NEW DELHI, 10 September 2004 — India’s census officials yesterday released “adjusted figures” that show the population growth rate of the Muslims has dipped and not risen as shown earlier. The earlier figures had raised concern among the Hindu extremist parties with the BJP planning a nationwide campaign to highlight the fall of population rate among Hindus.
According to the latest figures, the growth rate of the Muslim population fell from 32.9 percent between 1981 and 1991 to 29.3 percent over decade ending 2001. Figures for the Muslim population given out earlier in the week showed that the community’s numbers had fallen over the same period.
Census registrar general J. K. Banthia told the Indian Express newspaper that the discrepancy was because the figures released earlier in the week did not take into account the fact that Muslim-majority Kashmir state was not included in the 1991 census.
A door-to-door survey of Muslim households was conducted in Kashmir in the latest 2001 census. “What we gave out was without any adjustments... we did say that Kashmir and Assam had been excluded,” he said.
The latest adjusted figures have made an estimate of the Muslim population in Kashmir in 1991 and then calculated the growth of the entire community in India over the decade until 2001.
“The Muslim population is not ballooning at all. They have a higher growth rate than Hindus, but it is falling, not increasing,” Deputy Registrar General of Census Commission R.K. Mitra said yesterday.
India’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had reacted sharply to the previous census data that showed the minority Muslim community was growing faster than the majority Hindu population.
It had expressed grave concern that “certain communities” were ignoring the problem of runaway population growth and causing an “alarming demographic imbalance”.
