A Chennai-based social science institute, the Centre for Policy Studies (CFPS), has come up with a study that says the ‘‘Indian Religionists’’ (Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists) may become a minority in the Indian Union in 50 years. The study is funded by the Government-run Indian Council of Social Science Research and Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani has written the foreword.Advani calls the recently released book, Religious Demography of India, essential to maintain the integrity of our borders and ensure peace and harmony. Advani writes: ‘‘.the growth and decline of population play a crucial role in the rise and fall of nations.That is why active and alert societies.keep a keen eye on the changing demographic trends within themselves.’’ WHAT EXPERTS SAY • The 1991 Census data listed 82 per cent Hindus and 13 per cent Muslims, Dr Ashish Bose, Professor Emeritus at the Institute of Economic Growth, notes, adding: ‘‘Since Independence we are adding less than one percentage point to the Muslim proportion. So it will take another 380 years for the Muslims to be a majority. That is if the current trend persists.’’ • The author of Differentials in the Population Growth of Hindus and Muslims, P.M. Kulkarni, admits the rise in Muslims to the total population is higher than the Hindus but adds: ‘‘The impact on the share of the total population is very negligible—half a percentage point in a decade. In 40 years, the rise is from 10.4 to 12.6 per cent.’’ He adds: ‘‘Rigorous and continuous observations and analyses of the changing demography of different religious groups is.of importance in maintaining the integrity of our borders.’’None of the authors is a trained demographer and the centre’s earlier published works include Food for All on ‘‘the Indian discipline of growing and sharing food’’ and Timeless India: Resurgent India on the re-emergence of the ‘‘Hindu Rashtra’’.The three author-researchers of the study—metallurgist A.P. Joshi, who was earlier with the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore; physicist M.D. Srinivas, who is with the University of Madras; and CFPS Director and a physicist from IIT, Powaii, Dr J.K. Bajaj — say their conclusions are based on an analysis of Census data from 1901 to 1991.Bajaj says the fact that the authors are not trained demographers does not matter. ‘‘Physicists can get into anything. We did some rigorous research for five years.’’ The study says its calculations show ‘‘a decline of 11 percentage points in the share of the majority community in a geographical and civilisational region like India’’. This, it adds on a grave note, ‘‘is an extraordinary occurrence in the course of about a century’’.The authors then go on to show that ‘‘the percentage of Indian Religionists is smoothly moving down from about 77 per cent in 1901 to about 68 per cent in 1991, while the curve for Other Religionists (Muslim and Christians) correspondingly keeps moving up.’’ The two ‘‘intersect at 50 per cent mark just before 2061’’. A detailed statewise analysis of the Census data follows.The authors even turn around the UN projections for the population trends in the subcontinent, including Bangladesh and Pakistan, to show that the Indian Religionists will be reduced to 50 per cent even before their own calculations — by 2050. While appreciating the CFPS’s efforts to compile religious profiles, Dr Ashish Bose, Professor Emeritus at the Institute of Economic Growth and one of India’s foremost demographers, calls their mathematical projections faulty and a case of statistical jugglery. Asserting that there was no chance of Muslims becoming a majority for the next 400 years, if at all, he asks why the centre clubbed disparate groups like the Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and the tribals under one head.Demographer P.M. Kulkarni questions the CFPS’s decision to take the Indian Union, Pakistan and Bangladesh as a whole to make the projection.
