Oct 26, 2024, 05:41 PM IST

This is fastest growing religion in India, not Hinduism it is...

Varnika Srivastava

The share of Muslims in India’s population has grown by over 43 percent since 1950, according to a new working paper by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Economic Advisory Council (EAC).

The paper, which examines global demographic trends from 1950 to 2015 using data from the Association of Religion Data Archive (ARDA), shows that India’s Muslim population rose from 9.84 percent in 1950 to 14.09 percent in 2015, a 43.15 percent increase.

Meanwhile, the Hindu share declined by 7.82 percent, from 84.68 percent to 78.06 percent.

The Christian population saw a slight rise, from 2.24 percent to 2.36 percent, and Sikhs increased from 1.74 percent to 1.85 percent.

 The Buddhist population also grew significantly, from 0.05 percent to 0.81 percent, though the report does not specify this nearly 1,600 percent increase.

In India, younger Muslim women (ages 10–19) show increasing support for birth control compared to older women (ages 20–30), although their knowledge about it is lower. Muslim women tend to marry earlier than women of other religions

A 2016 study found that urban Muslim women's contraceptive use in northern India was driven more by socioeconomic factors than by religious beliefs. 

Muslims make up 14.2% of India’s population, with around 172 million adherents according to the 2011 census, and India held the second or third largest Muslim population globally as of 2010.