Why BJP leaders’ comments on a survey of India’s Muslim population are misleading

On Thursday, several news media reported on one study released by the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council on changes in the population share of religious minorities in 167 countries between 1950 and 2015.

The headline of most publications was that the share of the Muslim population in India had risen from 9.84% in 1950 to 14.09% in 2015 – that is, 43.15%. On the other hand, the share of India’s Hindu population fell from 84.68% to 78.06% – i.e. 7.82% – during the period, the study said.

Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar claimed that the “demography of India is being changed” due to the increase in the population of a “particular community”. He also linked the study to the Bharatiya Janata Party‘s claim that Congress wanted to introduce reservations in education and government jobs based on religion.

Chandrasekhar’s first claim is misleading, while the second is plainly false. The study’s findings on the change in religious population share are not new and follow a trend well documented in the decennial census.

Census data shows that the religious composition of the country’s population has undergone only modest changes since 1951. In fact, the ten-year growth rate for Muslims has declined over the past thirty years.

Back in 2015, Shoaib Daniyal had written about the flaws in the arguments of the Hindutva Party leaders. In an article headlined: “Five graphs that puncture the pretense of Muslim population growth,” he showed how the rhetoric about demographics is belied by data. Read it here.

The second claim that Congress plans to set quotas based on religion is true debunked by several organizations including Role. The Congress manifesto makes no such promise.

BJP MP Sudhanshu Trivedi made similar claims, while Amit Malviya, the leader of the party’s social media cell, claimed that the rise in Muslim proportion was due to “decades of Congress rule”.

The fact that BJP leaders are using a well-known fact about India’s demographics to make misleading claims during the general election raises questions about the timing of the survey’s release. Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Tejashwi Yadav asked how the survey could have determined the country’s population based on religion when the national census, scheduled for 2021, had not yet begun.

India’s religious composition has remained largely unchanged

The introduction to the study, co-authored by Shamika Ravi, member of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, and two others, says it was conducted to analyze shifting demographic trends that are “exacerbating economic inequality within and between countries, straining governance, and fueling friction between states and people.”

The research uses data from a 2017 research paper on religious demography of different countries, written by Davis Brown, a researcher at Baylor University in Texas in the United States, and Patrick James, professor of international relations at the University of Southern California.

In a chapter on the change in religious demography in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation countries, the Prime Minister’s Advisory Council study notes the increase in Muslim population and decrease in Hindu population in India.

The findings reveal nothing new. They also do not indicate that India’s demography is changing significantly, as Chandrasekhar suggested.

In 2021, a Pew Research Center analysis of the census conducted in India found that Muslims made up 9.8% of India’s population in 1951, while in 2011 this share was 14.2%. During the corresponding period, the proportion of Hindus fell from 84.1% to 79.8%.

Publicly available census data is consistent with the new study’s findings.

In addition, the Prime Minister’s Advisory Council study noted that “globally, the share of the majority religious group has fallen by approximately 22 percent.” The 7.82% decline in India’s Hindu population is thus significantly lower than the global average, according to the study.

Immigration and conversion bogey

On Thursday, Chandrasekhar also raised questions about the reasons for the rising proportion of Muslim population in India. “How much of this growth is caused by illegal immigration and conversion?” he asked.

The study itself does not provide a definitive answer to the minister’s question, even though factors such as “migration, conversion, differences in fertility rates and variation in territorial boundaries” are cited as reasons for changes in the religious composition of a population.

However, it adds: “We abstract from the causes of this change and focus instead on the share of the minority population as a cumulative outcome measure of their well-being.”

The Pew Research Center study found that fertility rates were the highest main cause of population change in India. The fertility rate among Muslims is still the highest in India. But the National Family Health Survey-5, published in 2022, found that fertility rate among Muslims has experienced the sharpest decline among all religious communities over the past twenty years.

The Population Foundation of India noted on Thursday that “the ten-year growth rate for Muslims had fallen from 32.9% in 1981-1991 to 24.6% in 2001-2011. This decline is more pronounced than that of Hindus, whose growth fell from 22.7% to 16.8% over the same period.”

In terms of religious conversion, the Pew Research Center study found that 98% of Indian adults identified with the religion they were raised in, demonstrating the lack of impact of conversions on the religious makeup.

Meanwhile, more than 99% of people living in India were also born in India, the survey found. These data showed that migration also had little impact.

False claim about religion-based quotas

Chandrasekhar and Trivedi used the study’s findings to repeat the false claim that Congress would provide reservations on the basis of religion if voted to power. This claim has been made repeatedly by BJP leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, at various election rallies.

“How much of this growth (in the Muslim population) is caused by illegal immigration and conversion?” Chandrasekhar asked on Thursday. “What is the impact of this increase on the rights of other minority communities? There is a huge attempt by some parties and Congress to amend the Constitution and introduce religion-based reservation.”

This claim is baseless as the Congress manifesto does not talk about religion-based reservations nor has any of the leaders made any such announcements.