Did Hindu population decline in India? What we know, and what we don't

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has claimed that centuries of foreign invasions and colonial rule in India not only exploited resources and people but also led to the decline in the Hindu population. While addressing a state-level workshop on 'Atmanirbhar Bharat-Swadeshi Sankalp' in Lucknow on September 23, Yogi Adityanath claimed that the Hindu population in India was 60 crore by the year 1100. But when the country gained independence in 1947, the population of Hindus reduced and remained around 30 crore.

"By the year 1100, the Hindu population in India was 60 crore. And when the country gained independence in 1947, the Hindu population was only 30 crore. Tell me, should our population have increased or decreased in these 800-900 years?" CM Yogi said while addressing the gathering, news agency ANI reported.

Is the claim of Yogi Adityanath really true?

As we know, the census in India was formally initiated in 1871 under British rule, with the first official nationwide census conducted in 1951 after India's independence. Before this, there were no standardised or official processes to determine the total population or the Hindu population of India.

During the 12th century, India was predominantly a Hindu-dominated region, divided into several kingdoms or dynasties ruled by different monarchs. Unlike the British-era system that began in 1871, these rulers did not conduct structured population surveys. As a result, there is no credible or formal data to suggest that the Hindu population was around 60 crore by the year 1100.

It was only in 1951, through the first post-independence census, that accurate figures were recorded of the pan-India population. This census reported India’s Hindu population at approximately 30.5 crore, marking a significant rise from the 1941 count, which was around 25.53 crore.

Decline of Hindu's population between 1950 and 2015

A new Pew Research Centre report indicated that the religious composition of India has been fairly stable since the 1947 partition. The total population grew to 1.2 billion in the 2011 census from 361 million in the 1951 census.

After Independence, the total population was around 361 million in the 1951 census, and by the 2011 census, the total population was recorded as 1.2 billion. Amid this time frame, the number of Hindus grew to 966 million (from 304 million in 1951), Muslims to 172 million (from 35 million), Christians to 28 million (from 8 million), Sikhs to 20.8 million (from 6.8 million), Buddhists to 8.4 million (from 2.7 million) and Jains to 4.5 million (from 1.7 million). India’s Parsis, a small minority, are unusual as their population shrank by almost half, to 60,000 in 2011.

However, between 1951 and 2011, India witnessed a modest demographic shift, where the share of Muslims grew by about 4 percentage points, while the share of Hindus fell by a similar margin. Meanwhile, the proportion of other religions remained largely unchanged. But surprisingly, the growth of Muslims is somewhat faster than other groups, as they tend to have high fertility.

Fresh data released by the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM) in 2024 highlighted similar patterns over a longer timeline. It revealed that between 1950 and 2015, the share of Hindus in the population declined by 7.82 per cent, whereas the Muslim share rose by 43.15 per cent. The report noted that this mirrors a global trend in which the majority of communities have experienced a steady decline in their share of the population.