Fudging the
population: The missing 90 million Indian Muslims
By Shakir Lakhani Published: October 26, 2017
Indian muslims
offer Jummat-ul-Vida, the last congregational Friday prayers in the holy month
of Ramadan at Jama Masjid in New Delhi. PHOTO: AFP
There is one thing about Indian Muslims that just can’t be denied
–
most of them are
poor. They don’t earn enough to be able to go on vacations to other
countries. Most of them wish to go for Hajj to Saudi Arabia, and this they are
able to do only when they are very old; having struggled to save over many
years for the journey.
Of course, there are
rich and literate Indian Muslims whom one occasionally meets (mostly in the UAE
and Saudi Arabia), and when you talk to them, they are adamant that the
population of Indian Muslims is much more than that declared by their
government. I have heard this many a times from the few educated Indian Muslims
I have come across during my trips to foreign countries.
However, Hindutva extremists fear that Indian
Muslims are growing exponentially and India will soon become a Muslim-majority
state. This is because, according to the past seven Indian censuses (1951 to
2011), Muslims have grown from 11.66% to 14.23% of
the total Indian population. What they don’t know is that their governments
have tried to keep Hindutva extremists calm by deliberately suppressing the
actual number of Indian Muslims. I mean, if virulent Hindutva extremists are
terrified by just a 2.75% increase in the Muslim population in 60 years, they
will definitely come out on the streets and kill all Muslims in sight if told
that the number of Indian Muslims is actually around 22% of the total
population.
So I have done a lot of
research over the past few months and I can easily prove that fudging has taken
place when recording the number of Muslims in India. I shall try to explain as
simply as possible.
Let us start with the Indian census of 1941, six years before the British left
the sub-continent. According to the Hindutva extremist Jana Sangh’s website, in 1941, the
number of Muslims in undivided India was 94.4 million, half of whom lived in
what later became Pakistan (including Bangladesh). The 47
million Muslims of Pakistan and Bangladesh had grown to about 326 million in 2011, while the 47 million Muslims in
India had grown to only 172.2 million in the same year. This is a big
difference of 153.8 million. However, we have to take into consideration the
migration of Muslims from India to Pakistan and Bangladesh immediately after
Partition.
According to Indian census
data, the population of Indian Muslims grew by 33% between 1951 and 1961. If we
assume that the population grew at the same rate between 1941 and 1951, the
Muslim population in India in 1951 would have been 62.5 million. The exact
number of Muslims who left India to settle in Pakistan and Bangladesh after
Partition is unknown, but is estimated to be between six and eight million. If
we assume that seven million Muslims left India after Partition, and that
another million Muslims died in the Bengal famine of 1943, the Indian Muslim
population in 1951 would have been about 54 million, instead of 35 million as
recorded in the 1951 census.
Again, according to Indian
census data, the Indian Muslim population grew by about 386% in 60 years from
1951 to 2011. If the population had been recorded at 54 million in 1951, it
would and should have been about 262 million today (assuming that it grew by
386%, as per India’s data itself). Since the 2011 census reported the number of
Indian Muslims as 172 million, there are at least 90 million Indian Muslims who
have not been registered by the Indian authorities. This means that in 2011,
there were at least 22 Muslims out of every 100 Indians.
So
the question then arises, why don’t Indian Muslims speak up? One reason could
be that they are too busy struggling desperately to survive, and don’t care
whether they are registered or not, since they know that they will always
remain the underdogs in a country which is rapidly heading towards Hindutva
Talibanisation. Then of course, there is the Indian government itself, which wants to ensure that
India remains a Hindu-majority country. They fear that once a state has
more Muslims than others, that state could demand independence. Already West
Bengal, Assam and Kerala have more than 25 % of Muslim population, while Uttar
Pradesh (UP) and Bihar have a significant Muslim population.
But Hindutva extremists should ask themselves why Muslims are
growing so rapidly, while Hindus are declining in India. Perhaps a high protein
diet (including beef) increases fertility?
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