Demography Watch: Mumbai, Thane Witness High Growth In Muslim Population; Share Of Christians Declines In Goa

The Centre For Policy Studies (CPS) has published its latest, twenty-seventh note on the Religion Data Census of 2011. This note shows a sharp rise in the population share of Muslims in several parts of Maharashtra and Goa, and the continuing decline in the share of Christians in both states.

Maharashtra

The share of Muslims in the state of Maharashtra has increased by four percentage points since 1961, reaching 11.5 percent in 2011. This is the third largest— after Kerala and Karnataka— of all states to the south and west of the Gangetic plains. The growth has been particularly significant in the last two decades.

Seventy-three percent of the state’s Muslim population is urban. This is similar to the composition of Karnataka where three-fourths of the total Muslim population is urban.

Muslims form a majority (population greater than 50 percent) in 20 of the 348 towns in the State and have a share of between 40 and 50 percent in another 21. Almost all of these 41 towns have witnessed a very high growth in the share of Muslims in the recent decades.

Take the case of Malegaon, for instance. The share of Muslims has gone up from 67.4 percent in 1981 to 79.0 percent in 2011.

In Bhiwandi, it has risen from 50.7 to 56.0 percent in the course of the last decade alone, a jump of more than five percent.

In Greater Mumbai, their share has increased from less than 13 percent in 1961 to nearly 21 percent now.

In Thane, there has been an even more spectacular rise from 4.3 percent in 1951 to 12.3 percent in 2011.

During the same period, their share has risen from 10.5 to 16.6 percent in Akola (including Washim) and from 9.6 to 14.6 percent in Amravati.

In Nashik, the rise is from 6.3 to 11.4 percent and, in the Aurangabad-Jalna-Prabhani-Hingoli part of Marathwada, their share has gone up from 12.7 to 17.2 percent.

The share of Buddhists has been slowly declining since independence. Millions of lower caste Hindus had converted to Buddhism at the time of Independence, heeding the call by Dr B.R. Ambedkar. At the time, the number of Buddhists in Maharashtra had increased from less than 25 lakh to around 2.8 crore. Currently, their population has come down to 65 lakh.

Goa

Goa’s total population is 14.58 lakh. Of these, 66 percent are Hindus, 25 percent Christians and more than eight percent are Muslims. In North Goa, 76 percent of the populace is Hindu, 16.4 percent Christians and seven percent Muslim while there are 53.3 percent Hindus, 36.2 percent Christians and 10 percent Muslims in South Goa.

One peculiar phenomenon to note here is that the share of Indian religionists (Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains, etc) has actually seen an accretion in Goa. Their share was only 44 percent in 1910. It has reached 66.6 percent now.

While their share saw a jump of 16 percent from 1910 to 1961, it has only increased by four percent since then.

From 1961 onwards, the presence of Muslims has grown rapidly. They have gained 6.5 percentage points in their share in the five decades between 1961 and 2011. On the other hand, the share of Christians has declined from 55 percent in 1900 to 25 percent now.

Here’s what the composition of Muslims and Christians looks like in the state, according to the latest census:

Read the full note and analysis here.