the region with the share of Theravada Buddhist population declining by 10%
Of the three major religions in Nepal, the share of the majority Hindu population declined by 4%, the share of Buddhist population declined by 3%, while the Muslim population increased by 2%.
Only Sri Lanka and Bhutan among non-Muslim majority countries have witnessed an increase in the share of the majority religious denomination between 1950 and 2015. In Sri Lanka, the share of the majority Theravada Buddhist population increased by 5%, while the share of Hindu population (the next largest religious group) declined by 5%. In Bhutan, the majority Tibetan Buddhist population increased by almost 18%, while the Hindu population declined from 23% to 11% in the same period.
While the study has not focused on the causes of the change but focused on the share of the minority population as a cumulative outcome measure of their well-being, it is clear that religious conversion from Animism to Islam and Christianity happened at a significant level in these 65-year-time period.
Of the 20 countries that saw the maximum increase in the share of the majority religious group, all of them were Christianity or Islam based. On the other hand, of the 20 countries that saw the maximum decline in the share of the majority religious group, only 3 of them had Christianity or Islam based denominations as the majority religious group. Animism was the majority religion in 16 of these countries.
There are 16 different subcategories of Christianity that are a majority in at least one country. Similarly, there are eight subcategories of Islam and three denominations of Buddhism that constitute the majority population in at least one country.
The researchers took 1950 as the starting year for their study, while using the data compiled by Religious Characteristics of States Dataset (RCS-Dem) published by Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA), which has more extensive and consistent data points on religious demographics than other available sources, for two major reasons.
“Firstly, this was around the time that the international human rights framework under the aegis of the newly created United Nations began to take shape with minority rights and state responsibility for protection of minorities being mainstreamed in international law.
Secondly, the seventy years period after World War II is considered a golden epoch in human history with the number of democratic countries increasing from 28% in 1950 to 63% in 2000. Finally, as an ancillary point, the epoch starting with the 1950s is also the period from which census data collection became more scientific, timely and of high quality. For example, India conducted its first census post independence in 1951 after setting up specialized and permanent institutions like the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, instead of the ad-hoc arrangements that used to be undertaken for earlier exercises.”
The said data was published by ARDA in the year 2019. The researchers took 2015 as the endline year because the latest version of RCS-Dem had data till 2015.
As per the hypothesis of the researchers, the change in the proportion of the minority population as a share of total population is a good proxy for the status of minorities in a country over time.
“A society which provides a congenial environment for the flourishing of minorities is more likely to witness an increase or stabilization in their numbers over a period of three generations. Conversely, a society which creates a hostile environment for minorities and/or denies them access to public goods and services is more likely to witness a decrease in their share of the overall total population.”
“The nature and extent of change in the share of the minority population in a country is therefore a strong indicator of their relative wellbeing within a country.”
The Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA) works on democratizing access to the best data on religion. It was founded as the American Religion Data Archive in 1997 and the initial archive was targeted at researchers interested in American religion It now includes American and international collections submitted by the religion scholars and research centers in the world. The ARDA is supported by multiple trusts, endowments and universities and is based in the IU School of Liberal Arts at Indiana University-Purdue public university, Indianapolis, United States.