Demographics of India

India is the second most populated country in the world with nearly a fifth of the world's population. According to the 2019 revision of the World Population Prospects[4][5] population stood at 1,352,642,280.

Quotes

Ancient India

• As far back as the 3rd or 4th millennium B.C. and probably much earlier still, India was in possession of a highly developed civilization with large and populous cities.
  • Kingsley Davis, The Population of India and Pakistan (Princeton : New Jersey, 1951), quoted in K.S. Lal , Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India (1973) p 26 [1]

• So in India some three to seven thousand years ago there were peoples possessing a technology sufficiently advanced to support a dense population.
  • Kingsley Davis, The Population of India and Pakistan (Princeton : New Jersey, 1951), quoted in K.S. Lal , Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India (1973) p 26-27

• So putting the evidence from archaeology, literature, and history together, we reach the conclusion that before the Christian era India had a substantial population, first because of its advanced technology and second because of the fertile environment of the application of this technology.
  • Kingsley Davis, The Population of India and Pakistan (Princeton : New Jersey, 1951), quoted in K.S. Lal , Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India (1973) p 28

• Although no data as such are available for the ancient times, there are statements of Greek writers which depict India as a country of large population. Apollodorus writes that there were between Hydaspes (Jhelum) and Hyphasis (Beas)—approximately the kingdom of Porus—1500 cities, none of which was less than a kos, which, adds Elphinstone, ‘with every allowance for exaggeration, supposes a most flourishing territory‘.
  • K.S. Lal , Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India (1973)

• The population of the country as a whole did not greatly vary between the early Hindu period and the first advent of Muhammadans, and it may be supposed to have lain roughly between the above limit (100—140 million).
  • Pran Nath, Study in the Economic Condition of Ancient India, Royal Asiatic Society (London, 1929), Chapter V. Dr. Pran Nath, quoted in K.S. Lal , Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India (1973) p 28 [2]

Medieval India

• The population was very much greater (on the eve of Turkish invasions) than at the death of Akbar. During centuries of invasions, constant oppression and misrule, the wholesale massacres during the Pathan period, the population of India dwindled...This broad fact emerges from the two estimates (Ferishtah’s and Moreland’s), howsoever erroneous or full of fallacies the individual estimates may be.
  • Jatindra Mohan Datta, “Proportion of Muhammadans in India Through Centuries", Modern Review, Calcutta, January, 1948, p. 32. Quoted in K.S. Lal , Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India (1973) p. 32

• Although there were mass conversions, the country was too vast, the invaders too few, and the volume of immigration too small to change the social complex… India, therefore, never became a Muslim nation, but remained simply a Hindu country in which Muslims were numerous.
  • Kingsley Davis, quoted from K.S. Lal, Indian Muslims, who are they (2012)

• All the people..are idolaters . There is not a single Musalman. Occasionally a Musalman may visit the country... but the natives are all infidels.
  • Early in the seventeenth century, Muhammad Sharif Hanafi, the author of Majalis us salatin and a much travelled man, writing about the southern region of the country, about Carnatic.
  • Muhammad Sharif Hanafi. quoted in K.S. Lal , Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India (1973), 147, Eand D, VII, p. 139.

• Therefore, wherever Muslims made successful inroads, they reduced the Hindu population directly by slaughtering the men in large numbers and taking away the women and children as captives. It indirectly reduced the Hindu populace by rendering the remnant Hindu men unprocreative by depriving them of childbearing female partners. Since those women became the vehicle for breeding Muslim offspring instead, the final result was a reduction of the Hindu populace and a sharp rise in the number of Muslims. The growing Muslim population was to be maintained by the toiling of the vanquished Hindus, subjected to grinding taxes. This is roughly the same protocol, which Prophet Muhammad had applied to the Jews of Banu Qurayza and Khaybar.
  • M.A. Khan, Islamic Jihad, 2008, p.102, quoted in Benkin, Richard L. (2014). A quiet case of ethnic cleansing: The murder of Bangladesh's Hindus. p.101.

• Of the whole population of Hindustan... five parts in six are composed of Hindus...
  • Jahangir, Tarikh-i-Salim Shahi, quoted in Lal, K. S. (2002). Return to roots. New Delhi: Radha.(82)

• In short, while there can be no doubt about the presence of some Muslims in Sind, Gujarat and on the western coast of India, their number, till the end of the tenth century was almost microscopic. In Hindustan proper, east of the river Indus, there were hardly any Musalmans in A.D. 1000.
  • K.S. Lal , Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India (1973), 101

• It has been estimated earlier that there were about four hundred thousand Muslims in India in A.D. 1200. If their numbers became double in sixty to seventy years, they would have been about 3.2 million in 1400. The total population of India in 1400 has been estimated at 170 million. The Muslims would have been about 1.8 per cent of the total population with 50 to 53 Hindus to one Muslim.
  • K.S. Lal , Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India (1973), 126

• We have, therefore, only one choice left to arrive at a tentative percentage of Muslims in A.D. 1600... by 1600 Muslim numbers may not have risen beyond 15 million. In that year the total population of India has been estimated at 140 millions. Muslims would have formed about one-ninth to one-tenth of India’s total population.
  • K.S. Lal , Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India (1973), 143

• Even under Mohammedan rule, India remained largely a pagan land.
  • W. Muir, The Caliphate quoted in Misra, R. G. (2005). Indian resistance to early Muslim invaders up to 1206 A.D. p.138

British Raj

• In the whole of India the proportion of Hindus to the total population has fallen in 30 years from 74 to 69 percent, but this is partly due to the inclusion at each succeeding Census of new areas in which Hindus, if they are found at all, are a minority. Bengal contributes 24 millions or 36 per cent to the total number of Muhammadans in India. They are found chiefly in the Eastern and Northern Districts. In this tract there was a vigorious and highly successful propaganda in the days of the Pathan Kings of Bengal. The inhabitants had never been fully Hinduised, and at the time of the first Muhamadan invasions most of them probably professed a debased form of Buddhism. They were spurned by the high class Hindus as unclean and so listened readily to the preachings of the Mullahs who proclaimed that all men are equal in the sight of Allah, backed as it often was by a varying amount of compulsion. "Another less notable exception is found in Malabar, where the Mappillas are the descendants of local converts, the earliest of whom were made by the Arabs who began to frequent the coast in the 8th century. A certain number of new converts are still being made."
  "It should be added that even in Northern India the Muhammadan population is by no means wholly of foreign origin. Of the 12 million followers of Islam in the Punjab, 10 millions showed by the caste entry (such as Rajputs, Jat, Arain, Gujar, Mochi, Turkhan, and Teli) that they were originally Hindus. The number who described themselves as belonging to foreign races such as Pathan, Biloch, Sheikh, Saiyad and Moghal was less than 2 millions, and some even of these have very little foreign blood in their veins.”
  "The number of Muhammadans has risen during the decade by 6.7% as compared with only 5% in the case of Hindus. There is a small but continuous accession of converts from Hinduism and other religions, but the main reason for the relatively more rapid growth of the followers of the Prophet is that they are more prolific. This may possibly be due to their more nourishing dietery, but the main reason is that their social customs are more favour able to a high birth rate them those of The Hindus. They have fewer marriage restrictions, early marriage is uncommon and widows remarry more freely. "The greater reproductive capacity of the Muhammadans is shown by the fact that the proportion of married females to the total number of females aged 15- 40 exceeds corresponding proportion for Hindus. The result is that Muhammadans have 37 childrens aged 0—5 to every person aged 15—40 while the Hindus have only 33. Since 1881 the number of Muhammadans in the areas then enumerated has risen by 26.4 per cent while the corresponding increase for Hindus is only 15. 1 per cent." Writing on the comparative increase of the two communities in Burmah the census report proceeds in para 173:— "We have seen that in Burmah the Hindu settlers have a tendency to become absorbed in the Buddhist population around them, but this is not so with the Muhammadans. There are scattered communities of Muhammadans who have been settled in Burmah for several generations and still retain their faith unimpaired. When a Muhammadan marries a Burmese wife he brings up his children in his own religion. The offsprings of these mixed marriages are known as Zerbadis.
  • Census of India report’ for 1911, quoted in Hindu Sangathan by Swami Shraddhanan

• In six decades (1881-1941)… at no census have the Muslims failed to improve their percentage and the Hindus failed to lose…” [It is due not only to the] “proportion of Muslim women married, but those who are married also have a higher fertility.”
  • Kingsley Davis, quoted from K.S. Lal, Indian Muslims, who are they (2012)

• The population of India in the present day is over three hundred millions, and every sixth man is a Muslim. Nine hundred years ago there were no Mohammedans east of the Indus...
  • Stanely Lanepoole. Medieval India 1903, 1, quoted from K.S. Lal, Indian Muslims, who are they (2012) [3]

• However, the seed of the debate on the differential population growth rates of the Hindus and Muslims was planted in the undivided India itself. Kingsley Davis, an eminent demographer, was one of the first to raise a debate on the Hindu-Muslim population growth rates in the sub- continent. In his famous book “The Population of India and Pakistan” (1951), he presented before the world the fact that Muslim fertility was higher than the Hindu fertility. For instance, the decline in the proportion of the Hindus from 75.1 per cent to 72.9 per cent in between the censuses of 1881 and 1901 (Davis, 1951) created strong reaction and fear among the Hindus that the Muslims would become the majority population in India in the future.
  Numerous research and review studies have been done on this area since then. But there seems to be no end to this highly debated topic and it still remains a very popular area for research studies among the research scholars and population scientists.
  • Fertility and Health Behaviour Among Hindu and Muslim Women in Assam : Kishor Singh Rajput · 2011 34 .

• It was in February 1912, while standing in the spacious hall of the Arya Samaj in Calcutta, that a Bengali gentleman, dressed in European habits, was introduced as Colonel U. Mukerji of the I. M. S. to me. His dress at first prejudiced me against him, but when he spoke to me of the pamphlet on which he was engaged and worked out mathematically how within the next 420 years the Indo-Aryan race would be wiped off the face of the earth unless steps were taken to save it. I learnt to respect his patriotism and resolved mentally that I would never be led away by mere appearance in judging of the worth of a man in future.
  • Hindu Sangathan by Swami Shraddhanan

• In Scrafton, for example, the Muslim population consists of foreign conquerors as opposed to native Indians, and it is broken down into Arabs, Pathans, Afghans, Mongol Tartars, and Persians, plus slaves. There is no recognition of indigenous Muslims other than "slaves," and the numbers are hugely underrated: The Moors are not "the hundredth part of the natives". Rural Bengal's millions of Muslims are not yet visible.
  • Trautmann, Thomas R. (2008). Aryans and British India. p.67.
  • Scrafton (1761:20) quoted from Trautmann, Thomas R. (2008). Aryans and British India. p.67. Scrafton, Luke.[4] Reflections on the government, &c. of Indostan: and a short sketch of the History of Bengal, from the year 1739 to 1756. Edinburgh: n.p. [5] [6] [7]

Independent India

• Ever since 1951, "the propor­tion of Mus­lims has been gradually but steadily increa­sing every decade by roughly one percentage point"­.
  • Ashish Bose: "1991 Census data: Muslim rate of growth", Indian Expr­ess, 9-9-1995.

• Some commentators have drawn attention to the divergent courses of the fertility rates in the two parts of Bengal. In Indian West Bengal, which is three quarters Hindu, the fertility rate is 2.07, below the re- placement level. The contrast with Muslim Bangladesh, where the transition has been blocked, is striking. A shared language should have led to a convergence through cultural contagion, but a pietistic Islam seems to have frozen changes in patterns of thought in Bangladesh and, as a repercussion, provoked a halt to the transition. But a consideration of educational patterns leads to a rejection of the hypothesis of a direct effect of the religious variable on fertility.
  • Youssef Courbage, Emmanuel Todd - A Convergence of Civilizations The Transformation of Muslim Societies Around the World -Columbia University Press (2011). (English Translation).

• The Pakistani fertility rate is slowly declining: In 1988 it was at 5.56 children, and since then it has lost only 0.9 percent annually. With 4.6 children in 2005, 6 the Pakistani fertility rate, the highest in this group, is far above that of the Arab world, except for Yemen. One cannot fail to be impressed by the alignment of the fertility of the Muslims of northern India with that of Pakistan: In 1998 –1999, it was 4.8 in Uttar Pradesh, 4.9 in Rajasthan, and 4 in Bihar. One might suggest a slight boost from the combined effect of minority status and the fact that Muslims in these states belong to the least privileged strata in social and educational terms. The minority effect must play the leading role, because elsewhere in India, in states where Muslims enjoy higher than average educational status, in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, they also have a higher fertility rate than their Hindu neighbors.
  • Youssef Courbage, Emmanuel Todd - A Convergence of Civilizations_ The Transformation of Muslim Societies Around the World -Columbia University Press (2011). (English Translation).

• The Muslim population of the Indian subcontinent would reach 820 million by 2050 against 1200 million non-Muslims. Equal numbers with and even bypassing of the non-Muslim would be possible by century’s end.
  • Youssef Courbage and historian-anthropologist Emmanuel Todd, Le Rendez-Vous des Civilisations (Le Seuil, Paris)

• Of­ficial census data show that the Hindu per­centage has decli­ned, and the Muslim percentage increas­ed, in every single successive census in British India, free India, Pakistan and Bangl­adesh... Ever since regular census operations were started, the per­centage of Muslims has grown every decade in British India, in­dependent India, Pakis­tan and Banglade­sh... The Muslim percentage has not only incre­ased, but the rate of increase itself has increased... The one general prediction to which the data cer­tainly compel us, is that the Muslim percentage will be increas­ing at an ac­celerating rate for at least another generation; and also beyond that, unless the present generation of young adult Muslims brings it procreati­on rate down to the average Indian level...So, every decade the Muslim per­cent­age in the Subcon­tinent incre­ases by more than 1%, with the rate of incre­ase itself incr­eas­ing. In India, the rate of incre­ase in the Muslim per­centage is considerable, though lower than the subcontinental total, but is rising faster due to the differential in the use of birth control and the incre­asing Muslim immigration... And why stop our conclusion with finding the Hindu position right? The data just surveyed also teach us something about the secularists who have ridiculed and thoroughly blackened the said Hindu position: they are wrong. We have not used any esoteric figures inaccessible to the common man; all these data were at the disposal of the secularists. Yet, some of them insist that the Muslim percentage will remain constant, or that the Muslim incre­ase is proportionate to relative Muslim poverty. The fact deserves to be noted: a whole class of leading intellec­tuals brutal­ly denies easily verifiable facts, i.c. the accelerating increase of the Muslim and the decrease of the Hindu per­centage...
  • Elst, Koenraad. (1997) The Demographic Siege. Also quoted in Lal, K. S. (2002). Return to roots. New Delhi: Radha.(81)

• When you consider the population trends in the Indian Subcontinent, it seems inevitable that Muslims will make up 50% of its population in less than eighty years. Extrapolating the trends within India, it will be less than fifty years until the Muslims are again 24% of the population, the percentage which in the forties was enough to enforce Partition. Add to that the millions- strong illegal Muslim immigration into India, which will only accelerate as population pressure increases in Pakistan and Bangla Desh. So, the majority status of the Hindus is by no means guaranteed. Moreover, the so- called minority is in fact the Indian department of a world-wide movement, from which it effectively gets moral and financial support.
  • Elst K. Ayodhya and After: Issues Before Hindu Society (1991)

• In fact, the migration figures are the best refutation of the "Hindu bully, Muslim victim" myth: as against the constant trickle of Hindu refugees out of Pakistan and Bangladesh, there is no Muslim flight out of India, but on the contrary a massive Muslim influx into India.
  • Elst, K. (2010). The saffron swastika: The notion of "Hindu fascism". p 764ff

• Immigration from Bangladesh is of two types. Firstly there are members of the minority communities fleeing occasional waves of per­secution or the more general sense of being second-class citiz­ens under the Islamic dispensation. Few Hindus would disput­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­e their right to settle down in India. Secondly, there are Mus­lims seek­ing econom­­ic oppor­tunities or sheer living space, which dirt-poor and inten­sely overc­rowded Banglad­esh cannot offer to the ever-larger num­bers of newcomers on the hous­ing and labour market... The BJP argues that refugees from persecution and illegal economic migrants merit a different treat­ment, as is assumed in the arrangements for refugee relief of most countries... Terminology is a part of the problem here, with secularists systematically describing Hindu refugees as "migrants" if not "infiltrators", and Muslim illegal immigrants as "refugees".
  • Elst, Koenraad. (1997) The Demographic Siege, ch 2.

• The Hindu population in East Bengal had declined from 33% in 1901 to 28% in 1941. It fell to 22% by 1951 due to the Partition and the post-Partition exodus, and to 18.5% in 1961. By 1971, it had fallen to 13.5%, partly due to the 1971 massacre by the Pakistani Army, partly due to intermittent waves of emigrati­on. The 1981 figure was 12.1%. In 1989 and 1990, due to "large-scale destru­ction, desecration and damage inflic­ted on Hindu temples and religious institutions", "clandestine migrat­ion­­­ by the Hindus to India went up".
  • Elst, Koenraad. (1997) The Demographic Siege, ch 2

• Contrary to the noise in several quarters, careful analyses of the data show that minorities are not just protected but indeed thriving in India. This is particularly remarkable given the wider context within the South Asian neighbourhood 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... By way of illustration, India is one of the few countries that 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.
  • Jose, A. et al. Share of Religious Minorities – A Cross-Country Analysis (1950-2015). released in May 2024. Co-authored by Shamika Ravi, Abraham Jose, and Apurv Kumar Mishra. [8]

• In Asia, a prominent example of immigration-driven ethnic change is taking place in the north-eastern Indian state of Assam. A Hindu-majority tongue of Indian territory lying north of Muslim Bangladesh, Assam has long been host to large-scale illegal, but peaceful, Bengali immigration. Bengali Muslims grew 30 to 50 percent over the period 1971 to 1991. They now constitute more than 30 percent of Assam’s population and are believed to control the electoral verdict in 60 of Assam’s 126 Assembly constituencies. Numerous battles have taken place over whether large numbers of Muslims have the legal status necessary to add their name to the electoral rolls.
  Muslim growth has been the catalyst for ugly Assamese attacks against unarmed Bengali workers since the 1980s, and an Assamese political movement demands the deportation of illegal immigrants. This conflict is regional, but on the wider Indian level, the growth of the Muslim population through higher fertility and an often exaggerated degree of illegal immigration has been a red flag for Hindu nationalism. The Muslim population’s fertility advantage over Hindus was 10 percent at partition in 1947, but is now 25–35 percent. Only a fraction of this gap can be explained by relative Muslim poverty. Muslims grew from roughly 8 percent of the Indian total in 1947 to 14 percent today, and are projected to rise to 17 percent by 2050. These are not staggering numbers, yet have proven useful tinder for Hindu nationalists and sparked sporadic violent reprisals against Indian Muslims.
  • Kaufmann, E. P. (2011). Shall the religious inherit the Earth?: Demography and politics in the twenty-first century. Chapter 2: Section: Ethnic change and violence

• At first glance, Muslims seem more resistant to family planning than others. Research on Muslim fertility in India, for instance, concludes that Indian Muslims have been more reluctant to adopt contraception and family planning than Hindus or Christians, despite equal access. Muslims tend to have an especially large fertility advantage when they are in the minority. In Europe, India, Thailand, Russia, China and the Philippines, the Muslim fertility advantage is greatest. This is particularly true of zones of conflict like Israel–Palestine. One could argue that minorities in general, not merely Muslim ones, tend to have higher fertility rates than majorities. Yet in Muslim-majority Indonesia and Malaysia, Muslims outbirth most Hindu, Christian and Chinese minorities, while in the Arab world, Muslim fertility is higher than that of the minority Christians and Druze.
  • Kaufmann, E. P. (2011). Shall the religious inherit the Earth?: Demography and politics in the twenty-first century. . Chapter 4, Section: The countryside comes to town

• Any law against population control will be a conspiracy against Muslims... The rise in the country’s population is due to Dalits and tribals and not because of Muslims.
  • SP leader Iqbal Mehmood, in June 2021. Jun 27, 2021 UP law panel examining feasibility of population control legislation