All religious groups in India show major declines in fertility rates, limiting change in the country’s religious composition over time
In recent years, the size of India’s religious groups and their future growth have been topics of great interest to the Indian public. A new Pew Research Center report shows that India’s religious composition has been fairly stable: Hindus make up 79.8% of India’s population and Muslims account for 14.2%; Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains account for most of the remaining 6%. In the six decades between 1951, when the first post-Partition census was conducted, and 2011, the date of the nation’s most recent census, the share of Muslims in India grew modestly, by about 4 percentage points, while the share of Hindus declined by about 4 points. Other major religious groups held relatively steady, and all groups grew in total number as India’s overall population boomed.
A related blog post covers the report’s main findings.
Categories: Demographics, Hinduism, Hinduism