Muslim Population Explotion

Truth About Muslim
Population Explosion
In India
Evidence From Census 2011
S. R. SWAROOP
For the Devas
ii
Contents
Preface v
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Religion in the Indian Subcontinent . . . . 3
1.2 Partition-1947 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.3 India since independence . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.4 Numbers can hide reality . . . . . . . . . . 12
2 The Explosion 19
2.1 India level trends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.2 The red zone states . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
2.3 The Orange zone states . . . . . . . . . . . 52
2.4 Other States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
2.5 The two security nightmares . . . . . . . . 77
2.5.1 Chicken Neck . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
2.5.2 The Mughal corridor . . . . . . . . 80
2.6 The Christians in the North East . . . . . 82
3 Future projections 87
3.1 Muslim fertility advantage . . . . . . . . . 88
3.2 Projection: Methodology . . . . . . . . . . 94
3.3 Exponential growth . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
3.4 Overall trends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
3.5 How does explosion work? . . . . . . . . . 111
3.6 The Double Whammy . . . . . . . . . . . 115
iii
iv CONTENTS
3.7 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
4 TFR Politics 125

4.1 Sterilization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
4.2 Female Foeticide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
4.3 Infant Mortality Rate . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
4.4 Other Myths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
4.5 Exodus Experts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
5 Conclusion 155
5.1 Statistical Gymnastics . . . . . . . . . . . 157
5.2 Under or Over-breeding . . . . . . . . . . 166
5.3 Optimal Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
5.4 The Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
6 References 177
Preface
Democracy is all about numbers, so if you have lost num-

bers, you have lost the game. Anyone with basic under-
standing of the democratic process and demography will
understand the very important role demography plays in
the election of democratic governments. Demography is
important on its own but it is due to "one person, one
vote" which makes demography even more important in
a modern democratic society. And it should specially be
remembered by those who have already seen a partition
into two countries on religious lines.
Hindu population as a percentage of total Indian pop-
ulation and Hindu fertility vis-a-vis Muslims has been
falling gradually ever since independence but specially
after the announcement of family planning programs by
the central and various state governments in the 1990s.
This information is not new. But the extent to which
it has fallen is an entirely different debate. The Census
of 2011 showed that population of Dharmic religions has
fallen from 87.2% in 1951 to 83.5% in 2011 (with Hindu
population at 79.8% i.e. below 80%) while the Muslim
population has risen from 10.4% in 1951 to 14.2% in 2011.
On paper 14.2% looks like a small number but digging
deeper into population data will reveal why this should
send alarm bells ringing for the future of India.
The Congress led UPA government (perhaps deliber-
v
vi PREFACE
ately) did not release the religious data of 2011 census.

Many people believed that the central government did
not release the census data so as to not alarm the Hin-
dus as their percentage had fallen for the first time below
80% in India which could have helped BJP in consolidat-
ing the Hindu vote. But even when BJP came to power
in 2014 with an overwhelming majority, thanks to the
Hindu vote consolidation, they did not release the census
data on religious demographics until much later.
And as expected, the census data confirmed the fears
of many pragmatists as the Hindu population fell below
80% in the Census 2011. In fact, as we will show during
the course of this book, the situation on the ground is
much worse than what most people in India are spoon-
fed to believe. While it is true that the total population
of Hindus in India has fallen to 79.8% in 2011, but this
only tells part of the story.
The real story is about the population of children in
India where Hindus are much worse off, something that
is cleverly masked by the aggregate population number.
The aggregate statistics does not tell that Muslims were
already 23% in the 0-4 age group in the urban areas in
2011, neither does it tell that they were just 14% in 50-54
age group, thus implying a huge change in demography.
So Muslims population had an effective gain of 9% in
a span of two generations separated by 50 years in the
urban areas. In any country where partition happened
on religious lines such information would be a point of
everyday discussion, but it is almost censored in India.
Why is Demography important?

The very fact that this question of demography is being
asked in this day and age in India points to the absolute
vii
low to which Indian strategic thought and real-political

awareness has fallen to. India is not a mono-religious,
mono-cultural nation state to find this question stupid.
India has already witnessed one partition along the re-
ligious lines in 1947, thanks to the religious sentiments
of the then Muslims and their religious demography pro-
vided an overwhelming support for the demand of par-
tition. At the time of partition, the population of un-
divided India was 74% Hindu and 26% Muslim in the
1941 census. It is important to highlight here that the
Muslim League, the spearheading Muslim party behind
partition, won majority of the seats reserved for Muslims
in the elections of 1946, i.e. right before the partition.
Now, seven decades after partition, the demography
of divided India is fast approaching the pre-partition de-
mographic levels. So the possibility of a second partition,
or a violent movement and long civil war prior to another
partition is very much on the cards if the present trends
continue where the so called secular parties keep playing
the British role of divide and rule and appeasement (un-
der the name of secularism) and BJP, the Hindu party of
today, keep playing the role of the then Congress under
Gandhi (in the name of true equality and true secular-
ism).
One might ask the question why is this past and his-
tory so important? Haven’t we already left behind the
partition memories when India chose to become a multi-
cultural secular nation, thus settling this debate in 1947
itself? The answer to this question is the fact that this
kind of demographic change (as seen in India) and the
resultant history is neither new nor one-off historical in-
cident. It has occurred all over the world and many ex-
amples abound. A few examples are sufficient to clear
the cob-webs in the minds of naive Hindus who have not
put much thought into the demographic question- Que-
viii PREFACE
bec in Canada, Christian country of Lebanon vs Islamist

Lebanon of today and finally not to forget the Bengal
and Punjab of non-partitioned India.
Let’s start with Quebec, which has nothing to do with
Islam but everything to do with demographics. It is a
province in Canada, which was originally a French colo-
nial area, colonized by the French which they lost to the
British in the Seven Years War. Even though it came
under the British after the Seven years war, Quebec still
had a large minority of French citizens who held on to
their language and religion (largely Roman Catholic) as
against the majority British (Anglican Church or Protes-
tants).
Up until the 1960s the Quebecois Catholics had a
large fertility gap with the rest of Canada.1 This in turn
slowly increased the influence of Francophone Catholics
in the British polity and more and more support for Que-
becois nationalism grew with the increase in their popula-
tion. This issue was settled only when the Canadian gov-
ernment recognized Quebec as a separate nation within
a united Canada (by granting various concessions). Of
course, it is a simplistic analysis of Quebecois nationalism
but one cannot disregard the demographic angle behind
it.
So the French Catholics managed to carve out a state
within a state essentially within Canada from a minor-
ity which was only 1/10th the size of the rest of Canada
(Anglo-Saxon Protestant) when they were first incorpo-
rated in Canada as per the Seven Years War. Of course,
this kind of semi-peaceful resolution in India is highly
unlikely, as unlike Indian Muslims, French Catholics in
Canada are largely civilized now and did not engage in
violent conversion of the Anglo Saxon protestants within
1
Catherine Krull, Fertility Change in Quebec:1931-1961
ix
their domain, like how the Muslims converted the re-

maining Hindus in the post independence Pakistan and
Bangladesh.
Lebanon, another example, is a country in the middle-
east which was formerly under the Ottoman empire. It
was once touted as the most peaceful middle eastern
country and highlighted in the liberal media as the multi-
cultural paradise. Lebanon was often paraded as a proof
of the secular Islamic society, up until the internet came
and blew that propaganda to pieces and showed Lebanon
for the Islamist state that it is today. Lebanon conducted
its last census under the French rule in 1932 and has since
then shied away from the idea. The current power shar-
ing mechanism between the three religious groups will be
unable to survive the information in new census and can
throw the nation once again into civil war.
What many do not know is that, even in the 18th
century, Lebanon had a Christian majority. The Chris-
tians had a lower TFR on average vis-a-vis the Muslims
and over time, the Muslim minority started changing
the demography of the country, to the point that today,
Lebanon is a Muslim majority country and Christians
are now under the mercy of the Muslim ballots. Since
the Shias and the Sunnis each form roughly half of the
total Muslim population in Lebanon and generally hate
each other more than they hate the Christians, the latter
can still bide their time in Lebanon until their demog-
raphy is completely eroded. But for how long, no one
knows.
Another example is the United Punjab province in
India which had Hindu/Sikh (Dharmic) majority up un-
til the 1920s while united Bengal had Hindu majority
up until the 1850s. This is something many Hindus do
not know. The fact that demography in these provinces
changed to Muslim majority by the time Jinnah arrived
x PREFACE
was one of the most important reasons for the call for a
separate country for Muslims in pre-independence India.
For examples from present, one can look within the
Hindu majority India today. The places where Hindus
are a minority deserve a special mention as they have be-
come hostile to the native Dharmic population, whether
it is Kashmir, Nagaland or Mizoram. Kashmir in particu-
lar saw Kashmiri Pandits being driven out of their homes
by their own neighbours, the very same Muslim neigh-
bours they had played with while growing up. While
Jammu and Ladakh are Hindu and Buddhist majority
respectively and are an integral part of India today and
hardly pose a threat to India, Kashmir being Muslim
majority is a place where no Hindu, not even the native
Kashmiri Pandits could think of going back.
On the other side of the border, Pakistan although
founded on the principle of religion also practised secu-
larism (at least legally for some time post independence),
which many in the left liberal circles conveniently for-
get. When Jinnah created Pakistan, he promised safety
for the Hindus who stayed back, partially backed by the
presence of British legal code which was adopted by the
new nation. Of course, today it is a completely different
story as the Hindus of Pakistan have been wiped out of
existence in the former east Pakistan/Bangladesh, where
Hindu population has fallen from 20% even in 1971 to
8% today. 2
Also we should not forget to reiterate here that Mus-
lims in the current Indian Union overwhelmingly voted
for Pakistan during the 1946 general elections. So, any
claim about their adherence to ’secularism’ is a lie which
2
States like Nagaland and Mizoram which have a Christian ma-
jority today are no different as they openly pursue Christian agenda
with no pretense of secularism whatsoever, now that the demogra-
phy has been completely won by the Christians.
xi
will be shattered the moment any party on the lines of

Muslim League appears on the horizon (of course riding
on the back of Muslim demography).
History of course has a very unfortunate problem of
repeating itself, specially given how little Islam has changed
from its foundations in the 7th century, which is why
learning from history is very important for the survival
of any country or civilization under its attack. Can the
liberals or the left even pretend that secularism is possi-
ble or that Hindus will have any rights under a Muslim
majority India? Is there any strong reason to believe that
the Hindus in India will not suffer the same fate as the
former Hindus in Pakistan or Bangladesh?
These very few examples are sufficient to drill home
the message of importance of demography, but the leftist
intelligentsia is quick to dismiss any concern whatsoever
about the changing demographics of India. These excuses
are designed depending on the information set possessed
by the debater.
The first excuse is the complete denial of the extent of
demographic change. In this case, the liberal intellectu-
als try to show how it will take more than two centuries
for the Muslims to take over the country demograph-
ically. Any person who claims otherwise is claimed a
Sanghi and hence his opinions mocked, reputation soiled
and arguments thrown into the dustbin. If the first ex-
cuse fails they resort to outright naive solutions and ar-
gue that high Muslim population will cause no problem.
The number of riots, both before and after the parti-
tion, are completely ignored without even an acknowl-
edgement of the importance of demography. In the third
and extreme case, where they might accept the problem,
they pretend to solve it by educating the Muslims to
end their extra-territorial loyalty to Ummah. But states
like Kerala with high Muslim TFR prove this strategy to
xii PREFACE
be outright flawed as the highly educated Muslims there

have systematically out-bred all other communities, thus
puncturing the education is the best anti-dote and Mus-
lim population surge is a temporary phenomenon narra-
tive. If the rest of the country follows this Kerala model,
it will become Muslims majority sooner rather than later.
Structure of book
Given the immense propaganda and misinformation sur-
rounding the demography, this book aims at dispelling all
the myths created by the liberal intelligentsia on Muslim
population growth in India. The results presented here
are based on the Population Census of 2011, done by the
Government of India and based on real world statistics.
This book will serves as an informative eye opener and
documents the extent of demographic changes in contem-
porary India against the myths peddled by the liberal in-
tellectuals, who do not want the average Hindu to wake
up from his deep slumber.
The book is divided into several parts as described
below.
• Introduction: It gives a broad overview of the changes

in demography in the world and the Indian subcon-
tinent during the past 100 years. It also partially
dispels the myth of no Muslim population explo-
sion.
• The Explosion: This chapter shows the extent of

demographic change in current India using data
from Census 2011 and provides innovative way to
gauge information about the future by looking at
different generations. The results here show the ex-
tent of explosion of Muslim population in various
xiii
regions of the country. We have extensively uti-

lized maps to present the demographic picture of
different states and regions of India.
• Future Projections: This chapter presents the lat-

est trends in fertility for Hindus and Muslims. Based
on fertility trends and current population levels we
make future population projections under various
scenarios. Most importantly, we also destroy the
myth that one should not worry about Muslim pop-
ulation growth since the Muslim fertility has been
declining in the last few decades.
• TFR Politics: In this chapter, we analyze the rea-

sons behind decrease in Hindu share in total popu-
lation. The reasons vary from government policy on
sterilization and population control to evils within
the Hindu society like female foeticide, not to men-
tion the general Hindu apathy towards maintaining
demographic superiority.
• Conclusion: This section provides future course of

action and concludes the discussion.
Although it will be interesting to present data on

other religions as well but this book will stick to pre-
senting the information primarily on Hindus and Mus-
lims. While there is a booming Christian population,
thanks to the conversion mafia, it is not as big a secu-
rity challenge as the increase in Muslim population in the
near future. Also it is difficult to gauge the true extent
of Christianity as a lot of Christian converts belong to
the lower castes and tribes and will lose various social
benefits post conversion if their new identity is revealed.
Since it makes sense for the neo-converts to mask their
identity and not get identified in the census data, it is
xiv PREFACE
more difficult to get the complete picture of the growth

of Christian community in India.
Thus, this book focuses only on disseminating the
information on Muslim population in India. Including
details on other religions like Christianity would dilute
the main message in this book, which is about the surge
in Muslim population. So, although Christian numbers
are presented in some sections of this book but not much
time is spent on explaining them.
There are two main data sources used for the anal-
ysis in this book. The first primary source of data has
been taken from the population census done by the Gov-
ernment of India in 2011. For most of the analysis we
have used the total population numbers of each religion
reported at the district level. These district level religion
statistics can then be further disaggregated by age, sex
and rural-urban status.
For the aggregate statistics on the past population, we
have used information from various other sources and pri-
marily from Centre for Policy Studies (henceforth CPS).
We have tried to provide historical data, wherever it adds
to the overall understanding of the situation. The source
for external material is quoted in the footnotes. But most
of the population analysis in this book is driven by the
information present in the latest Census 2011. Although
the overall population numbers from previous census are
interesting but they still do not reveal the true picture
about the future of Muslim population.
This forms the core of the book as it reflects the in-
novative methods used for future prediction, something
not often used by the demographic experts (due to being
unaware or explicit bias against Hindus) reporting on In-
dia. The bulk of chapter 2 and some parts of chapter 3
are based on 2011 Census data.
Apart from the population data, we have also used in-
xv
formation from National Family Health Survey 3 (NFHS-

3) to calculate fertility levels and other important char-
acteristics among the different population groups. Some
information is used from the past NFHS waves or from
the latest round of NFHS-4, but most of the results are
prepared using raw data from NFHS-3 wave done in 2005-
06. The latest round of raw data was not publicly avail-
able when we compiled the results of this book and hence
we stick to the past survey (although the results will not
change much even with new survey). This data is used
to get results presented in chapter 3 and 4. Unlike the
2011 Census, NFHS does not cover whole population but
is a representative survey for India.
If a table or figure does not mention data, it is from
Census 2011 or NFHS-3 depending on whether it is popu-
lation data or survey. We mention Census 2011 or NFHS-
3 wherever possible, though it might be removed in some
cases to avoid redundancy. In all other cases when ex-
ternal information is used, its source is mentioned in the
footnote or at the end in references.
Note: We have taken utmost care to map the dis-
tricts correctly between 2011 census and the mapping
software. But it is possible that some districts are not
matched correctly due to difference in the total number
of districts due to addition of new districts in the Census
2011. We try to mention the cases where the maps do
not reflect the population figures for these new districts.
In case you come across any such errors please email us.
Target Audience
The book is fairly heavy on maps and tables. It is pri-
marily written for mass consumption and not just for
academic discussion. Hence, we have tried to walk on
xvi PREFACE
a tight rope as it is fairly difficult to balance these two

objectives.
In order to accomplish the first objective we have used
visual aid wherever possible. This also means a lot of
information is packed in the maps, which does not nec-
essarily gets repeated in the text unless very important.
The accompanying website for the book provides visual
aids like videos and more maps to understand the demo-
graphic changes. The readers are advised to peruse the
website for more information as well as to introduce the
work to others.
At the same time, in the genuine interest of scholar-
ship we have also provided legitimate references wherever
possible. But to ensure readability, in case if explanations
do not add to the understanding of the topic at hand,
weskipped and technical details as well as the references.
In case of any doubts or clarifications, please feel free to
contact the authors.
Acknowledgements
It is almost impossible to finish such a work without the
constant support and guidance of family and friends. We
have been fortunate to receive feedback and comments
from many friends, both online and offline, at almost
every stage; from editing and proof-reading to designing
various aspects of the book. We will like to express our
deepest gratitude to all of them.
Lastly, we will thank our family which has been a
pillar of strength and source of motivation in all our en-
deavours and this project is no different.
S. R. SWAROOP
February, 2018
1
Introduction
“Pakistan and Bangladesh are their fixed de-

posits. Those are Islamic states, no one can lay
claim on them. India is a joint account, plunder
it as much as you please.1 ”
– Siva Prasad Roy
The liberal discourse in India hates to talk about

the increasing Muslim numbers in India and if any evil
RSS/BJP leader mentions it by mistake, it takes the
whole liberal world by storm. What follows next are
apologies and some number crunching exercises to prove
the insignificant size of Muslim population in India and
how Indian demographics cannot be altered in the near
future. The entire number crunching exercise is to high-
light that India is safe from the Muslim fertility bomb
and that even if the current fertility trends continue it
would take forever i.e. at least 2250 AD (not too far if
you think from a civilizational context!) for Muslims to
make Hindus minority(<50%) in India. The next step
after this number crunching exercise is to then give out
the disclaimer that given rising prosperity in India the
1
Sita Ram Goel, Muslim Separatism
1
2 1. INTRODUCTION
fertility will decline for both Muslims as well as Hindus.

What such disclaimers forget to mention is that- Muslim
women will continue to pop out one more kid than their
Hindu sisters, whether the latter’s TFR (total fertility
rate) is 2 or 4.
This whole number crunching exercise actually goes
completely against the liberal agenda if you look at it
closely. Instead of proving that Muslims are insignificant
in India, the standard liberal argument should follow the
current European template- "Diversity is good for the na-
tion and since India is a plural country, Hindus should
stop claiming it exclusively for themselves. Indians love
Biryani as much as they love Halwa, so there should be
no problem even if Muslims becomes majority i.e. more
than 50%." But like every other nascent western fad and
ideology this argument might take a few decades to get
mainstreamed in India, at least among the folks brain-
washed by secular education.
However, under current situation and having suffered
one partition based on religious fault lines, this argu-
ment would be unpalatable even for the dumbest and
most secular Hindu. Even the most secular Hindu knows
what happens to minorities in a Muslim majority coun-
try (only that they do not how far they are down this
road). A quick look at their neighbours like Pakistan
and Bangladesh is sufficient to give them a glimpse about
their future under a Muslim majority. Since it is dif-
ficult to sell usefulness of excess Biryani, this explains
why the liberal commentators prefer to fool gullible Hin-
dus by number crunching instead. Hence, statistics is
used to prove how the fascist Hindu Organizations are
wrong about the Muslim fertility bomb and that there is
no way in which the Muslims can take over India in the
next 200 years. 200 years is not too long in the civiliza-
tional context but sufficient enough to put the gullible
1.1. RELIGION IN THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT 3
Hindu to sleep and go with earning his daily bread.

But those who are not gullible very well understand
how bogus these number crunching exercises are. Firstly,
Muslims do not have to attain 50% population to enforce
their agenda. Given their deep belief in Islam and com-
mitment to resort to violence to enforce it, their nuisance
value increases exponentially with their actual numbers.
After all, the Muslims were below 30% at the time of
partition in 1947. Secondly, the population explosion is
much higher and hidden well under the statistics pre-
sented to the local populace. If it were so insignificant,
why did the Government of India take so long to come out
with the religious demographics in 2011 census. Even the
Hindu fascist government under NDA took a long time
before releasing these statistics.
1.1 Religion in the Indian Sub-

continent
The share of Dharmics (Hindus and other local non-
Abrahamic faiths) have been falling in the Indian sub-
continent ever since the British first started enumerating
the population census in 1881. The share of Dharmics in
India in each census since 1881 are presented in the table
1.12 .
The population of Dharmics has fallen from about
79% in 1881 to 67% in 2011. During the course of these
130 years, the Dharmic population grew almost five times
from 20 crores in 1981 census to 100 crores in 2011. In
2
Unlike India which conducts census every ten years, the census
from Pakistan and Bangladesh are not regular and hence adjusted
figures are reported here as calculated by Centre for Policy Studies.
For details see CPS.
4 1. INTRODUCTION
Year Population (millions) Percentage

Total Dharmic Muslim Christian Dharmic Muslim Christian
1881 250 198 49 1.7 79.32 19.97 0.71
1891 279 220 57 2.1 78.81 20.41 0.77
1901 283 218 62 2.7 77.14 21.88 0.98
1911 303 231 67 3.7 76.40 22.39 1.21
1921 305 230 71 4.5 75.30 23.23 1.47
1931 337 252 79 5.9 74.75 23.49 1.77
1941 388 287 94 7.4 73.81 24.28 1.91
1951 443 325 108 9.0 73.47 24.49 2.04
1961 540 392 136 11.5 72.70 25.17 2.13
1971 678 483 179 15.3 71.27 26.48 2.26
1981 853 599 236 18.2 70.19 27.67 2.14
1991 1,068 734 312 21.7 68.74 29.22 2.03
2001 1,293 881 385 26.7 68.13 29.80 2.07
2011 1,528 1,027 470 31.0 67.22 30.75 2.03
Table 1.1: Population in the Indian Subcontinent (India,

Pakistan and Bangladesh)
contrast, the Muslim population jumped from 5 crores to

47 crores, i.e. more than nine times.
While in terms of percentage points the fall in Hindu
share has only been 12 points, but in terms of growth
rate of total population, the Muslims (nine times) have
shown almost double the growth as compared to Hindus
(five times). Since population growth is exponential these
numbers are really spectacular since Muslims started out
with one-fourth the population of Hindus in 1881, but
still managed to decrease the share of Hindu population,
pointing towards the big fertility gap that has existed
between these two religious groups.
The Hindus lost roughly six percentage points from
1881-1951 i.e. the first 70 years and another six between
1951-2011 i.e. the last 60 years. The drop has been
much faster in the last six decades mainly on account of
lower growth rate of Hindu population as compared to
the Muslims.
1.1. RELIGION IN THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT 5
To understand the evolution of demographics in the

subcontinent since independence, we need to look at ta-
ble 1.2 which gives breakup of population by religion
in the subcontinent for the three countries of Pakistan,
Bangladesh and India. It also gives the important pic-
ture on how minorities have been treated by Hindus and
Muslims since 1947 under India and Pakistan-Bangladesh
respectively.
On the one hand are the two Islamic nations, which
were majority Muslim in 1951 and have since then wiped
out the remaining traces of minority Hindus in their fief-
doms. The Hindu population in Pakistan has been below
2% since 1951, while it has fallen from 23% to 9% in the
last 70 years in Bangladesh. On the other hand, Muslims
have grown stronger in India from 10.5% in 1951 to 14.2%
in 2011. It should come as a surprise for the liberals that
Hindus in Pakistan-Bangladesh have reduced and almost
disappeared under the peaceful Muslims, while under the
fascist Hindus in India the Muslims added 3.5 percentage
points!
If we look at the absolute numbers, the picture be-
comes much more clear. While the Hindus in India grew
by roughly 3.3 times during this time to increase their
number from 31 crore to 100 crore, the Muslims have
grown more than 4 times in all these countries. The
most spectacular growth story is of the Muslims of In-
dia who grew by 4.6 times during this time, even higher
than Pakistan and Bangladesh, the two countries that
were formed for them in 1947. So, not only Muslims got
a separate country in 1947, they also multiply faster in
secular India.
Compare the situation of Muslims in India to the Hin-
dus in Bangladesh, who grew by less than 1.5 times dur-
ing this time. This silent disappearance of Hindus in
Bangladesh is the least highlighted and ugliest chapter
6 1. INTRODUCTION
Year Population (,000) Percentage (%)

Total Dharmic Muslim Christian Dharmic Muslim Christian
Pakistan
1951 33,703 538 32,732 433 1.60 97.12 1.28
1961 42,880 630 41,666 584 1.47 97.17 1.36
1972 62,462 1,119 60,435 908 1.79 96.75 1.45
1981 84,254 1,389 81,554 1,310 1.65 96.80 1.56
1998 132,352 2,540 127,720 2,093 1.92 96.50 1.58
Bangladesh
1951 41,933 9,599 32,227 107 22.89 76.85 0.26
1961 50,840 9,801 40,890 149 19.28 80.43 0.29
1974 71,478 10,223 61,039 216 14.30 85.40 0.30
1981 87,120 11,358 75,487 275 13.04 86.65 0.32
1991 106,315 12,088 93,881 346 11.37 88.30 0.33
2001 123,851 12,415 111,079 357 10.02 89.69 0.29
2011 144,044 13,392 130,205 447 9.30 90.39 0.31
India
1951 361,088 314,934 37,728 8,425 87.22 10.45 2.33
1961 439,235 381,565 46,940 10,729 86.87 10.69 2.44
1971 548,160 472,516 61,418 14,225 86.2 11.2 2.60
1981 683,329 586,336 80,293 16,700 85.81 11.75 2.44
1991 846,421 720,031 106,737 19,654 85.07 12.61 2.32
2001 1,028,737 866,349 138,188 24,200 84.21 13.43 2.35
2011 1,210,855 1,010,790 172,245 27,820 83.48 14.23 2.30
Table 1.2: Religious demographics in Pakistan,

Bangladesh and India
of demographics in the history of Indian subcontinent.

To any independent observer, it should hit as a shock
why such a big demographic loss of Hindus in Bangladesh
did not (or does not) make any headlines in the interna-
tional or domestic media while random incidents against
minorities in India get front page coverage everywhere.
The growth in Muslim population in India alone should
be sufficient to put to rest any questions about the space
offered to Muslims in India. While hue and cry is raised
over stray incidents against Muslims in India, the geno-
cide of Hindus in Bangladesh (before, during and after
the 1971 war) completely passes under the radar.
And although Bangladesh is touted as a democracy
1.2. PARTITION-1947 7
and less anti-Hindu than Pakistan, this disappearance

of Hindus from Bangladesh should shock you even more
about the realities of living under a Muslim majority.
The disappearance of Hindus in Bangladesh is yet an-
other tale of disappearance of other religions from a coun-
try once it attains Muslim majority, something that has
been observed repeatedly from Egypt to Lebanon.
1.2 Partition-1947
A nation which does not learn from history keeps repeat-
ing the same mistakes. The history about the horrors of
partition has been whitewashed and the new generation
is kept in dark about it. While every country tries to
remind its future population about the past horrors by
keeping it alive through culture- art, media and muse-
ums, the Indian state has used a reverse policy to down-
play the atrocities of the partition.
There can be a thousand explanations which can be
given for the partition of India ranging from British con-
spiracy or communalism practiced by the then Muslim
League, the dominant Muslim party in pre-partition era.
But at the back of all explanations and logical gymnas-
tics lie the cold fact that British India had a large Muslim
population and the sentiment of a pure Islamic land got
overwhelming support among the Muslims of that time.
The below table 1.3 3 shows the Muslim population
figures from 1941 census, the last census before the par-
tition, according to which the Muslim population was
26.9% of the then total Indian population. Out of the
then provinces Baluchistan, NWFP, Sind, Bengal and
Punjab, had Muslim majority. Out of these five, the first
3
Table reproduced from Ambedkar, "Pakistan or Partition of
India", 1945
8 1. INTRODUCTION
State Population (,000) Muslim

Total Muslim Percentage
1. Ajmere-Merwara 583 89 15.4
2. Andaman Nicobar 33 8 23.7
3. Assam 10,204 3,442 33.7
4. British Baluchistan 501 438 87.5
5. Bengal 60,306 33,005 54.7
6. Bihar * 36,340 4,716 12.9
7. Bombay 20,849 1,920 9.2
8. Central Provinces & Berar + 16,813 783 4.7
9. Coorg 168 14 8.8
10. Delhi 917 304 33.2
11. Madras 49,341 3,896 7.9
12. N.W.F.P. 3,038 2,788 91.8
13. Orissa 8,728 146 1.7
14. Punjab 28,418 16,217 57.0
15. Panth Piploda 5 0.2 4.8
16. Sind 4,229 3,054 72.2
17. United Provinces @ 55,020 8,416 15.3
Total 295,502 79,344 26.9
* Bihar 28,823 4,168 14.4
Chota Nagpur 7,516 547 7.3
+ C.P. 13,208 448 3.4
@ Agra 40,903 6,231 15.2
Oudh 14,114 2,185 15.5
Table 1.3: Population figures from Census 1941
three provinces completely went to Pakistan, while the

latter two were divided between India and Pakistan.
Entire books have been written on the subject of par-
tition of India but we think that the above table gives
a good snapshot into the politics of that time. Any po-
litical idea or platform requires the backup of a suitable
demography, which in the case of partition was provided
by Muslim population to the Muslim League. While
the British could have fanned the communal hatred but
without the support of a large section of population, the
project for creation of new homeland based on religion
1.2. PARTITION-1947 9
would have been a non-starter.

While the Muslim population percentage in undivided
Punjab and Bengal was 57.0% and 54.7% respectively,
the parts that went to West Pakistan and East Pakistan
(Bangladesh) had 78.8% and 70.2% share of Muslims in
1941. The statistics for the regions which became west
and east Pakistan are given in table 1.4. Both the regions
saw an increase in the total Muslim population numbers
between 1901-1941. While Pakistan saw decrease in Mus-
lim Population from 83.88% to 79.82% between 1901 and
1941, Bangladesh saw an increase from 66% to 70%.
The surprising result (decrease in Muslim Population)
in case of Pakistan is accounted for by the increase in
number of Sikhs, who grew by 5.63 times during this
time (not shown in the table). Some authors have argued
that the Sikh population during this time grew riding on
the improved irrigation facilities, which allowed for better
harvest thus in turn allowing for supporting bigger fami-
lies. Though the Hindu population decreased during this
time, but the increase in Sikh population decreased the
overall Muslim share in the pre-partition west Pakistan.
The conclusion from the above two tables is that the
secessionist demand for a new nation based on religion
started rising even when Muslims were less than 25% of
the then total population. Of course, the important point
to note here is that when population of Muslims reached
25%, there was enough geographic variation to guarantee
that some regions had Muslim population above 50% and
these were the regions which spearheaded the demand for
a new Islamic nation devoid of any kaffirs.
So the important question which these statistics raise
is for those who chant that "demography does not mat-
ter". A country which has already seen a partition on re-
ligious lines cannot afford to overlook such an important
historical incident. Equally worrying is the intellectual
10 1. INTRODUCTION
Year Population (,000) Percentage (%)

Total Dharmic Muslim Dharmic Muslim
Pakistan (1901-1941)
1901 16,577 2,641 13,904 15.93 83.88
1911 19,381 2,898 16,364 14.95 84.43
1921 21,108 3,274 17,620 15.51 83.48
1931 23,541 4,427 18,757 18.81 79.68
1941 28,282 5,568 22,293 19.69 78.82
Bangladesh (1901-1941)
1901 28,927 9,814 19,113 33.93 66.07
1911 31,555 10,353 21,202 32.81 67.19
1921 33,254 10,608 22,646 31.90 68.10
1931 35,604 10,812 24,731 30.37 69.46
1941 41,999 12,437 29,509 29.61 70.26
Table 1.4: Religious demographics in pre-partition Pak-

istan and Bangladesh
environment which suppresses any talk on demography

where any concerns regarding big jump in Muslim popu-
lation percentage are completely brushed aside as figment
of imagination.
While Muslims might not reach 50% of the Indian
population in the next few decades but there would be
enough regions with greater than 50% Muslim popula-
tion. Given the history of partition these regions which
will have similar demographics to Bengal and Punjab
of pre-partition India are the regions one should worry
about.
Also, India as a nation state has not proved any bet-
ter than the British in handling communal flareups as it
is amply demonstrated by the large number of riots in
post-partition India as well as how the Kashmiri Pandits
were expelled by the Muslim majority region of Kash-
mir in the 90s. And government after government, both
1.3. INDIA SINCE INDEPENDENCE 11
in the centre and J&K, have failed to rehabilitate the

Kashmiri Pandits and give them natural justice. If the
pusillanimous response of the Indian republic in the past
is a benchmark, then Hindus will have a very hard time in
the regions where they become a minority as the Indian
state would not come to their rescue.
1.3 India since independence

Before we deep dive into the census 2011 figures, it is
important to take a stock of the population numbers as
reported in the past censuses conducted by Government
of India. These are the figures quoted everywhere and
are normally used to dissuade the general public from
paying attention to the Muslim fertility bomb.
Year Dharmics Muslims

Total(%) Change Total(%) Change
1951 87.22 – 10.45 –
1961 86.87 -0.35 10.69 0.24
1971 86.20 -0.67 11.20 0.51
1981 85.81 -0.39 11.75 0.55
1981 85.07 -0.74 12.61 0.86
2001 84.21 -0.86 13.43 0.82
2011 83.48 -0.73 14.23 0.80
Table 1.5: Religious population in different census
The Muslim and Dharmic population change over the

decades is shown in table 1.5 4 . While the percent-
age point change for Muslims was around 0.5 in the ini-
tial decades, it has increased to around 0.8 in the last
4
Source: Centre for Policy Studies (CPS)
12 1. INTRODUCTION
three decades and totalling up to roughly four percent-

age points gain in the seven decades post independence.
This increase in Muslims has been at the cost of de-
crease in population of Dharmics which has come down
from 87.2% to 83.5% during the same time. Although
to a normal observer this might look like only a 3.7 per-
centage point loss, but given the exponential nature of
population growth and high base population of Hindus
to begin with, this is a big erosion. It is something that
we will clearly explain in the latter chapters of the book.
But does this 3.7 percentage point decrease reflect the
full picture of Muslim population explosion? No. And to
answer why that is the case, we will look at the census
figures from 2011 and explain in the next section.
1.4 Numbers can hide reality

While the total population is a good metric but it hides
more than it reveals. The future of any region is deter-
mined by the next generation and not the current overall
population numbers. Since population projection might
require one to make too many assumptions, a better way
to gauge the future is to look at the percentage share of
each religion in the number of young adherents.
The importance of demography in a democracy can-
not be overstated. Mulayam and Mayawati with less than
20% core voters are able to come to power in UP and
dominate the agenda in a first past the post democratic
system. Keeping this cutoff in mind, we will look at 0-4
year population cohort of Muslims in 2011 census and
identify districts where this share has changed rapidly.
These same kids will reach voting age in less than two
decades and alter how we view politics.
The 2011 census reports the population in each age
1.4. NUMBERS CAN HIDE REALITY 13
group, so we can gauge the extent of future Muslim pop-

ulation by looking at these different age cohorts. The
share of Hindus and Muslims in different age cohorts is
given in table 1.6. This table 1.6 also presents the crux
of the book as it shows the extent to which Muslim share
has already risen in the lower age cohorts. The overall
population numbers hide this huge increase in Muslim
population share in the lower age cohorts.
Age Group Muslims Hindus

Urban Rural Total Total
0-4 22.88 15.20 17.23 77.41
5-9 22.65 14.90 16.92 77.87
10-14 21.75 14.09 16.16 78.45
15-19 21.31 13.47 15.85 78.38
20-24 19.47 12.62 14.93 79.07
25-29 17.38 11.78 13.73 80.26
30-34 16.40 11.24 13.03 80.97
35-39 16.07 11.06 12.77 81.21
40-44 15.27 10.70 12.27 81.33
45-49 14.42 10.25 11.70 81.64
50-54 13.81 10.08 11.37 81.79
55-59 13.48 9.76 11.02 82.1
60-64 14.43 9.70 11.13 82.13
65-69 14.13 9.18 10.59 82.56
70-74 13.68 9.00 10.32 82.89
75-79 11.87 8.47 9.52 82.75
80+ 13.52 9.41 10.65 81.6
All ages 18.23 12.41 14.23 79.8
Table 1.6: Population by age group (Census 2011)
Before we look at table 1.6 for analysis, some clarifi-

cations are in order. During the course of this book, we
14 1. INTRODUCTION
will use the same two age cohorts repeatedly, 50-54 years
and 0-4 years. Firstly, looking at younger cohorts allows
us to directly gauge the population changes that will take
place in the future. It does not require too many assump-
tions like one needs in population forecasting models. So,
50-54 age cohort act as a base to compare the young 0-4
age group. Secondly, the newly born today will form the
youth of tomorrow and will influence the policies as well
as show muscle on the street. The 50+ year old genera-
tion will not do political rallies or put shops on fire. It
is the youth who will control future and the share of 0-4
year age cohort captures the youth who will be active 25
years down the line. Thirdly, using 50-54 year cohort as
a reference against 0-4 year cohort also allows us to be
free of any biases which might arise due to big difference
in two religious groups in terms of life cycle decisions or
average age. The older generation can live longer de-
pending on care or medicine usage etc5 . There are slight
differences in pre-natal care and early childhood survival
rate of Hindus and Muslims, but we cannot gauge if such
differences were present when the 50-54 year group was
growing up. So, we choose 50-54 age cohort as it allows
us to compare population across 50 years (today’s 50-54
year old were 0-4 year old 50 years ago), without suffering
any biases which might come due to longevity difference
between the two groups.6
Now, lets go back to analyzing the table 1.6. As one
5
A larger share of Muslims live in urban areas and thus can live
longer due to better medical facilities
6
Actually Muslims have lower infant mortality as compared to
Hindus. According to NFHS-3, 6.53% Hindu children die between
0-4, as compared to 5.82% Muslim children. Reference: Guillot
and Allendorf (2009). So, actually share of Muslims will only grow
when they grow older as a larger percentage of Hindu kids will die
during childhood compared to their Muslim counterparts.
can see, the percentage of Hindus has fallen from roughly

82% in the 50-54 age cohort to around 77.5% in the 0-4
age cohort. This is an erosion of 5.5 percentage points in
50 years i.e. in roughly two generations if you consider
one generation to be 25 years. The share of Muslims
jumped from 11% to 17% i.e. a 6 percentage point in-
crease. This is more than 50% increase in Muslim share
in just two generations.
Compare this now to the earlier table about overall
Muslim population numbers. If you look at table 1.5,
the increase in Muslim share from 1971-2011 (two
Censuses separated by 50 years) is from 11.2% to
14.2% i.e. only 3 percentage points, while if you
look at cohort numbers in table 1.6, the increase
is 6 percentage point across two generations sep-
arated by 50 years. Thus one should not be surprised
why Islam apologists prefer to quote overall population
numbers and thus a small increase of 3 percentage points
instead of looking at the cohort size from Census 2011
and quote a tremendous 6 percentage point increase in
the Muslim share.
The numbers appear even more striking if instead of
looking at cohort of 50-54 years, we look at 25-29 year
cohort as a reference base. The jump is from 13.7% to
17.2% i.e. 3.5 percentage points in just 25 years. So, the
Muslim share has increased more rapidly in the last 25
years (3.5%) than the one before that (2.5%).
It is also interesting to see this change in demogra-
phy by rural and urban areas. The Muslim population
growth looks even more phenomenal in the urban areas,
which have higher concentration of Muslims in general.
The urban Muslim population share went from 13.8% to
22.9% i.e. 9 percentage point gains between the two co-
horts separated by 50 years (out of which 5.5 percentage
points were added in last 25 years). This means that the
16 1. INTRODUCTION
Figure 1.1: Muslim Population share across age groups

(Census 2011)
Muslims almost form one quarter of the 0-4 year olds in

the urban areas.
To give a complete idea of this trend we have plotted
Muslim population share in India by different age cohorts
in figure 1.1. The figure shows the big jump around 20-24
age group, when the urban Muslim share jumped sharply.
Although the rural population share also shows a similar
jump but it is not as significant as the urban one.
Since this jump happened for the age cohort of 20-24,
it corresponds to those born between 1986-1991. While
the Muslims population share had been growing even be-
fore but what caused this sudden change? One of the
probable explanations for this break could be sharp in-
crease in fertility gap between Hindus and Muslims dur-
ing this time specially in the urban areas. Only an in-
crease in fertility gap between the two religious groups
could explain such a big change in the trend from one
cohort to the other. This is a topic we would later ex-
plore in detail.
To summarize, looking at the age wise breakup of
different religions presents the true picture of the current
demography in India. The changes are almost double
the size in cohort analysis, something that is masked by
the overall population numbers. What makes it worse is
that this is not population projection but was the state of
demography seven years ago i.e. in 2011 and since then
a lot of water has flown under the bridge.
18 1. INTRODUCTION
2
The Explosion
“The future belongs to those who show up.”

– Mark Steyn
The last chapter gave a snapshot about the overall

growth in Muslim population share in India. Now it
is time to look deeper and identify the regions which
have seen the maximum explosion in Muslim population.
These geographical regions are going to be the hotspots
of Islamic fundamentalism in the near future and chal-
lenge the hegemony of Kashmir being the only Islamic
underbelly of India.
This chapter will put to rest the theory of insignifi-
cant Muslim population growth in India by laying thread-
bare the population numbers by each region and cohort.
Given the large difference in Muslim population geograph-
ically, it is easy to hide Muslim growth trends using
statistics. But before we get there we should know how
does this statistical chicanery actually work?
The first step is to quote the aggregate population
numbers for whole India. Since India is huge and Mus-
lims still form roughly 14% of the total population, it is
assumed that once lulled into complacency by the 14%
19
20 2. THE EXPLOSION
number, a lay Hindu would not argue further. Secondly,

if the person involved knows a bit more about demogra-
phy and points towards the unequal population growth
of Muslims in specific states, his arguments are brushed
aside as the overall Muslim population percentage in these
Muslim heavy states is still below 30%. In this way, the
doomsday scenario is pushed back by 100-200 years de-
pending on the mood of the statistician. But in this
chapter we will show why this second attempt is also a
failure as the 2011 census provides much more informa-
tion through its cohort wise data.
2.1 India level trends

The last chapter presented the details on how Muslim
population share has climbed up to 22% in the case of
0-4 year cohort living in urban areas. This is 7% percent-
age points higher that their share in 50-54 year cohort i.e.
just two generations ago. But these are aggregate statis-
tics and hide local pockets of Muslim dominance. So,
how does Muslim numbers look like at a disaggregated
level?
The spatial population distribution for Muslims for
the two age cohorts is shown in figure 2.1 and 2.2. These
two maps show Muslim population shares at the district
level. For the course of this chapter, we will stick to six
colour codes to show the Muslim population percentage:
• <10% - white
• 10-20% - light green
• 20-30% - green
• 30-40% - dark green

2.1. INDIA LEVEL TRENDS 21
State Total Urban

0-4 50-54 All Ages 0-4 50-54 All Ages
ANDAMAN & NICOBAR 8.71 8.65 8.52 12.30 12.32 12.05
ANDHRA PRADESH 11.41 7.96 9.56 22.77 15.14 18.58
ARUNACHAL PRADESH 1.95 1.76 1.95 5.31 4.46 4.59
ASSAM 45.00 27.32 34.22 24.95 13.90 18.24
BIHAR 18.70 15.20 16.87 23.29 16.75 20.08
CHANDIGARH 6.35 2.52 4.87 6.38 2.52 4.88
CHHATTISGARH 1.94 1.89 2.02 6.45 5.37 6.04
D & N HAVELI 3.70 3.53 3.76 6.52 5.93 5.91
DAMAN & DIU 8.86 8.14 7.92 10.50 10.04 9.10
GOA 11.78 5.67 8.33 15.54 7.68 11.15
GUJARAT 10.78 8.40 9.67 18.03 12.26 14.75
HARYANA 11.51 4.23 7.03 5.84 2.21 4.03
HIMACHAL PRADESH 2.92 1.61 2.18 4.04 2.19 3.19
JAMMU & KASHMIR 76.78 63.78 68.31 75.24 59.69 64.40
JHARKHAND 16.95 11.73 14.53 20.04 13.39 16.99
KARNATAKA 15.74 10.22 12.92 26.76 16.71 21.20
KERALA 37.32 19.30 26.56 40.65 21.14 29.00
LAKSHADWEEP 99.11 94.85 96.58 99.03 94.12 96.36
MADHYA PRADESH 6.86 5.79 6.57 18.28 12.36 15.40
MAHARASHTRA 13.96 8.97 11.54 23.92 14.01 18.64
MANIPUR 10.96 6.14 8.40 13.44 6.79 10.00
MEGHALAYA 4.60 4.45 4.40 2.31 2.32 2.58
MIZORAM 1.38 0.87 1.35 1.28 0.95 1.45
NAGALAND 3.45 1.77 2.47 6.56 3.06 4.55
DELHI 16.18 8.46 12.86 16.39 8.55 13.01
ODISHA 2.39 1.70 2.17 7.46 4.33 5.86
PUDUCHERRY 7.31 5.73 6.05 9.18 6.67 7.32
PUNJAB 2.54 1.34 1.93 3.34 1.54 2.47
RAJASTHAN 10.77 7.37 9.07 22.00 13.63 17.91
SIKKIM 1.79 1.13 1.62 5.37 2.74 4.04
TAMIL NADU 7.01 5.00 5.86 11.28 7.75 9.27
TRIPURA 10.77 6.55 8.60 7.09 3.11 4.83
UTTAR PRADESH 21.34 16.08 19.26 36.96 25.38 32.20
UTTARAKHAND 17.61 8.84 13.95 25.99 12.99 20.20
WEST BENGAL 34.94 20.54 27.01 27.82 12.33 18.93
INDIA 17.23 11.37 14.23 22.88 13.81 18.23
Table 2.1: State wise Muslim Population

22 2. THE EXPLOSION
• 40-50% - orange
• >50% - red
Now lets go back and look at figures 2.1 and 2.2. At a

first glance, one can see that the number of coloured dis-
tricts has increased tremendously in the 0-4 age cohort as
compared to 50-54 age cohort. According to the district
definition we are using, the total number of coloured dis-
tricts (i.e. those with more than 10% Muslim population)
has gone up from 268 to 351 in the youngest cohort. Out
of 594 districts, this represent an increase of 14% which
went from minuscule Muslim presence i.e. white to >10%
share (green or red) in the district population.
The important point to note here is that the green-
ery has increased everywhere and no part of India is un-
touched by this growth. This change between these co-
horts corresponds to change of color from white to light
green. At the same time one can also notice that already
green districts turned dark green or red as we move from
50-54 year age cohort to 0-4 age cohort. This means
Muslim population in the young cohorts has consolidated
upon the population gains made by their forefathers.
So, how many districts jumped from one colour (or
one percentage bracket) to another as we move from the
old cohort to the young cohort?
The statistics for change of district status between
the two age cohorts is shown in the transition data table
2.2 and 2.3. While table 2.2 corresponds to total Muslim
population share, table 2.3 corresponds to the share of
Muslims in the urban areas.
Each entry in the table 2.2 reports the number of
districts that lie within a given percentage bracket for the
two different age cohorts. The diagonal is coloured grey
and corresponds to districts whose status is unchanged
Figure 2.1: Muslim (%) in Age group (50-54 yrs)

24 2. THE EXPLOSION
Figure 2.2: Muslim (%) in Age Group (0-4 yrs)

Age Age(50-54 yrs)

(0-4 yrs) <10 10-20 20-30 30-40 40-50 >50
<10 326 0 0 0 0 0
10-20 83 74 0 0 0 0
20-30 0 40 8 0 0 0
30-40 0 7 7 2 0 0
40-50 0 0 9 9 0 0
>50 0 0 0 4 8 17
Table 2.2: No of districts with share of total Muslims in a

given percentage bracket and under different age cohorts.
for the two age cohorts i.e. these districts lie in same
percentage bracket both for 0-4 age group as well as 50-54
age group. The green cells on the other hand correspond
to those which have higher percentage of Muslims in the
younger cohort compared to the older cohort. Had the
share of Muslims decreased in the younger cohort in any
bracket for any district, it would have gone above the
diagonal (i.e. grey cells), but that did not happen for
any district.
Also, the sum for each column gives the number of
districts corresponding to a given percentage bracket for
50-54 year age cohort, while the row sum gives the num-
ber of districts in a given percentage bracket for the 0-4
age cohort.
To understand transition lets look at the first column.
There are 326 districts which have <10% Muslims in both
0-4 as well as 50-54 age cohorts, but there are 83 districts
which have 10-20% Muslims in 0-4 age cohort, but had
<10% Muslims in 50-54 age cohort. These 83 districts
registered a switch from being less than 10% Muslim to
10-20% Muslim between the two cohorts.
26 2. THE EXPLOSION
Lets further understand the transition matrix by look-

ing at the bottom right cell. There were 17 districts with
>50% Muslim population in the 50-54 year cohort and
they all continue to have >50% Muslim population even
in the 0-4 age cohort. The adjacent green cell on the left
shows that there were 8 districts in 40-50% bracket for
the 50-54 age cohort but they became >50% Muslim in
0-4 age cohort. In total there are 29 districts (17+8+4,
sum of the last row) with >50% Muslim share in 0-4 age
cohort, while there were only 17 districts (sum of the last
column) with >50% Muslim share in the 50-54 age co-
hort. So in 50 years 12 more districts became Muslim
majority, bringing the total number of Muslim majority
districts to 29.
In the table, we have coloured the non-zero entries
to show the transition of population share between the
two age cohorts. One should note that all the coloured
entries lie below the diagonal of this matrix. There is
NO district which saw a decrease in the share of Mus-
lim population from old cohort to the young. The pres-
ence of zero in all the cells above the diagonal highlight
the reality of Muslim population growth in every district
wherever they have managed to get a toe hold.
This transition matrix also highlights the stark fea-
ture that the already coloured districts have turned darker
in shade i.e. moved to higher share brackets everywhere.
The transition is one way- from green districts to dark
green and dark green to red and so on.
Other than the important points mentioned above,
this table actually packs more information. We should
look at the lower percentage brackets to understand the
whole picture. There were a total of 83 districts which
moved from <10% bracket in 50-54 age cohort to 10-
20% bracket in the younger age cohort. This means that
roughly 20% districts which had <10% Muslim popu-
lation jumped to the next level. However, out of 121

(74+40+7) districts with 10-20% Muslim share, 47 dis-
tricts i.e. 39% of this group jumped to the next level.
Then among the 24 (8+7+9, 20-30% column) districts
with 20-30% Muslim share, 16 districts i.e. 67% jumped
to the next level in the younger cohort. Then 13 out
of 15 (2+9+4, 30-40% column) districts jumped to the
next level in 30-40% Muslim share, while all 8 districts
in 40-50% level become >50%.
This means that once a district gets higher Muslim
population share, it jumps to an even higher population
share at a much faster rate. This is reflected from the
stats that all the districts with 40-50% Muslim share in
the old cohort became Muslim majority in the younger
cohort. What causes this pattern?
On the one hand is the simple explanation of the ex-
ponential growth rate which alone can explain this trend.
Given higher Muslim TFR (total fertility rate) than Hin-
dus, the districts with higher Muslim population share
decreases the Hindu population share much faster than
the districts where Muslims have lower population share
and hence lower base to multiply upon. On the other
hand, one can think about how Kashmiri Pandits were
chased out of the valley. This forms a more complicated
explanation, but will resonate among many, where fertile
age Hindus flee from Muslim majority areas for a better
life. In the end the reality should lie somewhere in the
middle of these two explanations. While an earlier phase
would build on TFR difference, the latter phase can in-
volve physical intimidation and violence like in the case
of Kashmir.
A similar transition matrix for urban areas is given in
table 2.3. The results are even more stark for urban areas.
The urban areas had fewer non-green districts to begin
with and those which were green have turned darker in
28 2. THE EXPLOSION
Age Age(50-54 yrs)

(0-4 yrs) <10 10-20 20-30 30-40 40-50 >50
<10 196 0 0 0 0 0
10-20 76 76 0 0 0 0
20-30 0 94 17 0 0 0
30-40 0 22 43 5 0 0
40-50 0 1 17 13 1 0
>50 0 0 1 8 10 14
Table 2.3: No of districts with share of Muslims in a

given percentage bracket and under different age cohorts
in urban areas.
colour increasingly. As of now there are 33 (14+10+8+1)

districts with more than 50% Muslims in 0-4 age group.
This number was only 14 in the 50-54 age cohort.
The urban areas have seen even larger population
growth for Muslims in the 0-4 age cohort as compared to
the rural areas as seen by the presence of large number
of green cells in urban transition matrix. For example-
in 10-20% bracket in the total population shown in ta-
ble 2.2, only (47 out of 121) i.e. 38% districts jump to
>20% brackets, while in urban areas (117 out of 193)
i.e. 60% jump to the next brackets. And they jump not
only to the next 20-30% bracket, but even higher up to
40-50%. One of the primary reasons for this result as
we will show later is the high TFR gap between urban
Hindus and Muslims as compared to their rural counter-
parts. The TFR difference in rural areas is lower and
hence the demographic loss is slower for Hindus there.
To summarize this section, we can say-

2.2. THE RED ZONE STATES 29
• A district once green turns darker in shade
• No district ever becomes less green on the color

scale (Once Muslims have an advantage in any dis-
trict, they only improve upon it). Is there any way
to explain this consistent trend other than religion?
• Urban areas turn darker at a much higher rate than

rural. Demographic loss is much faster in the urban
areas.
In the next section, we will look at the trajectories of

individual states in the past 50 years. We begin with the
states which have seen the highest demographic change.
We classify states into three codes depending on the sever-
ity of the demographic crisis. We borrow the colour
code from warning systems in order to classify the de-
mographic emergency. The red zone states are in severe
danger, orange zone states are in medium danger while
the rest are classified as others.
2.2 The red zone states

The red zone states are sitting on the cusp of demo-
graphic transition and these are the states where Hin-
dus can actually become a minority very soon. These
will also be the states which will need intervention in the
near future. The states under red-zone are-
• Assam
• West Bengal
• Kerala
• Uttar Pradesh
30 2. THE EXPLOSION
• Bihar
The red zone states are selected on the basis of their

high Muslim numbers as a percentage of their total pop-
ulation. These states (either whole state or specific re-
gions) have seen massive change in their population de-
mographics over the last two generations. If one looks
only at the overall growth numbers, one can easily brush
aside this growth as insignificant. Thus the need is to dig
a bit further into different age profiles.
We will first look at the table which is normally pro-
duced in the academic debates and uses the second point
of argument as we had mentioned in the introduction
(pushing doomsday scenario into the future by 200 years).
To show that there is no Muslim population explosion
even in the red zone states, these analysts will show the
statistics as presented in table 2.4.
Year Assam Kerala WB UP Bihar

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
1971 24.56 19.50 20.46 15.87 14.53
1981 - 21.25 21.52 16.27 15.09
1991 28.43 23.33 23.61 17.72 15.70
2001 30.92 24.70 25.25 18.50 16.53
2011 34.22 26.56 27.01 19.26 16.87
Table 2.4: Muslim population (%) in red zone states in

various census
So let’s first look at table 2.4.1 . The table 2.4 shows

the extent of Muslim population growth in these five
red zone states over the last five decades. While Assam
has seen roughly 10 percentage point increase in Muslim
1
Assam did not have census in 1981.
share in the last four decades, Kerala and West Bengal

roughly saw a jump of 7 percentage points. The increase
for UP and Bihar has been 3.5 and 2.5 percentage points.
As any leftist will argue these numbers are small and al-
though there has been an increase, Muslims are nowhere
close to 50% and hence these states will not be Muslim
majority any time in the near future.
But the proof of the pudding is in eating, so how long
do these states actually have before turning into Muslim
majority? What is the right way to look at these demo-
graphic changes? To look at the quantum of changes in-
stead of pondering over table 2.4, the right way is to focus
only on census 2011 and look at table 2.5, which gives the
percentage of Muslim population in these states by age
cohorts. While UP and Bihar have roughly 20% Muslims
in the 0-4 age cohort, Assam, Kerala and West Bengal
have 35% or more share of Muslims in the youngest age
group.
While the overall change in Muslim population was
only 10 percentage points in the case of Assam as shown
in table 2.4, but it is more than 17 percentage points if
one compares 50-54 age cohort with 0-4 age cohort in the
2011 census. A similar picture emerges if one looks at the
other red zone states. Let us analyze each of these states
separately.
Assam
Assam is sitting on a tinderbox and is the worst af-
fected among the red-zone states. The demographic evo-
lution of Assam is shown in figure 2.3. The number of red
districts in Assam has jumped from 4 in the old cohort to
11 in the young age cohort i.e. districts with more than
50% Muslim population in that cohort.
Overall, Assam saw an increase of Muslim popula-
tion from 27% in the old cohort to 45% in the 0-4 cohort.
32 2. THE EXPLOSION
Age Group Assam Kerala WB UP Bihar

0-4 45.00 37.32 34.94 21.34 18.70
5-9 43.44 34.74 34.29 21.33 18.17
10-14 38.71 32.00 33.34 20.83 17.89
15-19 33.94 32.05 31.89 21.11 18.54
20-24 33.37 32.15 29.09 20.13 17.18
25-29 31.82 29.48 25.70 18.46 15.93
30-34 30.24 26.97 23.36 17.71 15.22
35-39 28.86 24.13 22.85 17.56 15.41
40-44 28.25 21.46 22.21 17.37 15.52
45-49 26.82 19.90 20.94 16.83 15.42
50-54 27.32 19.30 20.54 16.08 15.20
55-59 26.22 18.96 19.58 15.79 14.48
60-64 27.17 18.42 20.57 16.05 14.57
65-69 26.35 19.01 19.81 15.03 14.10
70-74 28.45 16.67 18.85 14.55 13.90
75-79 26.90 15.07 16.24 13.68 12.93
80+ 32.08 14.06 18.21 15.23 13.52
All ages 34.22 26.56 27.01 19.26 16.87
Table 2.5: Total Muslim Population (%)- Census 2011


0-4 47.16 34.30 37.43 17.74 18.24
5-9 45.55 31.89 37.03 17.64 17.68
10-14 40.83 29.36 36.15 16.96 17.39
15-19 36.03 29.49 34.52 16.64 18.00
20-24 35.82 29.72 32.11 15.49 16.66
25-29 34.29 27.07 29.07 14.44 15.51
30-34 32.89 24.54 27.08 14.14 14.85
35-39 31.47 21.91 26.64 14.09 15.07
40-44 31.05 19.55 26.31 13.88 15.22
45-49 29.54 18.15 25.21 13.45 15.18
50-54 30.31 17.59 25.30 12.91 14.97
55-59 29.05 17.24 24.52 12.89 14.27
60-64 29.76 16.84 25.48 13.18 14.23
65-69 28.87 17.24 24.60 12.49 13.79
70-74 31.13 15.14 23.78 12.05 13.56
75-79 30.08 13.79 21.22 11.44 12.71
80+ 35.31 12.46 23.40 12.44 13.19
All ages 36.85 24.34 30.79 15.55 16.46
Table 2.6: Rural Muslim Population (%)- Census 2011

34 2. THE EXPLOSION

0-4 24.95 40.65 27.82 36.96 23.29
5-9 24.37 37.92 26.76 37.33 22.91
10-14 21.97 35.00 25.78 36.60 22.17
15-19 20.17 34.86 25.40 36.23 22.15
20-24 19.31 34.80 22.38 33.27 20.61
25-29 18.07 32.14 18.87 30.19 18.93
30-34 16.65 29.61 16.43 28.84 17.93
35-39 15.97 26.55 15.63 28.49 17.86
40-44 15.24 23.50 14.47 27.91 17.54
45-49 14.27 21.81 13.31 26.61 17.04
50-54 13.90 21.14 12.33 25.38 16.75
55-59 13.27 20.82 11.29 25.11 16.01
60-64 13.93 20.09 11.97 27.39 17.35
65-69 13.28 20.95 11.08 26.01 16.76
70-74 13.25 18.33 10.44 25.80 16.71
75-79 11.34 16.52 8.24 23.03 14.64
80+ 13.61 16.03 10.18 26.32 16.07
All ages 18.24 29.00 18.93 32.20 20.08
Table 2.7: Urban Muslim Population (%)- Census 2011

This is roughly 18 percentage point increase across gen-

erations separated by 50 years as shown in table 2.5. It
is also important to notice here the jump in the Muslim
population from 33.94% in 15-19 year cohort to directly
38.71% in the next young cohort of 10-14 years. This
then again sees a 5 percentage point increase in the next
cohort, followed by a 2 percentage point increase in the
youngest cohort. Looking at this huge jump for ages 0-
14 implies that the older generation of Muslims who gave
birth to these kids i.e. 24-39 years had a large number of
kids compared to Hindus or there was large infiltration
of Bangladeshi Muslims.
The next two tables 2.6 and 2.7 show the rural-urban
breakup for Muslim population in the different age groups.
There are few things to notice here. First, Assam (also
West Bengal) had a higher Muslim population in the ru-
ral areas in the old cohort. This is different from rest of
the country as in the rest of country, urban areas usually
have higher Muslim population. The British had started
settling Muslim peasantry in the lower Assam, mainly
in the composite Goalpara and to a lesser extent Kam-
rup districts, from several districts of what later became
Bangladesh. Since then and especially after 1971, these
numbers have only increased in the rural areas. Second,
the percentage of Muslims in the young cohort are 47%
in the rural areas, so rural Assam will be the first to
turn Muslim majority among all red zone states
in the future. Third, the urban areas had much smaller
Muslim population to start with in the older cohort, but
it has also almost doubled to 25% in the 0-4 year gener-
ation. So, even urban Assam is witnessing a fast demo-
graphic transition.
Out of total 24 districts, 12 districts in Assam are
already over 40% Muslims in the 0-4 age group, which
are given in table 2.8. Out of these twelve districts, nine
36 2. THE EXPLOSION
Figure 2.3: Percentage of Muslims in Assam

have above 60% Muslim share in the youngest cohort.

Most of these districts have made tremendous gains over
the past 50 years.
Barpeta, Darrand, Goalpara, Nagaonm, Karimganj,
Bagaigaon, Marigaon, Karmup and Nalbari have added
20 percentage points to the population from older age co-
hort to the young. Out of these districts Cachar, Nalbari
and Kamrup were all around 30% in the older cohort and
are now almost close to achieving Muslim majority in the
younger cohort.
District 0-4 yrs 50-54 yrs Total

Dhuburi 87.70 71.34 79.67
Barpeta 82.61 60.16 70.74
Darrang 77.84 51.13 64.34
Goalpara 68.79 49.81 57.52
Nagaon 67.97 43.80 55.36
Karimganj 67.40 46.02 56.36
Hailakandi 66.77 53.47 60.31
Bongaigaon 65.71 38.86 50.22
Marigaon 64.41 42.75 52.56
Kamrup 52.46 31.93 39.66
Nalbari 49.81 27.41 35.96
Cachar 44.43 31.37 37.71
Table 2.8: Assam districts- Muslim population (%)
Just to put it in historical context, the number of

Muslims in Assam in 2011 are 1.07 crore; up from 5 lakh
in 1901 and around 20 lakh in 1951 census. The number
of Dharmics in this period has gone up from 28 lakhs
in 1901 to 1.94 crore now. Thus Muslims have multi-
plied nearly 22 times, while Hindus less than 7 times.
In terms of population gains, Assam has seen one of the
most lop-sided demographic transitions in the history of
38 2. THE EXPLOSION
independent India, right under the nose of the Indian gov-

ernment. So, while immense time and energy has been
spent on resolving the ethnic conflict in Assam, but the
real issue of demographics has always been pushed under
the carpet by the Delhi elites.
West Bengal
The neighbouring state of West Bengal has not fared
any better than Assam in terms of mitigating demo-
graphic disaster. The border districts of West Bengal
have seen equal amounts of change in their demography
like Assam. Under the successive state governments in
West Bengal, it seems there was a clear policy of giv-
ing shelter to immigrants from Bangladesh for building a
captive voter base. This policy is only coming to haunt
now.
In terms of overall picture, West Bengal currently
stands at 34.9% Muslim share in the 0-4 age group. It has
increased by more than 14 percentage point from the 50-
54 generation, where the Muslim share stood at 20.5%.
It is also important to mention that out of these 14 per-
centage point gain, 9 points have been gained in the last
25 years i.e. from 25-29 age cohort to 0-4 age cohort, in-
dicating how population growth explodes once you have
a higher Muslim share. The driving force behind high
Muslim population in Bengal is through the rural areas,
which stand at 37.4% share of Muslims in the youngest
age group, compared to urban areas where this number
is 27.8%.
Compared to Assam, there is a big difference in the
case of West Bengal. The Muslim population is primar-
ily concentrated in lower Assam, while the upper districts
(roughly half of Assam) have less than 10% Muslim pop-
ulation. On the other hand, the entire West Bengal has
become coloured and has significant Muslim presence.
Figure 2.4: Percentage of Muslims in West Bengal

40 2. THE EXPLOSION

Murshidabad 73.74 59.02 66.27
Uttar Dinajpur 58.58 43.24 49.92
Maldah 56.93 44.95 51.27
South 24 Parganas 46.65 26.14 35.57
Birbhum 42.90 31.32 37.06
Table 2.9: West Bengal districts- Muslim population (%)
The Muslim population in West Bengal is more spread

out, moving from the high concentration border regions
to lower concentration interior regions, but still above
10% share. While the border districts are either dark
green or red, the inner districts have started to turn light
green.
Out of nineteen districts shown in the map of West
Bengal, five districts have more than 40% Muslim share
in the youngest age group. Most of these districts are
along the border with Bangladesh. Apart from them,
many other districts along the border too have 30% share
of Muslims in 0-4 age cohort.
The districts of Maldah, Uttar Dijnapur and Mur-
shidabad are already Muslim majority with Murshidabad
having the largest 73.7% Muslim population in the 0-4
age cohort. Birbhum and South 24 Parganas are in the
40% plus category. If one only looks at the total pop-
ulation, the Muslim share would not seem very high in
these districts except Murshidabd. But the younger age
cohorts show much rapid increase, something which is
hidden by the aggregate numbers. The crucial districts
of West Bengal are shown in table 2.9.
Kerala
Kerala is the southern most state in India and is
Figure 2.5: Percentage of Muslims in Kerala

42 2. THE EXPLOSION

Malappuram 78.02 62.59 70.24
Kozhikode 52.20 30.24 39.24
Kasaragod 49.76 26.30 37.24
Kannur 41.98 20.33 29.43
Table 2.10: Kerala districts- Muslim population (%)
severely under the red-zone. Given that this state is

under the influence of another big Abrahamic faith i.e.
Christianity, Hindus face a double assault here. Thanks
to the presence of these two population groups, Hindus
in Kerala are already below 50% in the lowest age cohort.
Apart from rural Assam, urban Kerala is the
only region which has gone past 40% Muslim share
in the 0-4 age cohort. The overall share of Muslims
in Kerala stands at 37.3% in the 0-4 age cohort, up from
19.3% in 50-54 age cohort. So, the Muslim share has
just doubled between the two generations separated by
50 years. In terms of percentage points gain, Kerala’s
gain is even larger than Assam.
Kerala has uniformaly lost Hindu demography both
in the urban and rural areas. The loss has been more
prominent in the urban areas where Muslim population
jumped from 21.1% to 40.6% from the old to the young
cohort. The rural areas saw slighly smaller gains as the
Muslim population now stands at 34.3% in 0-4 age group,
up from 17.6% in 50-54 age group.
But looking at Muslim demography alone gives an
incomplete picture as Kerala also has a large presence of
Christians. While north Kerala has more Muslims, south
has a large Christian population.
The details of all religious groups in Kerala are pre-
sented in table 2.11. Kerala has 59% Hindus, 21.4%
Christians and 19.3% Muslims in the 50-54 age cohort.

While the Hindus and Christians have both seen a sharp
fall in their shares, Muslims have expanded at their ex-
pense. Now in the 0-4 age cohort, Hindus have lost the
majority and contribute only 46.7% to the total popu-
lation, while Muslims and Christians contribute 37.3%
and 15.5% respectively. Thus the Muslims have replaced
Christians from the second spot and are now ahead of
them by a large margin. While in the 50-54 age co-
hort Christians were 21.4%, they are only 15.5% now
and much behind 37.3% Muslims in the state.
The change in Muslim population of Kerala is shown
in figure 2.5. As you can see from this figure, the Muslims
are dominant in the north of Kerala where their popu-
lation has reached above 40% in four districts in the 0-4
age cohort.
The most Muslim dominant district is Malappuram
where their population has gone from 62.6% in 50-54 age
cohort to 78% in the youngest age cohort as shown in
table 2.10. The other very notable addition to this list is
Kozhikode, Kasargod which have 52.2% and 49.8% Mus-
lims in the 0-4 age group. Both these districts had around
30% Muslims in 50-54 age group and have thus gained
more than 20 percentage points in between generations
separated by 50 years. The last district in above 40% cat-
egory is Kannur, which again added 20 percentage points
between these two age groups. The other two dark green
districts (>30% Muslim share) in the 0-4 age groups are
Wayanad and Palakkad and are on their way to join other
north Kerala districts.
Another important point to notice from figure 2.5 is
that now Muslims have a considerable presence in all
the coastal districts of Kerala, including even the South.
While Thrissur, Ernakulam and Kollam have turned green
i.e. 20% plus in 0-4 age group, Alappuzha and Thiru-
44 2. THE EXPLOSION
Age Group Hindu Muslim Christian

0-4 46.67 37.32 15.48
5-9 48.11 34.74 16.75
10-14 50.02 32.00 17.62
15-19 50.44 32.05 17.17
20-24 52.04 32.15 15.46
25-29 54.86 29.48 15.33
30-34 56.06 26.97 16.67
35-39 57.70 24.13 17.90
40-44 58.44 21.46 19.84
45-49 59.54 19.90 20.31
50-54 59.02 19.30 21.44
55-59 59.16 18.96 21.64
60-64 59.78 18.42 21.56
65-69 59.47 19.01 21.28
70-74 59.88 16.67 23.20
75-79 60.20 15.07 24.47
80+ 59.18 14.06 26.43
All ages 54.73 26.56 18.38
Table 2.11: Kerala: % of Religions (Census 2011)

vananthapuram have Muslim population between 10-20%.

If these districts also show same growth rate as other
northern Kerala districts, we can expect that south Ker-
ala will also have around 50% Muslims in another 50
years.
The Christians in Kerala are concentrated mostly in
Kottayam, Idukki and Ernakulam, where they still hold
majority but are shrinking fast just like their Hindu coun-
terparts in the other parts of Kerala.
What can we learn from the growth of Muslims in
Kerala? The case of Kerala should be an eye opener for
Hindus on a very broad level as it bursts many myths
that are being perpetuated in the media and academia.
Firstly, Kerala has low TFR for Muslims as compared
to their counterparts in rest of India, but it is still sig-
nificantly higher than both Hindus and Christians there.2
Secondly, it has high literacy for all religious groups which
bursts another popular myth that literate Muslims are
not interested in increasing their demographic share. Al-
though, partially the blame can be laid on Hindus and
Christians of Kerala as well because their fertility has
been below replacement for a very long time now while
Muslims maintained it well above the replacement level
of 2.1. In any case, Kerala shows how TFR differential
does not really decrease with increase in Muslim literacy.
Thirdly, there are no big differences in Muslim popula-
tion growth in the urban and rural areas. This again puts
to rest the theory that it is only the rural Muslims who
contribute more to the Muslim population growth.
Uttar Pradesh
The state of Uttar Pradesh has around 21.3% Muslim
population and so one might be surprised that we classi-
2
Discussed extensively in the next chapter
46 2. THE EXPLOSION
fied it under the red zone. The biggest reason that UP is

listed in the red zone is due to alarming rise in the num-
ber of Muslims in west UP and all along the border with
Nepal. Since UP is the most populated state, it is easy
to miss the real picture by looking at the whole state.
The story of UP unfolds only after looking at different
regions within UP separately.
Unlike Assam and West Bengal, the Muslim popu-
lation explosion in UP is happening in the urban areas.
The urban population in UP went up from 25.3% in 50-
54 age cohort to 37% in the 0-4 age group i.e. up by 11.7
percentage points. The rural areas on the other hand
have seen a smaller growth from 12.9% to 17.7% for the
same age groups. Since, UP still has a significant amount
of rural population, it brings down the population share
of Muslims in all age groups, but the urban numbers are
nevertheless very alarming3 . If the current trends con-
tinue, many urban centres in UP will see dominance of
Muslims in the urban politics.
The two most important regions to look out for in UP
are- western UP, where the Muslim population shares
have already reached alarming position and second the
districts which lie along the Nepal border. Most of these
districts have gained more than 10 percentage points be-
tween the 0-4 and 50-54 age groups. Both of these re-
gions are extremely important as west UP is right next
to Delhi, the seat of power of the Indian nation state,
while the districts along Nepal border are sensitive due
to possibility of infiltration by Pakistan and China.
West UP: The west UP region has been raising the de-
mand for becoming a separate state called Harit Pradesh
(Green State) for quite some time now since it is one of
the prime agricultural regions in India. While the de-
3
A good survey of UP towns is given here by CPS.
Figure 2.6: Percentage of Muslims in UP

48 2. THE EXPLOSION
Figure 2.7: Percentage of Muslims in Bihar

mand for Harit Pradesh has not materialized, it has in-

stead turned green in another way by becoming a Muslim
dominated region.
Out of all the districts in west UP, seven already
have 40%+ share of Muslims in the youngest age cohort.
These districts are Muzzafarnagar, Moradabad, Rampur,
Saharanpur, Meerut, Bijnor and Amroha. Most of these
districts have seen tremendous jump in the Muslim de-
mography with 10 plus percentage point increase between
the two age groups. It is important to note here that the
other districts like Baghpat and Ghaziabad are also dark
green (30% plus Muslims) in this region.

Rampur 51.29 48.00 50.57
Moradabad 50.70 41.20 47.12
Muzaffarnagar 50.48 31.31 41.30
Saharanpur 48.98 33.23 41.95
Bijnor 48.47 36.68 43.04
Amroha 43.78 36.44 40.78
Meerut 42.87 25.43 34.43
Table 2.12: UP districts- Muslim population (%)
It can thus be said that after Assam, West Bengal and

Kerala, if any region is a true red and alarming zone,
it has to be west UP. After Assam, west UP has the
maximum number of red or near red districts which are
equal to seven. The other districts in the region are also
catching up quickly with their counterparts in the region.
Since, the region is very close to New Delhi, it has im-
portant security considerations for the future.
The districts along the border with Nepal are no bet-
ter than west UP. We can see that Bahraich, Shravasti
and Balarampur have turned dark green in the lowest age
50 2. THE EXPLOSION
cohort and will probably turn red very soon in the future.
The other border districts have also not fared any bet-
ter and we see a general increase in Muslim share from
Lakhimpur Khiri to Siddharth Nagar. Since these dis-
tricts lie on the porous border with Nepal, it can create
significant security problems in the future by providing
easy infiltration routes into Indian territory.
Bihar
Bihar too has seen rapid explosion in Muslim popu-
lation in the border areas with Nepal and West Bengal.
Among the red zone states, it is still below 20% but it
has many sensitive districts and it’s urban Muslim pop-
ulation is already 23.3% in the 0-4 age cohort. Bihar is
one of the least urbanized states in India but its Muslim
population share mimics the rest of India statistics, with
slightly higher Muslim population in the urban areas as
compared to the rural.
In overall terms, the share of Muslims in Bihar has
risen from 15.2% in the 50-54 age group to 18.7% in the
youngest age group, thus adding 3.5 percentage points
between the two generations separated by 50 years. While
the rural population share jumped from 15% to 18.2%,
the urban share increased from 16.8% to 23.3%, i.e. a 6.5
percentage point change.
The geographical population distribution of Muslims
for the two age groups in Bihar is shown in figure 2.7.
There is a clear geographical pattern in the growth of
Muslims in the state. Most of the Muslim growth has
happened in the border districts, while many of the cen-
tral districts still have less than 10% Muslim population
in the younger cohorts. The increase in the border dis-
tricts along Nepal has been much more pronounced and
the same is true to those near West Bengal.
There are four Bihar districts which have more than

Kishanganj 69.83 65.31 67.97
Katihar 48.57 39.45 44.46
Araria 47.86 39.08 42.94
Purnia 42.03 34.79 38.46
Table 2.13: Bihar districts- Muslim population (%)
40% share of Muslims in the 0-4 age cohort. These dis-

tricts are Araria, Purnia, Katihar and Kishanganj. Kis-
hanganj has the highest share among these all where the
population of Muslims in 0-4 age group is 69.8%. The im-
portant feature of all these districts is that they all are
close to the chicken neck region of West Bengal. All these
districts have added roughly around 10 percentage points
in the Muslim population in 0-4 age group as compared
to the 50-54 age cohort except Kishanganj. Compared
to West Bengal, Kerala or Assam, this is smaller, as the
previous states added more than 10 percentage points
during the same time. This can again be explained by
the fact that Hindu fertility in Bihar has not crashed like
in these other states. The average Bihari Hindu still has
more kids compared to his counterpart in West Bengal.
Apart from these four districts, the Muslim popula-

tion has also reached more than 20% in Pashchim Cham-
paran, Puraba Champaran, Sitamarhi, Madhubani, Dar-
bangha and Supaul in the younger age cohort. All of
these districts again lie along the border with Nepal.
Once put together with the districts of UP, it forms one
big arc of high Muslim population concentration along
the entire border with Nepal.
52 2. THE EXPLOSION
2.3 The Orange zone states

The orange zone states do not have as alarming demo-
graphics as the red zone states but are close to getting
there. The Muslim demographics in these states mimic
those of red zone states just a few decades ago. Thus the
orange zone states of today will form red zone states of
tomorrow. The states under orange-zone are-
• Uttarakhand
• Jharkhand
• Haryana
• Maharashtra
• Karnataka
• Jammu & Kashmir
There are other reasons for importance of these or-

ange zone states. One, these states have seen a phe-
nomenal demographic change. Two, they lie next to the
other red-zone states and hence would see (or have al-
ready seen) a huge spill-over in their border districts.
Uttarakhand
Uttarakhand was carved out as a separate state by
the then NDA government in 2002. It has actually seen
the highest increase in the total Muslim population be-
tween the two censuses conducted in 2001 and 2011 and
the numbers jumped from 11.9% to 13.95%, i.e. roughly
two percentage points. It is more surprising because this
two percentage point increase happened on a low base of
11.9%.
2.3. THE ORANGE ZONE STATES 53
Figure 2.8: Percentage of Muslims in Uttarakhand

54 2. THE EXPLOSION
Although in our classification, Uttarakhand is not in

the red zone but it has been one of the biggest gainers
in the last years and the growth of Muslim population
has just been phenomenal. The share of Muslim popu-
lation is 17.6% in the 0-4 age cohort compared to 8.8%
in the 50-54 age cohort and looks much worse than what
comes out by comparing 2001 and 2011 census. This
means that within a span of 50 years, Muslim share has
almost doubled. This is a spectacular growth given the
fact that Muslims were less than 10% in the old cohort,
thus making their gains much more difficult. Even UP
and Bihar with much higher Muslim population share in
the old cohort did not add 9 percentage points to the
youngest cohort. Only Assam, Jammu & Kashmir and
Kerala added more percentage points than Uttarakhand
in such a short period of time.
The figure 2.8 shows this tremendous increase in the
Muslim population. Only two districts are green in 50-54
age cohort, but there are four districts which are green in
the youngest age cohort. The four districts of Haridwar,
Dehradun, Nainital, and Udham Singh Nagar went from
completely white to extremely dark colored. Haridwar
and Udham Singh Nagar district are specially interesting
since they became orange and dark green respectively.
This is a very alarming case as demography moves
slowly at low percentage levels and Uttarakhand should
not have seen such sudden transition in demography. One
of the potential reasons could be spillover of extra mi-
grants from neighbouring West UP districts. Two, out
migration of local Hindu population. Although the sec-
ond seems less likely since the Tarai districts of the new
hill state should see population inflow from rest of the
hill regions in Uttarakhand, due to the new economic
opportunities which should be available in the new hill
state.
Given that southern Uttarakhand sits next to West-

ern UP with Haridwar, Udham Singh Nagar and Nainital
on the border, it will create a multi-state demographic
problem in the future. What caused this phenomenal
upsurge in Muslim population in these border districts
should be a matter of concern for everyone. Uttarak-
hand hosts the most popular religious shrines of Hindus
in the Himalayas and having a big Muslim population in
the Tarai region can easily block access to these shrines
high up in the mountains. It is not just a delusion to
think that in the future, government will have to provide
Amarnath style security to the Hindu pilgrims who wish
to travel to Uttarakhand.
Haryana
Although Haryana currently does not have as big a
Muslim population as the other orange zone states but
it has seen significant increase in the percentage of Mus-
lims in some of its districts, which is very alarming. The
most alarming reason to include Haryana here is due to
the sheer increase in numbers that it has seen. Haryana
went from 4.23% Muslims in 50-54 age cohort to 11.51%
in the youngest cohort. While the number of Muslim per-
centage share just doubled in case of Uttarakhand, in case
of Harayana it increased almost 2.5 times. This makes
the share growth of Muslims in Haryana even steeper.
Apart from such rapid growth, there are other rea-
sons for importance of Haryana. One, it lies west of Ya-
muna i.e. right across the red-zone regions of west UP. So
any communal tensions erupting in UP can quickly grip
Haryana. Two, it lies next to Delhi where the southern
border has the green regions of Mewat, Faridabad and
Palwal. Rise of Muslim population in this regions com-
pletes the encirclement of Delhi with west UP on the east
and Mewati districts to the south of Delhi.
56 2. THE EXPLOSION
Figure 2.9: Percentage of Muslims in Haryana


Mewat 85.42 71.63 83.85
Palwal 28.29 14.28 20.00
Faridabad 12.45 5.57 8.93
Alwar 22.38 10.07 14.90
Bharatpur 21.68 10.66 14.57
Table 2.14: Mewat Region- Muslim population (%)
The growth of Muslim population in these districts of

Haryana has been very phenomenal, not seen anywhere
else in India. Mewat is the most stark among these dis-
tricts where Muslims now have almost complete demo-
graphic hold in the lowest age group. As we will show in
the latter chapter on TFR trends, Haryana is an outlier
with an average Muslim woman having a Total Fertil-
ity Rate above 5 even in the recent period, thus giving
Haryana the biggest TFR gap between Hindus and Mus-
lims.
The historical region of Mewat also extends to the
eastern districts of Rajasthan and thus it is important to
look at these regions together to get a holistic picture.
The rise in Muslim share in the two districts of Alwar
and Bharatpur again is more than 10 percentage points
between the two age groups. The Muslims in these two
Rajasthan districts have become from 10% to 22% be-
tween the two cohorts separated by 50 years. Outside the
red zone states, this kind of change is difficult but very
easily achieved by Muslims of Mewat.
Given such rapid population increase, it is important
to look into the beliefs of Muslims in this area and high-
light some important historical facts. The region is home
to Meo Muslims of the fundamentalist Tablighi Jamat.
This was not always the case though as early Meos like
58 2. THE EXPLOSION
the other forced converts in the middle ages were hardly

interested in the core Islamic practices for a very long
period. But this changed in the early 1900s when un-
der Maulana Muhammad Ilyas and Tablighi Jamat, the
Islam practised in the region became fundamentalist.
The results were soon for everyone to see as the Meos
in this region first revolted against the Hindu rulers of
Bharatpur. This was then followed by large scale parti-
tion riots in Gurgaon, Alwar and Bharatpur. Unlike the
Muslims of western UP who were offered protection by
the local Khaps, the Meos given their fundamentalism
garnered no Hindu sympathy. A large number of Meos
died in these riots and got displaced, but soon after in-
dependence they returned back to Mewat once the hos-
tilities subsided (although a few migrated to Pakistan).
Jharkhand
Jharkhand was carved out of erstwhile Bihar by the
last NDA government in 2002. It had a decent Muslim
population before as reflected in the 50-54 year cohort,
which was 11.73% of the total. For the 0-4 age cohort,
those numbers have now jumped to 16.95%. The two dis-
tricts of Sahibganj and Pakaur, which lie next to West
Bengal and near the sensitive area of chicken neck, join-
ing India with the other north-east states, have seen the
highest Muslim growth.
Other than the southern districts of Jharkhand, all
the districts in the north have seen a big change, though
not as big as Sahibganj and Pakur. The two north-
eastern districts of Jharkhand have seen more than 11
percentage point addition to the Muslim share in the 0-4
age cohort. In terms of gains the other districts which
have seen similar 10 percentage point jump are Jamatara
and Deoghar.
But these stats do not show that southern Jharkhand
is any better demographically for the Hindus. Jharkhand

Hindus are caught in the middle of a pincer movement
with the increase in Muslims in the northern districts,
while the rise of Christians in the south. After Kerala,
Jharkhand is another state with a significant number of
Christians. Although unlike Kerala, where Christians are
reducing, the Christians are increasing in Jharkhand due
to the possible prevalence of conversion mafia in the tribal
south.
The entire region south of Ranchi has been under the
grip of Christian conversions. Given the stealthy nature
of these conversions, the hard data would not reflect the
current numbers totally. But there are enough who have
declared themselves as Christians. The total Abrahamic
population in Ranchi is above 20% in the 0-4 age cohort
as shown in table 2.15. The numbers for these two re-
ligions are definitely inching up. The aggregate district
numbers do not show the rise in Christian figures which is
much higher if looked at the Tehsil level, pointing towards
concentration of Christian pockets just like the Muslims.

Ranchi 21.15 18.48 20.75
Purbi Singhbhum 10.27 9.01 10.20
Saraikela-Kharsawan 7.93 5.18 6.73
Table 2.15: South Jharkhand- Muslim and Christian

population (%)
Maharashtra
Not only Maharashtra is an important economic hub
of India but even historically it has been an important
seat for Hinduism, because it was here that Shivaji un-
furled the Saffron flag, which ultimately led to the decline
of Mughal kingdom and return of the brief but important
60 2. THE EXPLOSION
Figure 2.10: Percentage of Muslims in Jharkhand

Figure 2.11: Percentage of Muslims in Maharashtra

62 2. THE EXPLOSION
period of Hindu Raj. But currently, the Muslim popu-

lation share in Maharashtra has gone up from 8.97% in
the old cohort to 13.96% in the young cohort.
Maharashtra is in orange zone because its 10 districts
turned from white to green in the 0-4 age cohort. It
is a tremendous growth over a wide swathe of territory.
Not only a large number of districts have crossed the
psychological threshold of 10% but those already green
have turned darker.
The most phenomenal rise of Muslims has been in
Mumbai region and then followed by Aurangabad and
Akola. The rise in Muslim population in some of the
major districts of Maharashtra is shown in table 2.16.
Both Mumbai and its suburban districts have seen 13%
increase in the share of Muslims in the youngest age co-
hort, which almost matches the fertility zeal of the Meo
Muslims in Mewat.

Mumbai 32.34 18.90 25.06
Mumbai Suburban 26.00 13.27 19.19
Akola 24.37 14.58 19.70
Aurangabad 25.15 17.69 21.25
Table 2.16: Maharashtra- Muslim population (%)
Mumbai is the financial capital of the country and

attracts migrants from all over the country, so it is a bit
alarming to see this increase only in the population of
Muslims. It is not possible that it is attracting only the
Muslim immigrants with young children such that it has
caused this big imbalance in demography.
Mumbai is dominated by a class of Muslims, who if
we believe the media stalwarts, are primarily interested
in business. So what will explain this change in demog-

raphy? Is it migration or high fertility of Muslims? Only
migration cannot explain it as it is impossible to be-
lieve that the financial capital only attracts the Muslims.
There is something deeper at play which is not reflected
by the aggregate statistics.
Mumbai has been host to one of the worst riots in the
history of post-independence India. Did it permanently
alter the psyche of local Muslims to opt for their safety
in numbers? It is not that otherwise Muslims do not care
about high fertility, but probably the riots gave further
impetus to carry out the womb jihad.
The side effects of the rise in Muslim population is al-
ready felt in the residential areas of Mumbai. One of the
incidents was related to sacrificing goats on Bakrid. It
is a known unwritten (sometimes written) rule through-
out the world to not slaughter animals in the residential
premises due to hygiene issues. But it is an insufficient
reason for many practising Muslims, even though it might
be a point of objection by other residents. This led to
minor problems and scuffles in many housing societies
across Mumbai recently.
Ghettoization is the response to save oneself from
such indecency, where the two communities decide to
keep their contacts to the bare minimum and definitely
not live in the same premises. But this hurts the upscale
Muslims who try to move to posh societies but are denied
due to past precedents of their community members. As
an end result, the Maharashtra government is now plan-
ning to intervene through legislation to stop such dis-
crimination, but will it work? Or rather- does it look
at the problem holistically? How many people would be
happy with allowing unhygienic slaughter in their resi-
dential premises?
All in all, these problems will look like a minor side
64 2. THE EXPLOSION
show once the demography of Mumbai is altered com-

pletely. After the encirclement of Delhi, the political cap-
ital, by West UP and Mewat regions, the financial capital
i.e. Mumbai has been internally engulfed by home grown
Muslims. In summary, we can say that the two cities are
sitting on a cusp of big demographic churning.
Karnataka
Other than Maharashtra, Karnataka is the other state
where large swathes of geography has turned green. As
many as nine district moved above the threshold 10%
population level among the 0-4 age cohort as seen in fig-
ure 2.12. On the aggregate level, Karnataka moved from
having 10.22% Muslims in 50-54 age cohort to 15.74% in
the youngest cohort.
Except four disticts, rest of the districts in Karnataka
are already above 10% Muslim in the 0-4 age cohort.
Even out of these four, two are already above 9% and
must have crossed 10% threshold as we write this book.
The changes in Karnataka have been most notable in
the southernmost and northernmost districts. Both in
Dakshin Kannad and Kodagu in the south, the Mus-
lim share has more than doubled between the two gen-
erations. These districts are next to northern Kerala
and seem to be heavily influenced by that. Whether
this change is brought naturally by high Muslim TFR
or through infiltration of Keralite Muslims is a question
which cannot be answered by looking at aggregate num-
bers. In terms of gainers in the north, Bidar and Gul-
barga, both now have more than 20% Muslims in the 0-4
age cohort.
What has happened in southern Karnataka is not any
less phenomenal than what happened in northern Kerala
districts. Both in Dakshin Kannada and Kodagu, Mus-
lims have more than doubled their share as shown in table
Figure 2.12: Percentage of Muslims in Karnataka

66 2. THE EXPLOSION

Total
Dakshin Kannada 34.82 16.53 24.02
Kodagu 21.73 10.83 15.74
Dharwad 24.18 16.77 20.94
Bidar 22.19 15.98 19.68
Urban
Karnataka 26.76 16.71 21.20
Bidar 40.53 28.78 35.20
Gulbarga 39.98 30.01 35.16
Dakshin Kannada 39.90 18.59 27.23
Dharwad 33.11 20.72 27.24
Kodagu 31.81 18.59 24.25
Table 2.17: Karnataka districts-Muslim population (%)
2.17. The other district which comes close to such gains

is Dharwad and is located in the centre.
Another important fact which comes out of table 2.17
is that the gains in Karnataka are primarily made in the
urban centres. The overall urban population in 0-4 age
group in whole Karnataka is 26.76% and higher than the
all India level. The districts which are below 30% in total
Muslim share are inching or are already above 40% in 0-4
age cohort. This implies that the future urban politics
in Karnataka, some 2-3 decades down the line when 0-4
age cohort becomes young, will be predominantly driven
by Muslims.
To summarize, the gains made by Muslim popula-
tion are well dispersed over the whole Karnataka region
(specially urban centres), with the prominent gains being
made in the south. This should be a cause of concern as
combined together with the neighbouring high Muslim
concentration districts of northern Kerala, it would form

a big region of Muslim dominance and create multi-state
problem in case of communal flare-ups in any of these
southern states.
Jammu & Kashmir

The state of Jammu & Kashmir is actually more red
than even the red zone states. The only reason it is not
included in the red zone states is that it is the well known
Muslim dominated state in India, being the only one as
of now. The stranglehold of Muslims in the valley region
has been complete since the forced expulsion of Kashmiri
Pandits. What is left now is just the finishing touches to
the almost complete historical genocide business.
It is still noteworthy to document the changes in the
majority Islamic districts of Kashmir Valley. At the top
lies those districts which were almost 100% Islamic, i.e.
those in the valley region. Although the change from 50-
54 to 0-4 age cohort is hardly 1-2% gains for the Muslims,
but it shows the unrelenting nature of the Islamic jihad.
Never stop till it is absolutely complete. The template
followed in these districts is no different than Pakistan
or Bangladesh, except that these districts very well lie
inside the borders of India.
At the second level are the districts like Doda and
Rajouri, which are going from marginally Muslim domi-
nated to fully Muslim dominated. Rajouri is more spe-
cial because there the Muslim population has grown from
58.0% in the 50-54 age cohort to 71.8% in the 0-4 group.
Doda too has become 58.2% Muslim as compared to
50.1% in the older cohort.
The third set of districts are those which are not Mus-
lim majority but have still seen rapid growth in the Mus-
lim numbers. In this set on one side are the Jammu
division districts of Jammu, Udhampur and Kathua and
68 2. THE EXPLOSION
Figure 2.13: Percentage of Muslims in J & K

2.4. OTHER STATES 69
on the other is the Ladakh region. While the first set

of districts has seen 3-4% increase in the Muslim popu-
lation in 0-4 age group, Ladakh had seen an almost 5%
increase.
The story of J&K again solidifies the maxim of Mus-
lim aggression- whatever is mine is mine, but what is
yours is also mine. The erasure of remnants of any Hindu
demography in Kashmir valley plus the continued dilu-
tion of the Hindu demography in Jammu and Ladakh
regions seems to be the policy of this state.
But the pro-Muslim governments of J&K do not seem
to be satisfied with the speed of overall Muslim takeover
of the state through high Muslim fertility and have hence
decided to import Muslim Rohingyas and strategically
place them in the Hindu dominated Jammu. Accord-
ing to many sources, the current Rohingya strength in
Jammu is supposedly above 10,000 4 . Why didn’t the
bleeding heart Muslims of Kashmir valley settle the Ro-
hingyas in their own region rather than offload them on
the Hindu region of Jammu? Is this how the government
wants to protect the minority Hindus in Jammu & Kash-
mir by creating similar situation which led to the ouster
of Kashmiri Pandits in the 90s?
2.4 Other States

Apart from the eleven states mentioned in the previous
two sections, the other states too have seen burgeoning
Muslim demographics. These states may not see demo-
graphic inversion today but will form the orange or red
zone states tomorrow. We will quickly mention some de-
tails and notable factors from these states.
4
Hindustan Times report
70 2. THE EXPLOSION
Rajasthan
Rajasthan bore the brunt of very first Islamic inva-
sions in northern India but still somehow managed to
keep its Hindu character. This character is increasingly
changing with the pop-up of new districts with 10% plus
Muslim share in the 0-4 age cohort. There are three dis-
tricts currently above 20% share of Muslims- Jaisalmer,
Alwar and Bharatpur. The last two were already covered
in the discussion on Mewat region of Haryana.
The most noticeable development in Rajasthan has
been in the border districts with Pakistan. Both Jaisalmer
and Barmer have seen rapid increase in the Muslim de-
mographics. Although it is not as steep as in Alwar
and Bharatpur, but it has important geo-strategic con-
siderations given permanent rivalry with Pakistan, a self-
proclaimed Islamic hegemon neighbour. Having a large
Muslim population in these border districts will only in-
crease the burden on the security apparatus in India.
Gujarat
Like the neighbouring Rajasthan. Gujarat too has
seen rapid increase in Muslim population in all districts
but specially in the border districts. Gujarat has a spe-
cial significance because it is supposedly assumed to be
the laboratory of Hindutava. Looking at the number of
districts which turned green or dark green in colour, it
seems the laboratory is inconsequential in front of the
Islamic demographic machine.
The largest gains have been made in Kachchh, Jam-
nagar and Junagadh- more than 6%. There are many
other districts which have added 3-4 percentage points.
In summary, Gujarat has been no different than any other
state in India. The whole noise that Gujarat is the pin-
nacle of anti-minority politics has not made even a small
dent in the Muslim population growth. It has increased
by leaps and bounds just like in the other states.
Madhya Pradesh
Although the situation of Madhya Pradesh does not
look that precarious right now, but fact of the matter
is that it has added six new districts to the green zone.
Apart from these new additions, two districts now have
above 20% share of Muslims in the 0-4 age group. The
districts of Indore, Burhanpur, Bhopal and Shajapur have
all added around 5% to the share of Muslims in the
youngest cohort.
Andhra Pradesh
Andhra Pradesh is another important state and his-
torically has been the hub of Razakars of the erstwhile
era. Here, we show the figure for the entire Andhra
Pradesh when it was not divided between Andhra Pradesh
and Telangana.
The number of green districts in AP have increased
from 4 to 10 in the youngest age group. The most notable
jump has been in Hyderabad where the Muslim share
has jumped from 36.7% to 49.5%. So Hyderabad must
have become majority Muslim in the youngest age cohort,
as we write this book. Other districts which have seen
notable changes are Nizamabad, Cuddapah, Medak and
Adilabad all of which registered more than 4% change.
Apart from the high Muslim shares in the old Raza-
kar dominated Hyderabad region, Andhra Pradesh is also
known to be on high priority of the Christian conversion
machine. It is difficult to ascertain the number of true
Christians in AP since they increased till 1971 but have
shown a decline since then, at least in the official census.
Since the converts from lower castes lose their reservation
benefits on conversion, it is a prevalent theory that many
of the nouveau converts hide their true identity from the
72 2. THE EXPLOSION
Figure 2.14: Percentage of Muslims in Rajasthan

Figure 2.15: Percentage of Muslims in Gujarat

74 2. THE EXPLOSION
Figure 2.16: Percentage of Muslims in MadhyaPradesh

Figure 2.17: Percentage of Muslims in Andhra Pradesh

76 2. THE EXPLOSION
Figure 2.18: Percentage of Muslims in Tamil Nadu

2.5. THE TWO SECURITY NIGHTMARES 77
secular establishment in order to continue receiving the

benefits. Since the major focus of this work is not on enu-
merating the number of Christians, we leave this equally
important task for another time up until we can prove
these theories credibly.
Tamil Nadu
It is another big state and next to the red zone state of
Kerala. Any problems in the neighbouring Kerala would
sooner or later spill over into the state of Tamil Nadu.
Although Tamil Nadu does not look very green as
of now, but that is due to historically low presence of
Muslims in all districts which is changing now. While
it had only one green district in 50-54 age cohort, the
number of green districts in the 0-4 age group has gone
up to 6. Only Ramanathapuram had 10% plus Muslim
population in the older cohort, which has now increased
to 18.2%. Apart from Ramanathapuram, Vellore, Nilgiris
and Chennai have shown high gains in the range of 4%.
2.5 The two security nightmares
In terms of threat potential from the growing population

of Muslims, not all regions will be affected at the same
level or simultaneously. The riots in Assam in early 2011
and in Muzzafarnagar in 2013 were only a prelude to the
times that lie ahead. Similar to pre-partition situation
one can blame this on opportunistic politicians and state
irresponsibility, but that will once again amount to for-
getting the elephant in the room i.e. demography. One
can always come up with such scapegoat.
78 2. THE EXPLOSION
2.5.1 Chicken Neck

Chicken neck is the narrow stretch of land connecting
India to its north-eastern states and lie in the state of
West Bengal. The importance of this area can be gauged
by the fact that in some areas, chicken neck is hardly 27
km wide. If the enemy states capture the chicken neck,
they can easily cut the only land connection to the north-
east.
We are well aware of the increasing Muslim stronghold
in the border districts of West Bengal but it is increas-
ingly so in and around the chicken neck. The demo-
graphic changes in the chicken neck area can be seen from
figure 2.19. If you look carefully, the developments in the
chicken neck corridor should give sleepless nights to the
security apparatus in India. On the western side, the two
districts right next to this corridor, Kishanganj in Bihar
and Uttar Dijnapur in West Bengal are completely red
in 0-4 age group i.e. greater than 50% Muslim. The ad-
joining districts further to the west (Araria, Purnia and
Kathiar) are also orange i.e. 40%+ Muslim. On the east-
ern side of this corridor in West Bengal, the districts are
again increasingly becoming greener. Cooch Behar is al-
ready 30%+ Muslim. And once you go further the whole
lower Assam is already red in colour.
To summarize, things are slightly less worse in the im-
mediate eastern part of the chicken neck due to Sikkim
and eastern West Bengal districts, but the western ar-
eas of chicken neck are definitely precarious. And once
you take into account that this western part provides the
narrowest crossing between Bangladesh and Nepal, the
strategic nightmare only becomes much more evident.
If there is one geo-strategic blunder that will cost In-
dia heavily in the future, it is not widening the chicken
neck corridor at the opportune moment, when after the
Figure 2.19: Chicken Neck: Top(50-54 yrs), Bottom (0-

4yrs)
80 2. THE EXPLOSION
1971 war it had the perfect opportunity to extract its

pound of flesh in return of favour to the newly created
Bangladesh. But what is worse is that this level of de-
mographic change has not raised any alarm bells in Delhi
and it is continuing with ever increasing pace. Nothing
explains the shortsightedness of Indian state more than
the current situation in chicken neck.
2.5.2 The Mughal corridor

The Mughal Corridor usually forms a topic of heated con-
spiracy theory among many circles. Originally, the idea
of 800 mile corridor connecting east and west Pakistan
seems to have been proposed by Jinnah as a way to build
pressure on Congress during the partition negotiations.5 .
Even if we believe the quoted sources, it must have been
just a political gimmick played by Jinnah at that time.
But this idea has survived among both sides of the con-
spiracy theorists.
While Jinnah back then was in no position to carve
a corridor right through the heart of Indian state due to
unfavourable Muslim demography in these regions, ques-
tion is have the things changed significantly in the past
70 years? Does the northern banks of Ganga provide a
fertile ground to realistically pursue the idea of Mughal
Corridor this time?
To explore this idea, we have to look at the popu-
lation of Muslims in this whole belt which is shown in
figure 2.20. There have been significant strides made by
Muslims in the lowest age cohort in the whole region,
but two significant features pop out of this figure. First,
the good feature, the western side of this corridor near
5
As reported in Outlook here Also, reported in Chapter 8 of
"Study of the politics of the partition, 1937-1947" by Naqvi, Syeda
Sabiha Nazli.
Figure 2.20: Mughal Corridor: Top(50-54 yrs), Bottom

(0-4yrs)
82 2. THE EXPLOSION
Pakistan is still mostly white. Second, the bad feature,

things are not that rosy on the eastern side once you look
at the border regions near Nepal.
The regions to the east of west UP and west UP are in-
creasingly becoming more Muslim with each passing day.
Same is the case for the eastern most part of the corri-
dor in West Bengal, Bihar and Jharkhand. The region
in the middle is also increasingly turning green along the
Nepal border. Without resorting to any paranoia, from
the security point of view it is not a healthy development
to have a high Muslim population all along the border
with Nepal. While these districts in the central part of
the corridor might not directly cause exodus of the rest
of Hindus in the region, but they can easily provide a
transit corridor for men and material through the porous
border, thus making the task easy for the intelligence
units in Pakistan and China.
As things stand in Census 2011, carving out a full
Mughal corridor right now seems infeasible but can still
be a security nightmare. If in the future, Nepal turns
more hostile (under pressure by China and local devel-
opments) the only peaceful border of India will also need
careful watch and permanent vigil. Having a hostile pop-
ulation on the border will only make this task more dif-
ficult for the security forces.
2.6 The Christians in the North

East
We had stated at the outset of this book that this work is
primarily devoted to documenting the increase in Muslim
population of India, but we still think it is important to
mention the Christian growth in the North Eastern states
2.6. THE CHRISTIANS IN THE NORTH EAST 83
of India.
Out of the seven states, the Christian population in
the North East is around 70% in the 2011 census exclud-
ing Assam and Tripura (the population figure stands at
around 60 lakhs). We already know that Assam is highly
Islamized, so effectively the whole north east is domi-
nated by the two Abrahamic religions.
The demographic evolution of Christian population
in the North East is shown in figure 2.21. There are two
important points to notice from this figure. First, the
Christian population is dominant in all these states bar-
ring Assam, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur
valley (Imphal region). Imphal is a special case and is
the white region among the sea of red districts in the
right side of the figure. Most of the red districts do
not just have Christian majority, but are approaching
100% Chritian domination. Second, the concentration
of red districts is almost similar for the two age cohorts
barring one important exception of western Arunachal
Pradesh (although if you look closely at the Christian
numbers, they are slowly inching up in most districts).
This only highlights the difference in approach of the two
Abrahamic religions. While one gets a foothold and then
slowly increase upon it, the other expands by missionary
zeal and converts the whole family and tribe.
The history of Christianization of north east states
goes as far back as and around independence. Around
that time Christians formed 30% of the total population
(minus Assam and Tripura), while now the numbers have
gone up to 70%. The spread of Christianity among the
tribes in North East forms a text book case of Christian
mass mobilization, which started under the British but
ran unchecked under independent India.
The most important case is that of Arunachal Pradesh
as it is currently undergoing huge transformation. As you
84 2. THE EXPLOSION
Figure 2.21: Christians in the North East

2.6. THE CHRISTIANS IN THE NORTH EAST 85
can notice from the top of the figure 2.21, the districts
are fast changing from green to red. Actually, in the 2011
census it was the first time that Christian population per-
centage was higher than Hindus (30.26% vs 29.04%). To
gauge the size of transformation, it is important to high-
light here that just a decade ago in 2001, the Christians
were a mere 18.72% while Hindus were 34.60%.
The age cohort analysis in the case of Christianization
is not perfect because the Church focus is on converting
full families and tribes, which cannot be highlighted in
such analysis. Nevertheless, we are able to capture the
sharp rise in Christian numbers in Arunachal Pradesh.
Given that north eastern states are far from the corri-
dors of power in Delhi, such transformation is easy to
miss but only at a high strategic cost. Sadly, this rapid
transformation of Arunachal Pradesh finally completes
the evangelist project in the north east as the last fortress
of Hindu, Buddhist and Animist culture has also suc-
cumbed due to government lethargy.
86 2. THE EXPLOSION
3
Future projections
“Demography changes slowly and then suddenly

hits you in your face.”
– Yuga Parivartan
The favorite retort of the leftists and secularists living

in the safety of their gated colonies is that we all know
that Muslim population has grown in India and there is
nothing new that you have shown in the previous chap-
ters. These are general trends that we should not really
worry about as the Muslim population will stabilize in
the future due to decreasing TFR as an educated Mus-
lim woman will have fewer kids in the future.
In the last chapter we exposed how using the latest
young cohort is the right way to look at the current de-
mography, similarly in this chapter we will present results
on TFR (total fertility rate) to bust similar claims on fu-
ture projections. It is difficult to do future population
projections as a lot of things might be moving, so we will
make consistent assumptions and look at different scenar-
ios. Building on the analysis from the previous chapter,
we will project future cohorts instead of full population.
Since we have information on the youngest cohort, this
87
88 3. FUTURE PROJECTIONS
is the information we will use to make our predictions.

Hence, our projections will be most robust as we will use
the latest information.
Focusing on just the youngest cohort for population
prediction is better in at least two ways. Firstly, it allows
us to use the most recent information available. A 75
year old women will no longer have kids and will have
insignificant impact on the future demography. Secondly,
it also allows to cut down on the number of assumptions
we have to make for the population growth as we will see
later in this chapter.
In this chapter, we will firstly document the history of
Muslim fertility advantage or high fertility among Mus-
lims. Having done that, we will explain the methodology
used for future projection and then apply it to various
Indian states. We will also discuss how/why the
explosion of Muslim population was not noticed
until now but will be increasingly noticed in the
future. The most important take away from this
chapter is, it is only the percentage TFR that
matters, but everyone quotes raw TFR difference
between the two religions. The chapter will then
close with other important discussions on this topic.
3.1 Muslim fertility advantage

The Islam apologists all around the world have tried to
invent all sort of reasons to explain away high Muslim
fertility compared to other groups, but in the end there
is nothing better than theological explanation. When
talked about the Muslim womb jihad, the favorite taqiya
of the left is to claim that that Muslim TFR is com-
ing down, but what they do not mention is that al-
though Muslim TFR is coming down, it is still signifi-
3.1. MUSLIM FERTILITY ADVANTAGE 89
Region Non-Muslim Muslim Diff.

World 2.2 2.9 0.7
Sub-Saharan Africa 4.2 5.2 1.0
M.East-N.Africa 2.5 2.8 0.3
North America 2.0 2.7 0.7
Asia Pacific 1.9 2.4 0.5
Europe 1.6 2.1 0.5
Table 3.1: Worldwide Fertility by region 2015-2020.

Source: Pew Research Center Demographic Projections.
"The Changing Global Religious Landscape".
cantly higher than the other groups in the population.

The below table reproduced from Pew Survey shows this
trend from around the world.
There are few things to notice from the above table.
First, Muslims have higher TFR across the world and
there is hardly any exception.1 Second, on average they
have an advantage of 0.7 kids per woman when averaged
for the whole world, which given the average number of
2.2 kids per woman translates into 30% excess fertility.
So, what we see in India is nothing different as Muslims
over-breed others in the rest of the world as well.
Given the information on rest of the world, now we
can focus on the Muslim fertility advantage in the context
of India. The overall trends over the years for TFR are
shown in table 3.2. It gives the TFR for each state as
well as the statistics by religion corresponding to three
different NFHS surveys2 . The last row in gray colour
1
Orthodox Jews in Israel are the only exceptions.
2
NFHS: National Family Health Survey. The figures reported
here are from the surveys done in 1998-99, 2005-06 and the latest
2015-16. There are two ways to calculate TFR, from NFHS or
Census data and we report both.
shows the overall India trends. The overall TFR in India

has fallen from 2.85 in 1998-99 to 2.68 in 2004-05 to 2.20
in the most recent survey done in 2015-16. The recent
data from NFHS4 is disturbing in itself because many
states have gone below the replacement fertility level of
2.1 as shown in column 7 of table 3.2.
What can be clearly seen from this data is that Mus-
lim TFR has been higher than Hindus in the two surveys
(NFHS2 and NFHS3).3 At the all India level, although
the TFR has been falling for both Hindus and Muslims
the fertility gap between the two groups has stayed at
0.8. It would have been very useful to use the most re-
cent NFHS4 data for future projections, but only the
aggregate statistics were available and we could not com-
pute the religion-wise fertility difference from NFHS4 (al-
though we have used Census 2011 data to generate latest
TFR estimates).
The other important take-away point from table 3.2
is that the Muslims have fertility advantage in all states
and it is not just an aggregate pattern driven by a few
states. In the states with high Hindu fertility like Bihar,
which had a TFR of 3.86, Muslims had an even higher
TFR equal to 4.80 in NFHS3.
To understand the extent of difference for different
states, we computed the TFR difference betwen Hin-
dus and Muslims which is shown in table 3.4. While
the Muslim fertility was 22.56% higher than Hindus in
NFHS2, it increased by one percentage point to 23.60%
in NFHS3. When it comes to population growth, the per-
centage TFR differential is the only statistic one should
care about and not the raw TFR difference (as we will
3
The figures for NFHS2 quoted here are from Alagarajan and
Kulkarni, Population Growth, Fertility and Religion in India, EPW
(2005). The figures for NFHS3 are generated from the raw NFHS3
data by us. NFHS4 figures are from the NFHS website
State NFHS2 (1998-99) NFHS3 (2005-06) NFHS4

Hindu Muslim Total Hindu Muslim Total Total
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7)
Andhra Pradesh 2.20 2.53 2.25 1.79 1.89 1.79 2.00
Assam 2.00 3.05 2.31 1.95 3.63 2.42 2.20
Bihar 3.36 4.44 3.70 3.86 4.80 4.00 3.40
Gujarat 2.70 3.12 2.72 2.38 2.72 2.42 2.00
Haryana 2.77 - 2.88 2.43 - 2.69 2.10
Karnataka 2.04 2.84 2.13 2.08 2.16 2.07 1.80
Kerala 1.64 2.46 1.96 1.53 2.45 1.93 1.60
Madhya Pradesh 3.35 3.39 3.43 3.16 3.06 3.12 2.30
Maharashtra 2.45 3.30 2.52 2.00 2.85 2.11 1.90
Punjab 2.29 - 2.21 2.04 3.22 1.99 1.60
Rajasthan 3.69 4.93 3.78 3.14 3.95 3.21 2.40
Tamil Nadu 2.16 2.57 2.19 1.77 2.19 1.80 1.70
Uttar Pradesh 3.87 4.76 4.06 3.72 4.33 3.82 2.70
West Bengal 2.02 3.29 2.29 1.92 3.14 2.27 1.80
India 2.78 3.59 2.85 2.59 3.39 2.68 2.20
Table 3.2: Total Fertility Rate (TFR) by States
State Hindu Muslim Difference (%)

Urban 1.95 2.71 28.04
Rural 2.87 3.85 25.45
Table 3.3: TFR Rural vs Urban (Source: NFHS3)

show later). As you would remember from the previous

table, the TFR difference between Muslims and Hindus
stayed at 0.8 for both the surveys, the percentage differ-
ential actually went up due to lower TFR of Hindus.
The other important take away from this table 3.4

is that while Muslims have 22-23% higher TFR for the
whole country, it is above 30% in case of Assam, Kerala
and West Bengal. This huge difference is caused by a
TFR of less than 2 in case of Hindus in these states, plus
high TFR by Muslims. For example, take the extreme
case of Kerala, where TFR for Hindus is 1.53 and for
Muslims 2.45 (NFHS3). If we just look at the TFR of
Muslims in Kerala i.e. 2.45, it is less than national Hindu
TFR of 2.59. But Kerala Hindus are under-breeding to
such an extent that the percentage difference between
Hindus and Muslims have become 37.5%. While Uttar
Pradesh and Bihar have seen a drop in percentage differ-
ence, it has increased for Kerala and Assam. The case of
Assam is very special as the percentage difference there
jumped from 34.43% to 46.28%, an almost 12 percentage
point increase between 1998-99 to 2004-05.
A similar trend for difference can be seen by looking

at the fertility difference between urban and rural areas.
The religion-wise TFR by region is shown in table 3.3.
The urban areas have a low fertility compared to rural ar-
eas both in the case of Hindus as well as Muslims. While
in case of urban areas the fertility difference is 0.76, it
is slightly higher at 0.98 for rural areas. But in terms
of percentage difference, the rural areas have a 25.45%
difference compared to 28% in case of urban areas. The
low Hindu fertility in urban areas generate a much higher
percentage difference for a lower absolute difference be-
tween the fertility of two religions (similar to what we
State TFR Difference (%)

NFHS2 NFHS3
Andhra Pradesh 15.00 5.59
Assam 52.50 86.15
Bihar 32.14 24.35
Gujarat 15.56 14.29
Haryana - -
Karnataka 39.22 3.85
Kerala 50.00 60.13
Madhya Pradesh 1.19 -3.16
Maharashtra 34.69 42.50
Punjab - 57.84
Rajasthan 33.60 25.80
Tamil Nadu 18.98 23.73
Uttar Pradesh 23.00 16.40
West Bengal 62.87 63.54
India 29.14 30.89
Table 3.4: TFR difference between Hindus and Muslims

saw in case of Kerala). 4

The key takeaways from this subsection are the fol-
lowing:
• Muslims have higher TFR than Hindus in almost

all regions
• The absolute TFR is falling for the whole country;

for both Hindus and Muslims
• The absolute TFR difference between Hindus and

Muslims has stayed constant at 0.8, between 1998-
2005
• The percentage TFR difference between the two

communities has gone up due to lower base TFR
of Hindus (since the absolute difference has not re-
duced)
3.2 Projection: Methodology

The overall population projection although a worthwhile
exercise can hide a lot of information for a very long du-
ration. We already explained in chapter one and two
how we should stick to the youngest generation to un-
derstand the future direction of overall population. We
will do something similar for the future projections now.
4
It is important to mention here that there is another way to
calculate TFR from Census data. Since NFHS3 is from 2005-2006,
we also report the latest TFR values as calculated from 2011 Census
data in table 3.5. Both methods have their own advantage and
assumptions, but mostly the figures from the two are close to each
other as well as show the trend fall in TFR. Table 3.5 gives a
comprehensive list of TFR for all states and if you compare the
aggregate TFR numbers are close to NFHS4.
3.2. PROJECTION: METHODOLOGY 95
State Total Rural Urban

All Hindu Muslim Hindu Muslim Hindu Muslim
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7)
ANDHRA 1.63 1.61 1.85 1.70 1.89 1.43 1.84
ARUNACHAL 2.24 2.05 2.15 2.30 2.34 1.66 2.00
ASSAM 2.16 1.72 3.10 1.82 3.22 1.27 1.89
BIHAR 2.93 2.87 3.31 2.98 3.44 2.07 2.53
CHHATTISGARH 2.43 2.45 2.18 2.61 2.49 1.95 2.05
GOA 1.56 1.52 2.12 1.51 2.36 1.53 2.06
GUJARAT 2.03 2.01 2.24 2.28 2.45 1.64 2.13
HARYANA 2.32 2.19 4.81 2.35 5.37 1.92 2.95
HIMACHAL 1.74 1.74 2.45 1.79 2.51 1.24 2.10
J&K 3.02 1.98 3.57 2.16 3.97 1.54 2.61
JHARKHAND 2.61 2.51 3.17 2.81 3.62 1.76 2.19
KARNATAKA 1.81 1.76 2.24 1.92 2.40 1.49 2.16
KERALA 1.79 1.53 2.31 1.56 2.30 1.49 2.33
MP 2.63 2.65 2.61 2.90 3.16 1.96 2.34
MAHARASHTRA 1.91 1.88 2.35 2.10 2.53 1.57 2.30
MANIPUR 1.86 1.97 2.39 2.09 2.43 1.84 2.31
MEGHALAYA 3.63 1.93 3.64 2.35 3.90 1.47 1.87
MIZORAM 2.56 2.09 3.35 3.42 3.64 1.80 3.04
NAGALAND 2.08 1.79 3.39 1.98 3.74 1.69 3.07
NEW DELHI 1.80 1.76 2.31 2.08 2.90 1.75 2.30
ODISHA 1.98 1.96 2.09 2.05 2.16 1.55 2.02
PUNJAB 1.86 1.88 2.44 2.03 2.57 1.78 2.29
RAJASTHAN 2.80 2.77 3.42 3.00 4.17 2.05 2.74
SIKKIM 1.44 1.48 1.78 1.58 1.18 1.26 2.06
TAMIL NADU 1.58 1.57 1.87 1.63 1.93 1.49 1.85
TRIPURA 1.73 1.65 2.15 1.79 2.21 1.34 1.82
UP 2.61 2.55 2.90 2.77 3.35 1.74 2.22
UTTARAKHAND 2.13 2.02 2.99 2.19 3.46 1.59 2.45
WEST BENGAL 1.68 1.51 2.18 1.67 2.25 1.19 1.98
India 2.17 2.11 2.66 2.34 3.00 1.61 2.20
Table 3.5: TFR based on Census 2011

We will use the latest information on the youngest

cohort and extrapolate from there using the current fer-
tility rates for the two religions as found in NFHS3. The
aggregate Muslim and Hindu numbers for 0-4 age cohort
for different states will come from chapter two.
For simplicity of presentation, we will make the fol-
lowing assumptions:
• Each generation is roughly 25 years and completely

populates the next generation (ignoring life cycle
fertility concerns)
• A fertility of 2 children per woman is needed to

keep population constant (assuming infant mortal-
ity and other factors influencing population in next
cohort are similar for the two religions). Although,
replacement level TFR is 2.1, we make this simpli-
fying assumption for projections. It does not mat-
ter as we are more interested in share projection
rather than raw population numbers.
• No inter-faith children
The first assumption means that the current 0-4 age

cohort in 2011 will completely populate the next genera-
tion in 2036 i.e. 25 years later. This is keeping in mind
that it is only the fertile age women in any generation
which determine the population of the next generation.
The older men can father children with younger women
but even in that case the constraint is the number of
women in any generation. Though, women can bear kids
till later than 25 years old, but we are using the cutoff as
25 years for fertility to define one generation of 25 years.
This is not very stark assumption as still a lot of women
marry early and have kids before 25. We will revisit this
assumption again in the next section.
3.2. PROJECTION: METHODOLOGY 97
Again, to keep the analysis simple, we have assumed

that the population stays constant at 2 children per woman.
Of course, this is lower than the replacement fertility level
of 2.1 children per woman. This also assumes away many
other factors like less number of girls born in each cohort
or death of young kids as captured by Infant Mortality
Rate etc. But unless there is huge difference between
the two religions on these factors, our analysis will be
robust. Actually, Hindus have higher infant mortality as
compared to Muslims as well as more female foeticide,
which will only underestimate the extent of Muslim pop-
ulation growth in the next cohort.
The third assumption is again needed to keep calcula-
tion simple as there is no way to know how many women
give birth to children of another faith. There is a big de-
bate around "Love Jihad" and it is possible that there is
presence of systematic poaching of Hindu girls by Muslim
men.5 Any presence of Love Jihad angle will only bol-
ster the number of Muslims in the next generation, hence
our estimates in this section will again underestimate the
Muslim population growth in the future.
Thus given these assumptions, one should expect that
the share of Muslims in the future generations will be over
and above what we forecast in this section. Now, we will
explain the underlying projection model. This part is
slightly technical and mathematical and can be ignored
if you want. Nevertheless, it adds to the understanding
of the nature of population dynamics and exponential
growth, which explains why Muslim population explo-
sion till now did not attract too much attention. We
will present a very basic model of projection to show key
findings.
5
The case of Hadiya from Kerala has brought Love Jihad into
national limelight now.
3.3 Exponential growth

Population growth follows an exponential growth rate as
the future growth depends on the current population level
as well as its growth rate. The population of a generation
at time ’t’, Mt is given by:
Mt = (1 + rM )t M0
where Mt is the Muslim population in generation ’t’,

M0 is the Muslim population in generation 0 (or base-
line/initial generation) and rM is the rate of growth of
Muslim population, as will be captured in TFR. The
growth of Hindu population can be given by a similar
function with Ht being Hindu population at time t and
rH being Hindu TFR:
Ht = (1 + rH )t H0
The only difference between the two equations is the

difference in the rate of growth of populations. While in
the case of Muslims, the rate of growth is rM , in case of
Hindus it is rH . In terms of data and our assumptions,
a TFR of 2 will correspond to rH = 0, where population
does not grow. A TFR of 3 children will correspond to a
growth rate rH of 50% as each female will replace herself
and her husband with 3 children i.e. a gain of one more
member in the next generation. Similarly, a TFR of 2.5
will give a growth rate of 25% coming from 0.5/2 ∗ 100.
Finally, given the initial population levels H0 and M0 ,
the overall Muslim population share, ShareM , in any
generation after ’t’ periods will be given by:
Mt
ShareM =
Ht + Mt
3.3. EXPONENTIAL GROWTH 99
(1 + rM )t M0
ShareM =
(1 + rH )t H0 + (1 + rM )t M0
So, the overall Muslim population share is:
1
ShareM = 1+rH t H0
1+ ( 1+rM
) M0
The Muslim population share in the next generation

thus depends on only two variables:
• Initial ratio of Hindu-Muslim population share in
the base line generation i.e. H0 /M0 . We will use
this ratio from 0-4 age cohort as observed in 2011
census. This is our baseline cohort.
• Ratio of population growth rates of two religions as

given by the ratio (1 + rH )/(1 + rM ). This we can
calculate by TFR difference between two religions
from NFHS3 survey data or Census 2011.
This second variable i.e. ratio of Hindu to Muslim
population growth rates needs more attention as this
point is often ignored in the usual demographic debate.
The argument used by the left is that TFR is
coming down for all religions, but as can be seen
from above what matters is not the absolute TFR
of two religions, but the ratio as shown above. So
one should not focus on rM and rH separately, but
(1+rH )/(1+rM ). Actually the absolute TFR differ-
ence between the two religions does not matter at
all. Even if absolute TFR for Muslims might be falling,
the percentage difference between TFR of two religious
groups can still go up. And this is what has happened in
India in most states.
To illustrate this point, look at the example given in

table 3.6. The absolute TFR difference between Hindus
and Muslims is fixed at 1 in all cases while TFR is allowed
to vary. For a given Hindu and Muslim TFR, we have
calculated rM and rH . TFR is increasing for both Hindus
and Muslims as we go down in the table. The same
absolute difference of 1 TFR gives the highest TFR ratio,
(1 + rM )/(1 + rM ), in case where Hindus have TFR 2
compared to 3 of Muslims. And as shown before it is in
this first case (2 vs 3) that the share of Muslims will grow
the fastest.
Hindu Muslim Difference (1 + rM )/

TFR TFR rH rM TFR (1 + rH )
2 3 0 0.5 1 1.50
3 4 0.5 1 1 1.33
4 5 1 1.5 1 1.25
Table 3.6: Impact of TFR on growth ratios
This is exactly what has happened in the case of Ker-

ala, where the Hindu TFR decreased but the Muslim
TFR did not go down fast enough to decrease the TFR
ratio. Actually to keep the population shares constant,
the absolute Muslim fertility has to decrease by even
more as compared to the Hindus. For example- consider
the case where Hindus have TFR of 4 vs 5 vis-a-vis Mus-
lims, giving a ratio (1 + rH )/(1 + rM ) of 1.25. Now, if
Hindus have only 2 kids, then Muslims should have 2.5
kids in order to keep the ratio equal to 1.25.
Thus for a two kids decrease of Hindus from 4 to 2,
Muslims need an even bigger decrease from 5 to 2.5 to
keep the TFR ratio same. In case, Muslims also decrease
their TFR just by 2, then they go down from 5 to only 3,
3.4. OVERALL TRENDS 101
in turn increasing the ratio (1 + rH )/(1 + rM ) from 1.25

to 1.50 as shown in the table 3.6.
Thus reporting only absolute decrease in TFR is hid-
ing crucial information on demographic change. The
TFR difference between Hindus and Muslims was 0.8 few
decades ago as well as now. Since, Hindus had higher
TFR in the past, this 0.8 difference gap was on a higher
base thus decreasing the ratio of TFR. This instead led
to slow growth in Muslim share. But now this same ab-
solute difference leads to a bigger TFR ratio between the
two religions and will hence increase the Muslim share in
the next generation at a much faster rate. So, if the per-
centage difference does not decrease, one should expect
the Muslim population to rise even faster. If one adds to
it the growth chasing Muslim migrants from Bangladesh,
it will only exacerbate the demographic explosion.
3.4 Overall trends

This section gives the broad trends for future population
using the methodology as described in the previous sec-
tion. Before we showcase the population trends, there
are few points to remember:
• All projection graphs are for 0-4 age cohort only.

The idea is that if a group has majority in 0-4 pop-
ulation group, it will attain overall majority sooner
or later. 0-4 age group will constitute the total
youth in roughly 25 years and contribute to the
next cohort.
• The graphs are based on the current share of Hindu-

Muslim population in the reference group (state or
India in age cohort 0-4) and their corresponding
TFR as per NFHS3. The projections are similar
Region Share % (0-4 yrs) TFR (NFHS3) Difference

Hindu Muslim Hindu Muslim TFR (%)
India 77 17 2.6 3.4 30.7
India Urban 71 23 1.95 2.71 38.9
India Rural 80 15 2.87 3.85 34.1
Red Zone States
Assam 51 45 1.9 3.6 89.4
Kerala 47 37 1.5 2.5 66.6
West Bengal 63 35 1.9 3.1 63.5
Uttar Pradesh 78 21 3.7 4.3 16.4
Bihar 81 19 3.9 4.8 24.3
Table 3.7: Data used for projection
even if we use TFR from Census 2011, the reason

being that TFR ratios have hardly changed.
• The other religions are given the same TFR as Hin-

dus. For example- the Christians in Kerala have a
large share and have similar TFR as Hindus. So
the sum of Hindu-Muslim population will not be
100% in all cases.
• The absolute TFR difference does not matter, what

matters is the percentage differential between Hin-
dus and Muslims. For example- as long as the per-
centage gap is 20% it does not matter if Hindu TFR
is 2 and Muslim 2.4 or Hindu TFR 3 and Muslim
3.6. The future projections will remain the same.
Let’s first start with the overall case for India. The
share of Muslim population in the 0-4 age group is shown
in table 3.7. The total Muslim share is 17% while it is
23% in urban area and 15% in rural area. The corre-
sponding TFR for these regions are taken from table 3.2
and 3.3. For ease of reference, all the numbers used for
projection are collected together and presented in table
3.7. Now we will give projections for India and the red
zone states.
India
The future population projection for India is shown in
figure 3.1. It is calculated using the current Hindu and
Muslim share in population as given in 2011 census and
using TFR estimates from NFHS3. In all graphs in this
section, the baseline statistics used for projection as men-
tioned at the top of the graph. For example- in case of
total Indian population projection in figure 3.1, Hindu
population is 77% in the 0-4 age cohort, while Muslim
population is 17%. The TFR is 2.6 and 3.4 respectively
for Hindus and Muslims.
For the time period shown in figure 3.1, Muslim popu-
lation will reach 40% in 0-4 age cohort before 2136. This
will happen if they maintain same fertility differential of
30% during this period. But if Hindu fertility falls faster
and below 2 as seen in many areas, this can happen much
faster if Muslim fertility does not fall at a faster rate than
Hindu fertility. It should also be noted that Muslims will
be 30% plus by 2086 i.e. in roughly 70 years. At the
time of partition, the Muslim share in total population
was only 26%.
It can be seen by looking at figure 3.2, which gives
projection for rural and urban India. The urban fertil-
ity for both Hindus and Muslims is lower as compared
to their rural counterparts, but in terms of percentage
differential, urban areas have a higher difference. Thus
you can see that the growth of Muslim population share
is much steeper in urban areas when compared to rural
India. The difference is so huge that urban areas can
become Muslim dominated by 2120 i.e. in roughly 100
years, while rural areas will stay Hindu dominant for a bit
longer. Although the Muslims will cross the psychologi-
cal threshold of 40% in urban areas in roughly 70 years
India
77%−H, 17%−M in 2011 (0−4 yrs). TFR: H−2.6 and M−3.4

100
Hindus
Muslims
●
80
●
60
Population %
●
40
●
20
●
●
0
1961 1986 2011 2036 2061 2086 2111 2136
Year
Figure 3.1: Projection: 0-4 age group in India

India Urban
71%−H, 23%−M in 2011 (0−4 yrs). TFR: H−2 and M−2.6

100
Hindus
Muslims
80
●
60
Population %
●
●
●
●
40
●
20
●
0
1961 1986 2011 2036 2061 2086 2111 2136
Year
India Rural

100
Hindus
Muslims
●
●
80
●
60
Population %
●
40
●
20
●
●
0
1961 1986 2011 2036 2061 2086 2111 2136
Year
Figure 3.2: Top Panel:Urban, Bottom Panel:Rural India

(i.e. 2086) from now. If you think in terms of civiliza-

tion, 70 years is not such a long time. And what matters
the most for the civilization is economic resources. Since
cities drive the economics of a nation, one should be ex-
tremely worried that productive resources of India will
be under Muslim majority in roughly 70-100 years.
What is important to mention here is that we have
not discussed migration from rural areas to urban as In-
dia develops further. It is natural that given economic
development, many villagers will migrate to cities. Since
rural areas have higher Hindu population it is expected
that more migrants to cities will be Hindus, thus bring-
ing down the Muslim share in urban areas for some time.
But the extent of migration is not known and even if it
happens on a large scale (based on the premise that more
rural Hindus migrate compared to rural Muslims), it will
be at the cost of diluting Hindu majority in the rural
areas.
After looking at the overall state of India, we should
now focus attention on the red-zone states. The three
states which will be Muslim dominated in this century
itself and very near in the future are- Assam, Kerala and
West Bengal.
The population projections for 0-4 age cohorts for As-
sam are shown in figure 3.3. It is based on the current
Hindu and Muslim population percentage of 51% and
41% respectively in 2011. The current TFR rates are 1.9
and 3.6 for Hindus and Muslims. Based on these current
TFR trends, Muslims must have already achieved ma-
jority in the 0-4 age group as we write this book. The
Muslims do not even need to wait for the next generation
in 2036 to complete this transition. Not to mention that
these projections do not at all include the illegals from
Bangladesh flooding into Assam. If the Bangladeshi Mus-
lims keep flooding into Assam, we will see a much quicker
Assam

100
●
Hindus
Muslims ●
●
80
●
●
●
60
●
Population %
●
40
●
20
●
0
1961 1986 2011 2036 2061 2086 2111 2136
Year
Kerala

100
Hindus
Muslims
●
●
80
● ●
60
Population %
●
●
40
● ●
●
●
20
●
●
●
0
1961 1986 2011 2036 2061 2086 2111 2136
Year
Figure 3.3: Top Panel:Assam, Bottom Panel:Kerala

West Bengal

100
Hindus
Muslims
●
80
●
●
●
●
●
60
Population %
●
40
●
20
●
0
1961 1986 2011 2036 2061 2086 2111 2136
Year
UP

100
Hindus
Muslims
●
80
●
●
●
●
●
60
Population %
40
●
●
20
●
●
●
0
1961 1986 2011 2036 2061 2086 2111 2136
Year
Figure 3.4: Top Panel:West Bengal, Bottom Panel:UP

Bihar

100
Hindus
Muslims
●
●
80
●
60
●
Population %
40
●
20
●
●
0
1961 1986 2011 2036 2061 2086 2111 2136
Year
Figure 3.5: Bihar

Hindu demise in the state.

Similar demographic inversion is true in the state of
Kerala as well as shown in figure 3.3. New born Mus-
lim kids will be the majority some time in the middle
of 2011-2036. We have mentioned the statistics used for
these projections at the top of the graph for Kerala. Un-
less there is a change in Hindu-Muslim TFR percentage
difference, these trends will continue and results will be
there for everyone to see in 20 years.
The next state that will see demographic demise is
West Bengal. According to the current projections, West
Bengal will be Muslim dominated among the new born
cohort some time around 2036 (a few years later). In
2011, it had some 63% Hindus in 0-4 age cohort. If cur-
rent generation maintains same TFR differential as past
generation, it will have almost the same number of new
born as the Muslims around 2036.
The overall projections for UP and Bihar do not see
very different from the projections of India. The one big
difference in favour of Hindus in UP and Bihar is that
their TFR is not as low as the other three states men-
tioned above. Both the Hindu and Muslim TFR is high
and effectively the TFR differential is low, so the con-
vergence in populations of Hindus and Muslims is also
slow. But if UP and Bihar Hindus also copy their coun-
terparts from Kerala or West Bengal, they will also show
similar projections. An important point to mention here
though is that both UP and Bihar are very big states
and the figures here do not do justice to the regional
variations within these states. For example- West UP
is already having 50% share of Muslims among the new
borns, which would not be reflected in the statistics for
the whole state. Such regional variations though can also
be easily projected using this method, but have not been
reported here.
3.5. HOW DOES EXPLOSION WORK? 111
Key Takeaway from this section:

• Due to exponential growth rate, demography changes
slowly in the beginning and then quickly in the in-
termediate period.
• What matters for growth difference is the percent-
age differential between Hindu and Muslim TFR
and not absolute difference.
• Urban India is changing at a very fast pace com-
pared to rural area. One, due to larger share of
Muslims in urban areas. Two, due to large TFR
difference.
• Assam, West Bengal and Kerala are on a road of
no recovery due to high TFR gap between Hindus
and Muslims in these regions. At current trend,
these states will become Muslim majority in 0-4
age cohort before 2050.
3.5 How does explosion work?

We have already discussed in the previous section on the
key determinants of population share over a period of
time. In this section, we will bust another big statistical
lie used by the left, which is to lull the regular Hindu by
quoting slow change in overall Muslim Percentage. But
obviously the change is slow in the beginning when Mus-
lims have a smaller population base i.e. small M0 /H0 .
The overall Muslim share changed slowly due to old Hin-
dus hanging around when their share in total population
was much larger. But the story is completely different if
we look at different age cohorts.
From real data, this can be seen by looking at table
1.6, where the share of Hindus change slowly in the old
Year Share (%) Change (PP)

Hindu Muslim Hindu Muslim
1961 82.85 10.70 - -
1986 80.21 13.54 -2.64 2.85
2011 77.00 17.00 -3.21 3.46
2036 73.17 21.13 -3.83 4.13
2061 68.71 25.94 -4.47 4.81
2086 63.63 31.41 -5.08 5.47
2111 58.02 37.46 -5.61 6.05
2136 52.02 43.92 -6.00 6.46
Table 3.8: Simulation of 0-4 age cohort according to

our model taking 2011 population for 0-4 age group and
NFHS3 TFR difference
age cohorts but then change much quickly in the younger

cohorts. It is also true for age wise data presented at the
state level.
Now, lets analyze the same change by looking at the

projections presented in figure 3.1. The same figure is
now represented in terms of numbers in table 3.8. There
are two things to be noted from this table. First, our
model matches the data very well. Although the share
of Hindus and Muslims in the 0-4 age cohort is based
on simple TFR difference between the two communities
and the population ratio in 2011, it is able to replicate
their shares in the real data very closely. If you compare
with table 1.6, Hindu share is 77% in 0-4 age cohort in
2011. If we go back 50 years i.e. look at 50-54 age group,
according to our projection model, Hindu share should
be 82.85%. This is roughly equal to 81.79% share of
Hindus in 50-54 age cohort (born in 1961) in the real data
3.5. HOW DOES EXPLOSION WORK? 113
presented in table 1.66 . So, our model is doing fairly well

in matching the old cohorts born in 1961 and 1986 (who
are 50-54 and 25-29 year old today).
The other important point one can take away from
table 3.8 is the fact that the percentage point change is
growing over time. In the first 25 years, the change in
Muslim share is 2.85 percentage points, which will grow
steadily to 6.46 over time if TFR gap persists. So, we
can summarize:
• Aggregate population numbers hides the change

and it is reflected only by looking at the age cohorts.
Hindus had a big advantage in the old age cohorts
which suppresses the gains made by Muslims in the
younger age cohorts if one only presents the aggre-
gate Hindu-Muslim shares. This goes back to the
point made in chapter one.
• When one starts looking at the change in cohort
size, Muslim share grows steadily over time due to
exponential growth of population. The percentage
change in cohort size grows over time.
These two factors slow the population change that

any person can observe during his lifetime, except to-
wards the very end when the two religions have similar
population. Once a critical mass is achieved, the changes
happen much quickly. According to the above table in the
first 50 years, Muslim population went up from 10.70%
to 17.00% i.e. around 6.3 percentage points (between
1961-2011), while in the next 50 years (2011-2061) it will
jump to 25.94% adding roughly 9 percentage points.
6
Hindu share is low in 50-54 age cohort because Hindus have
higher infant mortality rate and lower life expectancy than Mus-
lims, thus decreasing their share in 50-54 age cohort. Accounting
for these factors will allow our model to match the data even better.
This is exactly how information has been hidden in

the last 50 years, as Hindus have been fooled by showing
them aggregate Muslim population share which is still
<15% while in the lowest age cohort (0-4 years) they are
already 17%.
Where does India stand currently?
As explained in the methodology section, the growth

in population depends on two crucial factors, first, the
ratio of Hindu to Muslim population and second, the
percentage TFR differential.
Ratio: India has already lost the massive Hindu to
Muslim population ratio that it had after independence.
In the first 75 years, Muslims have slowly but steadily
managed to increase their share, which currently stands
at 17% in the 0-4 age cohort, while it was around 10% in
1947. Compared to 75 years ago, Muslims have a bigger
population share now, so their position has grown much
stronger on the baseline ratio front.
TFR percentage differential: Muslims have al-
most always had TFR advantage in independent India.
While the TFR has gone down for both groups, the per-
centage difference has not gone down. Table 3.4 shows
that the aggregate differential still stands at 30% between
the two communities and has only grown over time due
to rapid fall in Hindu TFR. With Hindus having fewer
kids, it has just become much easier for Muslims to keep
a higher ratio with fewer number of kids.
For example- in Kerala Hindu TFR is 1.5, while Mus-
lim TFR is 2.4, which gives a massive 60% fertility ad-
vantage to Muslims. Unsurprisingly, the TFR difference
for Kerala went up from 50% to 60% between 1998-99
and 2004-05 with a decrease in TFR for both communi-
ties because Hindus adopted population control methods
3.6. THE DOUBLE WHAMMY 115
whole-heartedly. If this is an indicator of things to come,

just before/around the build up of demographic tensions,
Muslim TFR will zoom up while Hindu TFR will con-
tinue to plummet. Even currently, the Muslim TFR is
3.6 in J&K (one of the highest in the country) while that
of Hindus is just 2.0.
So, we can conclude that Hindus today have a bigger
disadvantage as compared to 1947. Not only they have
eroded the base advantage, but their TFR prospects are
also bleak and worse than that in the past.
3.6 The Double Whammy

The discussion till now had been restricted by the as-
sumption that both Hindus and Muslims take same time
for producing the next generation. But there is an in-
creasing trend of late marriages and late children among
middle class Hindus. Although, it has not been a big dif-
ference till now since a large section of Hindus too were
getting married early and having kids at an early age.
But with economic development, it is becoming more and
more difficult for Hindus to get married early and have
children.
As the middle class among Hindus expand, given that
there is no religious directive to marry early, the average
age for having marriage and children will only go up in
the future. This is something which is already docu-
mented among the upwardly mobile Hindus.
In this section, we will understand the implications
of late marriage on population growth if the Muslims
do not start marrying late like the Hindus. To do this,
we will now incorporate the time taken to produce next
generation in our population prediction model.
The population shares are affected not only by TFR
100 77−H, 17−M in Period 0 (0−4 yrs). TFR: H−2 and M−2.6
Hindus
Muslims
Fast Muslims
80
● ● ● ● ● ●
●
60
Population
●
40
●
20
●
0
0 30 60 90 120 150
Years
71−H, 23−M in Period 0 (0−4 yrs). TFR: H−1.9 and M−2.5

100
Hindus
Muslims
Fast Muslims
80
●
●
●
●
60
●
Population
●
●
●
●
40
●
20
0
0 30 60 90 120 150
Years
Figure 3.6: Two Scenarios: if Muslims have kids at

younger age compared to Hindus
but also the average age for bearing kids. If on average

Muslims have kids at a younger age compared to Hin-
dus, their next generation will arrive sooner. And if this
next generation comes earlier, then the generation after
that too will come early. So on and so forth for all the
future generations. For example- if Muslims take 3/4th
the years that Hindus take to produce next generation,
by the time Hindus produce 3 generations (75 years for 3
generations) Muslims would have produced 4 generations
(75 years for 4 generations).
Why does this matter? Since population follows an
exponential growth, a faster compounding means faster
growth in a given period of time. It is similar to com-
pound interest function, where faster compounding and
high interest rate both generate high future amount.
This double whammy of Muslims having kids at a
younger age is shown in the figure 3.6. By assumption,
in these figures Muslims take 3/4th of the time compared
to Hindus to produce next generation. This is not a
preposterous assumption as urban Hindus are delaying
marriage and kids to beyond 30 years of age. By this
assumption, if an average Hindu decides to have kids at
30 years, an average Muslim will only need to have kids
by 22.5 years, which is completely possible and realistic7 .
The figure 3.6 shows this double whammy graphically
by including population growth scenario of another set
of Muslims who generate next generation at a fast rate.
Let’s call these Muslims as "Fast Muslims" (represented
by dark green) and they take only 3 quarters of the time
(22.5 years) needed by Hindus (30 years) to produce their
7
The figures are speculative, but age of marriage and subse-
quently age for having kids is going up for Hindus. Similar graphs
can be drawn for other scenarios where Muslims take 0.8 or 0.9
amount of time as compared to Hindus for producing next gener-
ation
next generation.
As a comparison group, regular Muslims (light green)
are also included and they take same time as the Hindus.
As compared to the previous section, the figures here
show raw population numbers and not percentages. Also
notice that "Fast Muslims" have more points (seven) on
the graph, as they build their new generation faster than
both Hindus and Muslims (who have six points each for
the 150 year period). So, the Muslims will exceed Hindus
when any of the green lines crosses the saffron line.
The two panels in figure 3.6 correspond to two differ-
ent initial population and TFR scenario. The top panel
roughly represents whole Indian population in the 0-4 age
group. It has 77 Hindus and 17 Muslims to begin with
in the year 0 (you can think of it as the year 2011 and
total population as 100. Since Hindu percentage is 77%,
it translates to Hindu population of 77. Similarly calcu-
late the population for Muslims.). Also, the Hindu TFR
in this case is 2, while Muslim TFR is 2.6. We are again
making simplistic assumption that replacement fertility
level is 2, so Hindu population remains constant at 77 for
the whole period. On the other hand Muslims have pop-
ulation growth due to fertility of 2.6. The Fast Muslims
(dark green line) add new generation in 22.5 years, and
have a higher upward slope than Muslims (light green
line), who add next generation in 30 years, in the same
amount of time as Hindus.
Due to short breeding time, Fast Muslims will pass
Hindu population in roughly 127 years after year 0, while
regular Muslims will take a bit longer. Although it is
not shown on the graph, but if TFR gap continues even
regular Muslims (light green line) will cross the Hindu
population at some point. But the important take away
is that if you have next generation in less amount of time,
you will grow faster.
We can do a similar analysis for the urban areas which

have a higher Muslim population share as well as below
replacement fertility level for Hindus. This scenario is
shown in bottom panel of figure 3.6 where initially in year
0, Hindu population is 71 compared to 23 of Muslims.
The fertility for Hindus is 1.9 i.e. below replacement,
while 2.5 for Muslims. Since Hindu fertility is below re-
placement their population will keep falling during the
whole time, while Muslim population will be growing. In
this case, the Fast Muslims will overtake Hindu popu-
lation in less than 100 years while regular Muslims will
take slightly more than 120 years at current TFR levels.
In the second case, the double whammy reduces the time
taken by Muslims to overtake Hindus by roughly 20 years,
which is approximately the time taken by Fast Muslims
to churn out a new generation. Thus double whammy
will reduce the time needed by Muslims to catch up with
Hindu population by 16%. Although both 100 and 120
years seem far away right now, but they are significantly
different from each other and can cause political reper-
cussions at a much early stage.
Key Takeaway:
• Double Whammy due to difference in child bearing

age between Hindus and Muslims will allow for a
much faster population convergence.
• Urban areas will see much faster convergence due to

the presence of both low Hindu TFR plus delayed
child bearing by Hindus
But how does the two religions actually differ in giving

birth to their first children. As of NFHS3, there is no big
difference between age of mother at first birth, although
more Muslim women seem to bear children at a younger
Age at first birth

15
Hindus
Muslims
10
Percentage of females
5
0
15 20 25 30 35 40
Year
Figure 3.7: Distribution of mother’s age at first birth

(NFHS3)
Age Hindu Muslim

15 6.01 7.59
16 8.62 10.56
17 11.06 13.22
18 12.18 14.05
19 12.68 14.22
20 11.23 11.47
21 9.35 8.96
22 7.40 6.18
23 5.58 3.89
24 4.30 2.87
25 3.29 2.02
26 2.43 1.67
27 1.75 0.90
28 1.26 0.66
29 0.86 0.58
30 0.69 0.28
31 0.44 0.34
32 0.27 0.20
Above 0.63 0.35
Table 3.9: Mother’s age at first birth (NFHS3)

age compared to the Hindus. This information is shown

in table 3.9 and figure 3.7.
If you closely look at figure 3.7, you can see that green
line corresponding to Muslim women is higher than Hin-
dus in the lower ages. For ages below 22, higher percent-
age of Muslim women have already had their first child
compared to the Hindus. Since more Muslim women have
their first child early in their life, there are fewer Muslim
women who have their first child at a later age. Thus the
green line for Muslims crosses the saffron line for Hindus
between 21-22 years of age.
Although this difference is not high but it is still im-
portant to mention that back in 2005-06 (NFHS3 survey
period) Hindus were already having their kids late as
compared to the Muslims.
With the rapid spread of education and modernity
among Hindus, this trend for late children among Hin-
dus will only intensify. Although, we do not have NFHS4
data to give concrete information about this trend, but
rapid growth of Hindu middle class as compared to the
Muslims will support this hypothesis. So, if Muslims
do not delay their child bearing age as much as
the Hindus, then the population share of Hindus
will face a double whammy- low TFR as well as
slower rate of building new generation. This dou-
ble whammy will close the gap between the two
religions at a much faster rate.
3.7 Discussion
The effective message of this whole chapter lies in un-
derstanding the mechanism that will determine future
demographics. As evidently argued, the only two met-
rics that matter for demographic projection are baseline
3.7. DISCUSSION 123
level of populations and percentage TFR difference.

This chapter puts to rest the whole statistical gim-
mick that is peddled around- "the absolute level of Mus-
lim TFR is coming down". Yes, it is coming down but
Hindu TFR is coming down even faster and has led to a
situation where percentage difference between the TFR
of two religions has hardly changed.
Since the multiplication of future generation of Mus-
lims will happen on a bigger base population which is
17% now, compared to 10% at the time of independence,
the multiplication will be much faster. Given these two
important facts, whether you buy the number and projec-
tions given in this chapter or not, you will at least concede
that Muslims have a much better chance to pull off the
demographic inversion now than at any other time in the
history of independent India. Once you add the delayed
marriage and child bearing among the future Hindus to
this mix, the situation looks more grim. The last thing
Hindus want is the double whammy of demography to
hit them.
In terms of states, the future of Assam, West Bengal
and Kerala seems to be almost sealed in favour of Muslim
demography. Most people alive today will see J&K style
situations reoccur in these states in their life time most
probably. The number of Muslim births will be major-
ity in the next two decades in the best case scenario for
these states. Why is that so? Since we did not include
the amount of migration from Bangladesh in this mix,
the projections are in some way under-reporting the ex-
tent of future demographic change in Assam and West
Bengal. UP and Bihar on the aggregate do not appear
sitting on the tinder-box but will see regional flareups
in Muslim dominated pockets like the one seen in 2013
Muzzafarnagar riots in West UP.
We did not include the projections for other states,
but the Assam and West Bengal of yesterday were like

the other states with 15-20% of Muslims today. So their
future can be easily seen through the lens of historical
developments. All it takes is 50 years or 2 generations to
hand over the demographic superiority to the Muslims.
Since the three states mentioned above will be cer-
tainly dominated by the Muslims in the near future,
the only question is how will Hindus be treated in these
states? How the secular state of India handles the future
of Assam, West Bengal and Kerala will be the model tem-
plate for the rest of the country. The Hindus in the rest of
India will get another chance to draw valuable lessons as
and when this demographic transition is complete. The
past lessons from J&K hardly made any dent in the psy-
che of Hindu intellectuals. Will it be any different this
time?
4
TFR Politics
“Democracy is like a train, you get off once you

have reached your destination.”
– Erdogan
The lower rung BJP leaders every now and then are
known to raise the bogey of TFR and exhort Hindus to
increase their fertility. No sooner that such ideas are
floated, the entire media gets up into arms leading to
disowning of such members and comments by the top
BJP brass.
While the left chastises the TFR brigade by citing
their ill-founded fears about Muslim population explo-
sion, the neo-liberal supporters on the right although
acknowledging the problem fail to react because they
don’t/can’t match the resolve of Muslim women as they
think that Hindu women are not captive breeders and
even after making them aware of the ground situation
would not support the Hindu cause. Even though it
might be logically in the interest of Hindu women to have
more children, but such thoughts are not even partially
entertained (or vocalized) by the neo-liberals. Hence for
ideological purity this group of right wing does not want
125
126 4. TFR POLITICS
to act even after understanding the facts about demog-

raphy.
Apart from the economic Right Wing, the regular

Hindus hide their personal choice of having fewer kids
under the intellectual veneer of excess population, envi-
ronment deterioration and other ideas that have been
spoon fed to them since independence. And like any
other ’nouveau convert’ they have taken these modern
memes with great zeal. The national and state govern-
ments have spent enough money on brainwashing and
hence we find open support for this government pro-
paganda which has put the responsibility of saving the
world from environmental catastrophe squarely on the
Hindu shoulders. And the Hindus are more than happy
to comply and watch their own demographic demise with
loud cheers.
The previous chapter showed the big gap between

Hindu and Muslim fertility, but that did not completely
reveal the complicity of governments in curtailing the
Hindu fertility. The various "low population" programs
run by the government have had a much adverse impact
on the Hindus compared to the Muslims. The story of
Hindu fertility is actually much worse than what is re-
vealed through the TFR statistics. And these questions
affect not just the present but also the future of Hindu
demography.
We cover three more themes that are usually over-

looked in census studies, but important for understand-
ing the mechanics of fertility game. They are- steriliza-
tion, female foeticide and infant mortality rate. While
sterilization and infant mortality rate are closely tied to
government action, female foeticide is a reflection on the
lack of strategic thinking by the Hindu society as a whole.
4.1. STERILIZATION 127
4.1 Sterilization
Population explosion has been a big discussion since the
time of Malthus and although farm productivity has in-
creased at a much faster pace in the last two centuries but
the debate around high population refuse to die. It also
forms the bedrock of international policy making guided
by plethora of international organizations like the United
Nations and the World Bank.
India is a special target for such population policies
because it has the second largest population in the world.
This generates international interests both by scholars as
well as policy makers. Thus there has been a big push to
understand as well as to push down the Indian fertility
(you can read Hindu fertility). 1
As we saw in the previous chapter, the Indian fertility
is now 2.20 in the latest NFHS4 conducted in 2015-16,
which means the target for fertility reduction has been
achieved much quickly than expected even by the inter-
national organizations. The Hindu TFR is very close to
the replacement fertility level while for the Muslims it
stands above 2.6 even in NFHS4.
The most common method to control population in
India has been government mandated female steriliza-
tion. The level of female sterilization has been 36% or
above since the past 3-4 decades. In the latest NFHS4
survey, the sterilization level stands at 36% as reported in
table 4.1.2 We don’t yet have complete access to NFHS4
data, but according to NFHS3, the median age for female
sterilization stood at 25.7 years. This goes in line with In-
dians getting married early, having a few kids and then
getting sterilized. The rate of sterilization for different
1
Dyson, On the future of human fertility in India.
2
Figures based on women who ever had sex. Figures for NFHS4
taken from this link.
128 4. TFR POLITICS
NFHS3 NFHS4
(2005-06) (2015-16)
Female Sterilization (%) 37.3 36.0
Table 4.1: Female Sterilization in India
Age at Sterilization Hindu Muslim

<25 45.69 45.73
25-29 34.96 33.71
30-34 14.82 14.99
35-39 3.85 5.08
40-44 0.63 0.40
45-49 0.03 0.01
Table 4.2: Age at Sterilization (out of those Sterilized)-

NFHS3
age groups is shown in table 4.2.

But do all communities get sterilized at the same
rate? To answer this question we looked at the data
from NFHS3 which shows the sterilization of women by
religion as well as education levels. The details are shown
in table 4.3 3 . It gives sterilization both by communities
as well as education levels.
What you can clearly see from the table 4.3 is that
compared to Hindus only half the Muslim women ever
get sterilized. While the percentage of Hindus getting
sterilized stands at 32.78%, the rate for Muslims is only
16.60%. If one thinks about low fertility levels among
Hindus, sterilization at low age could be one of the di-
3
These numbers are slightly below the national averages re-
ported in previous table. While in previous table, GoI figures in-
cluded only women who ever had sex, in our calculations we include
all women and not just those who have ever had sex.
rect reasons. Except Muslims, the rest of the religious

communities too have a similar sterilization rate and so
it would not be too far fetched to say that Muslims are
either consistently avoiding government mandated ster-
ilization or government is not targeting them as much
as the Hindus. While the gullible Hindus seem to have
embraced the "Hum do, Hamare do" (we two, our two)
agenda of the government with enthusiasm, it has few
takers among the Muslims.
The table 4.3 actually gives more information than
just the rate of sterilization among different communi-
ties, it also reports the rate of sterilization among women
by different education levels. The rate of sterilization is
the highest among the low educated women as the more
educated ones seem to have access to other contraceptive
methods. Since Hindus are more educated than Muslims,
it implies that the thrust of sterilization is even higher
among the poor and uneducated Hindus.
And this intuition holds true if we look at the breakup
by education and religion as shown in table 4.4, which
shows the sterilization rates by the level of education
among Hindus and Muslims. There are two things to
notice from this table. First, Muslim rate of sterilization
is lower at all education levels. Second, the difference
in sterilization rates is the highest at the "No education"
level. While the uneducated Muslims only get sterilized
at 18.78% i.e. slightly higher than their average level of
16.60%, the uneducated Hindu female is sterilized at the
rate of 43.27% i.e. more than 10 percentage points higher
than aggregate Hindu sterilization rate of 32.78%.
While the rate of sterilization is high for low education
levels among Muslims, but Hindus see a drastic increase
in sterilization rate. Even at the higher education level,
there is a gap of more than 3 percentage points between
the Hindus and Muslims. The consistency of these results
130 4. TFR POLITICS
Religion % sterilized
By Religion
Hindu 32.78
Muslim 16.60
Christian 29.91
Sikh 23.81
Buddhist 44.46
Jain 29.57
By education level
No education 37.78
Incomplete primary 40.45
Complete primary 33.72
Incomplete secondary 24.20
Complete secondary 14.89
Higher 12.23
Table 4.3: Percentage of females sterilized- NFHS3
at all education levels should raise an alarm among those

who lobby for sterilization campaign as the way forward
for population control. Any sterilization campaign will
only end up hurting the Hindu fertility.
What is the success of sterilization campaign region-
ally? Is there a consistent difference between steriliza-
tion rates of Hindus and Muslims at the state level? To
understand this, the sterilization figures by states are re-
ported in table 4.5. The southern states are far ahead
of their northern counterparts when it comes to pro-
viding sterilization to their female population. Andhra
Pradesh comes out at the top with the sterilization rate of
54.41% among its females. The other southern states of
Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala too show high num-
bers compared to the northern states of Bihar and Uttar
Pradesh, where sterilization rate is around or below 20%.
Education level Hindu Muslim

No education 43.27 18.78
Incomplete primary 41.51 25.77
Complete primary 38.17 21.07
Incomplete secondary 24.13 14.94
Complete secondary 14.18 8.98
Higher 11.21 7.57
Table 4.4: Sterilization rate (%) by education and reli-

gion
From the table 4.5, one can conclude that Muslims

have much lower sterilization rate as compared to the
Hindus everywhere in the country. Except Goa, the ster-
ilization rate of Muslims is consistently lower in all states.
Whether it is the state with highest sterilization rate i.e.
Andhra Pradesh, or the state with lowest sterilization
rate i.e. Assam, the sterilization campaign has failed to
produce results among the Muslims. Even the low ster-
ilization states like UP and Bihar show a glaring gap
between the two communities.
Assam shows the lowest sterilization rate of roughly
10% among all states. It is a special case and once again
it is important to remember that Muslim population in
Assam is predominantly rural. So, it seems Assam has
such low sterilization rate because it failed to push ster-
ilization among its rural Muslims.
The most important point to note here though is the
campaign for sterilization in the saffron states i.e. states
which have had BJP rule for quite some time. The low
rung BJP leaders have been often seen campaigning for
high fertility among Hindus, so one would expect the
saffron states to follow a state policy which favours high
fertility among Hindus. But is that true in the data?
132 4. TFR POLITICS
One can take Gujarat as an example of saffron state

with long enough BJP rule to gauge the impact of saf-
fron rule on sterilization policy. Gujarat has an above
average rate of sterilization among its population and
there is a high enough difference of sterilization between
Hindus and Muslims standing at 11%. So at cursory
glance it seems that BJP has not been able to trans-
late the preaching of its low level leaders into action on
the ground through state policy. Although, Gujarat is
the only example here and so it is insufficient to draw
conclusion on BJP’s policy stance. It would be inter-
esting to calculate the same results from NFHS4 data,
since then we can include figures from Madhya Pradesh,
Chattisgarh etc with a long enough BJP tenure to impact
sterilization decisions.
But is sterilization always just and does the govern-
ment follow ethical policy of sterilization? To answer
this question, NFHS3 included a question on whether
the interviewee was informed about the irreversibility of
sterilization before the operation? Out of some 32,523 re-
spondents who answered this question, roughly one-third
were not informed about the irreversibility of the proce-
dure. It is a gross failure on the part of Indian state
to not inform people about such an important issue af-
fecting their lives. The results for this question and the
breakup by religion is shown in table 4.6.
The southern states seem to do slightly better on in-
forming their population about this procedure, but the
results are alarming for most other states. Thankfully, at
least in this case of not informing the females, there is no
glaring difference between the two communities as seen
by the national average of around 33% for both Hindus
and Muslims.
Key Takeaway:
State % sterlized Total Difference

Hindu Muslim Sterlized H-M
Andhra Pradesh 52.45 34.17 54.41 18.28
Assam 11.73 3.62 9.88 8.12
Bihar 24.48 5.75 20.12 18.73
Chhatisgarh 33.68 23.61 33.44 10.07
Delhi 20.19 6.85 17.54 13.34
J&K 20.84 17.51 18.50 3.34
Goa 19.85 23.27 17.39 -3.42
Gujarat 35.19 24.18 34.22 11.00
Haryana 33.83 3.85 31.31 29.99
Himachal pradesh 38.54 21.43 41.22 17.11
Jharkhand 25.02 8.81 19.35 16.21
Karnataka 47.07 34.13 44.83 12.94
Kerala 42.94 31.29 38.43 11.66
Madhya Pradesh 37.88 24.49 37.13 13.39
Maharashtra 40.28 26.20 41.40 14.08
Orissa 25.91 6.25 26.04 19.66
Punjab 25.05 11.96 24.02 13.09
Rajasthan 29.93 17.19 28.27 12.74
Tamil Nadu 44.62 39.59 42.38 5.02
Uttaranchal 26.62 7.69 24.94 18.93
Uttar Pradesh 16.77 5.42 13.46 11.36
West Bengal 27.46 16.49 27.35 10.97
Table 4.5: Female Sterilization Rate by State- NFHS3

134 4. TFR POLITICS
State Not Told Difference

Hindu Muslim Total H-M
Andhra Pradesh 36.96 34.77 33.82 2.18
Assam 12.85 13.79 12.77 -0.94
Bihar 34.58 29.72 36.45 4.85
Chhatisgarh 33.39 29.41 33.66 3.98
Delhi 10.76 16.00 10.58 -5.23
Gujarat 43.72 34.09 42.76 9.63
Goa 41.18 33.78 38.77 7.4
Himachal Pradesh 33.01 54.54 33.67 -21.52
Haryana 30.45 16.66 30.64 13.78
Jharkhand 39.54 30.00 37.04 9.54
Jammu and Kashmir 47.27 40.12 42.73 7.14
Karnataka 34.49 37.20 34.77 -2.71
Kerala 31.75 32.59 31.33 -0.83
Madhya pradesh 29.88 21.53 31.01 8.34
Orissa 20.86 0.00 20.67 20.86
Punjab 33.05 36.36 28.32 -3.31
Rajasthan 40.34 48.52 41.79 -8.18
Tamil Nadu 17.46 22.91 17.15 -5.45
Uttarakhand 27.04 29.41 26.76 -2.36
Uttar Pradesh 44.01 40.87 42.3 3.14
West Bengal 27.55 26.14 26.03 1.4
India 33.25 32.98 32.82 0.27
Table 4.6: Not told that Sterilization is irreversible-

NFHS3
• Hindus have much higher sterilization rate than

Muslims, 32% relative to 17%.
• The sterilization rate is consistently higher for Hin-

dus no matter how you slice up the data whether
geographically or by education levels
• Since sterilization is voluntary, this consistent under-

sterilization of Muslims implies that they avoid it
due to theological reasons or low targeting, while
Hindus react to government propaganda
• The thurst of sterilization campaign is built on ster-

ilization of low educated i.e. poor Hindu females
• Roughly one-third of the survey respondents did

not know about the non-reversible nature of fe-
male sterilization, which points towards a big hu-
man rights crisis as these women lose control over
their biological body due to misinformation/no in-
formation.
To summarize, one can say that the big dent in Hindu

fertility rode on the success of sterilization campaigns by
the successive governments. Most states have shown a
missionary zeal to sterilize poor uneducated Hindu fe-
males. Since, Muslims have higher fertility than Hindus
everywhere, this raises another question why such po-
lices did not specifically target the Muslims? The gains
by targeting Muslims (the high TFR group) would have
been much higher than targeting the Hindus.
If Muslims were targeted more under this policy, it
would have been much easier to achieve fertility reduc-
tion targets. So why did the governments not pursue
this direction? Or they actually targeted Muslims but
136 4. TFR POLITICS
they did not react to the incentives as much as the Hin-

dus. And if the governments knew that it is the Hin-
dus who are self-selecting into this policy, why did they
not stop or tune down the roll-out of the sterilization
campaign? Why did successive governments allowed the
erosion of Hindu demography through state sponsored
schemes, which specifically targeted Hindus more than
the Muslims? These are some very pertinent questions
which cannot be answered without having access to more
detailed data. And lastly, why have the saffron states
with long enough BJP rule not removed this policy, while
their low rung leaders go around asking Hindus to have
5 children?
4.2 Female Foeticide

If the Indian state has played its role in curtailing Hindu
population, the Hindu society is not far behind in limiting
its own growth. The presence of female foeticide has been
a problem for the last few decades and has gripped many
policy enthusiasts.
So what is the root cause of female foeticide among
Hindu society? The first impulsive answer will be to
blame it on the misogyny of Indian people (same can be
said about Chinese, where this problem is even worse)
who hate women and kill their female offspring. How-
ever, this is not true. The fact of the matter is, female
foeticide has its origin partly in poverty and partly in
female privilege. India is a traditional country and as
such, parents live with their children in old age, when
they can no longer work. For the majority of Indian par-
ents, it usually means living with their sons, as only the
sons are expected to take care of their old parents. This
is specially true in the semi-urban and rural areas where
4.2. FEMALE FOETICIDE 137
parents still live with their sons. Given the near absence
of any kind of social safety net in India, this is the only
option available to a regular person.
In this climate, when the erstwhile Congress govern-
ments ran massive propaganda against population explo-
sion and dangers of large families, which it blamed for the
lack of economic growth and hide it’s incompetence, par-
ents were forced to choose between a male and female
child. Sadly, it generated overwhelming support for male
children. This seems to have followed from the fact that
in most regions the male child is expected to take care
of old parents while the female child is supposed to leave
them and live with her husband.
In the past, having large number of children usually
meant that female foeticide or infanticide was never a
problem as children were seen as wealth and not as a bur-
den like how today’s society has been made to believe.
So the parents used to have many children without any
preference which kept the sex ratio balanced. But then
the government launched the propaganda against pop-
ulation and the result was that people decided to have
fewer children as should be clear from the statistics on
sterilization in the previous section.
When they were convinced to have fewer children,
they decided to select for male child which resulted in
female foeticide and infanticide overdrive. This propa-
ganda against over population need much more investi-
gation as highlighted in a piece published by Indiafacts
4
, according to which GoI took support of Ford Founda-
tion, the same organization which now trumpets feminist
causes, to help abort female foetuses in order to control
4
The article appeared in Indiafacts, an online portal, giving
details on push by Ford Foundation in aborting females in north
India to help control population growth. Read here.
138 4. TFR POLITICS
population.
Since our topic of discussion is demography, we leave
the discussion on reasons behind female foeticidethe for
some other time. Under the current climate, it is im-
portant to see the damage caused (or will be caused) to
Hindu demography due to this selective abortion of fe-
males by Hindus. Just like excessive sterilization, female
foeticide is a result of government war on excessive popu-
lation. The Muslims have not reacted as enthusiastically
as Hindus to the government directives on population
control as seen through their reluctance to use contra-
ception. This also led to lower female foeticide among
Muslims and thus they have a better sex ratio compared
to the Hindus.
It is only the females in each community who give
birth to the next generation and hence it is important to
look at the sex-wise breakup of each community in dif-
ferent age cohorts. These population statistics for India
are presented in table 4.7. It reports raw share of both
male and females in each age cohort. We will stick to
analyzing the results for age cohorts 0-4 years and 50-
54 years, as done before in Chapter 2. The columns (1)
and (2) give the percentage share of Hindus and Muslim
females in their age cohort. So, if there are 100 female
kids in 0-4 age cohort, 77.2 of them are Hindu (1) and
17.45 are Muslim (2) females. Same applies to other age
cohorts as well as columns (3) and (4). The gap between
female and male share is shown in columns (5) and (6)
for two communities, where column (5) = (1)-(3) and
(6)= (2)-(4). Under normal circumstances, i.e. no fe-
male foeticide, column (5) and (6) will be roughly close
to zero. The percentage of Hindu males among all males
in lower age cohorts will be equal to percentage of Hindu
females in all females among that age cohort.
The important points to notice from table 4.7 are the
following. Firstly, the share of Hindu females out of the

total female population is always lower compared to the
share of Hindu males in the total male population in each
age cohort. Secondly, the gap between percentage share
of Hindu males and females is still high in the lower age
cohort at 0-4 years, which probably hints towards pres-
ence of female foeticide among Hindus even now as shown
in column (5) of table 4.7. Under ideal scenario of no fe-
male foeticide and similar death rates during pregnancy,
both the columns (5) and (6) will be close to zero.
The important point to note here is that both Hin-
dus and Muslims have lower share of females in 0-4 age
cohort, implying that the other religions have a larger
share of females in these cohorts. If the rate of death of
female children were same across all religious groups, we
would expect both male and female population share in
that age group to match. But what we see here is that
population share of males is higher among Hindus in all
age cohorts and much higher in the lower age cohorts. If
the two had similar birth-death for both genders, there is
no reason to expect difference between female and male
population shares out of total female and male popula-
tion respectively.
What does table 4.7 tell and what it does not tell?
One, it does not give the extent of female foeticide among
Hindus and Muslims. Two, it does not say that there was
no foeticide among Muslims. What it gives is the relative
difference in female deaths between Hindus and Muslims.
The share of Hindu females out of total females in a given
age group should be similar to total Hindu males out of
total males, so the difference here captures the relative
excess female foeticide among Hindus.
The worst gap between Hindu male and female shares
in their respective age group is seen in the age cohort of
15-19 years i.e. those born between 1991-95. There are
140 4. TFR POLITICS
Age Female Male Difference(F-M)

Hindu Muslim Hindu Muslim Hindu Muslim
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
0-4 77.2 17.45 77.6 17.02 -0.40 0.43
5-9 77.67 17.15 78.06 16.72 -0.39 0.43
10-14 78.27 16.38 78.61 15.97 -0.34 0.41
15-19 77.88 16.27 78.81 15.47 -0.93 0.80
20-24 78.8 15.03 79.32 14.84 -0.52 0.19
25-29 80.07 13.82 80.45 13.65 -0.38 0.17
30-34 80.81 13.09 81.12 12.96 -0.31 0.13
35-39 81.03 12.81 81.39 12.74 -0.36 0.07
40-44 81.14 12.19 81.51 12.35 -0.37 -0.16
45-49 81.5 11.65 81.76 11.75 -0.26 -0.10
50-54 81.71 11.21 81.87 11.52 -0.16 -0.31
55-59 82.04 11.06 82.16 10.98 -0.12 0.08
60-64 82.24 10.83 82.03 11.43 0.21 -0.60
65-69 82.71 10.41 82.41 10.78 0.3 -0.37
70-74 82.96 10.12 82.82 10.51 0.14 -0.39
75-79 82.67 9.48 82.84 9.56 -0.17 -0.08
80+ 81.6 10.58 81.61 10.73 -0.01 -0.15
All ages 79.64 14.29 79.95 14.16 -0.31 0.13
Table 4.7: Population share by sex and age group (Cen-

sus 2011). Column (5)= (1) - (3) and Column (6) = (2)
- (4).
0.93 percentage point excess males as compared to fe-

males in this age group. A large share of this gap is cap-
tured by Muslims, who have 0.80 percentage point higher
number of females in this age group. These were the years
post liberalization when sex determination techniques be-
came available for the first time on a mass scale before
government curbed upon it.
Although the difference in these male-female shares
have come down over the new age cohorts but there are
still excess males in the Hindu population. It is only in
the higher age groups that the difference goes close to
zero or turn negative even for Muslims i.e. more males
compared to females, potentially implying early deaths of
Muslim females compared to Hindu females and/or lower
female foeticide in older generations.
Thus the key takeaways from the discussion on female
foeticide are:
• Hindus have practised female foeticide on large lev-

els in the past 2-3 decades with the worst period
being 1991-95.
• Share of Hindu females in the total female popula-

tion is lower than their male counterparts, pointing
to further worsening of demography in the future
as more share of Muslim females mean more share
in the reproductive pool.
• The boomerang effect of this foeticide will be only

seen now (post the 2011 census) as the worst im-
pacted generation from 1991-95 enter the reproduc-
tive age. The -0.93 percentage point gap in Hindu
male and female will show up in the next cohort.
Female foeticide is the most ugly side of the Hindu

society and will impose a huge demographic cost on the
142 4. TFR POLITICS
Hindus in the future. A society that kills it unborn

daughters will definitely earn the negative karma for its
actions. Now it is upon the future generations to pay for
the mistakes of their ancestors.
4.3 Infant Mortality Rate

It seems the dice of demography has been rolled against
the Hindus by the nature itself. How else can one explain
that on top of self-inflicted wounds like the excess female
sterilization and foeticide compared to Muslims, Hindu
children also die more naturally?
The infant mortality has come down for the whole In-
dian population over the years as reflected in the statis-
tics collected in the different waves of NFHS survey. But
what is puzzling is the consistent difference in the Hindu-
Muslim mortality rate among the infants. This difference
in mortality rates between Hindus and Muslims is shown
in table 4.8 5 .
Both Hindus and Muslims have seen a decreasing
mortality rate for their infants and the total number of
infant deaths has gone down from 9.16% to 6.53% for the
Hindus, while from 8.23% to 5.82% for the Muslims. But
the difference in Hindu-Muslim death rate has stayed at
0.71 even in the last NFHS3. Although, more Muslims
live in urban areas but that does not completely explain
the difference between the two communities as found in
some of the papers quoted above. The common explana-
tion of higher female discrimination (or foeticide) is also
rejected because Hindu male kids also die at an alarm-
ingly high rate when compared to Muslims. If discrimi-
nation was the major reason, male Hindu kids would not
5
Table reproduced from Allendorf and Guillot: Hindu-Muslim
Differentials in Child Mortality in India
4.3. INFANT MORTALITY RATE 143
Survey Under 5 Mortality Rate Percent Died

Muslim Hindu Muslim Hindu Difference
NFHS-1 93.6 105.6 8.23 9.16 0.93
NFHS-2 76.3 93.3 6.82 8.20 1.38
NFHS-3 62.9 71.6 5.82 6.53 0.71
All waves 77.4 90.6 6.95 8.01 1.06
Table 4.8: Infant Mortality rates (Source: Footnote 5)
have the infant mortality rate different than male Muslim

kids.
There have been many papers written on this issue
where the authors have tried to explain the puzzle using
different metrics. The puzzle only deepens since Hindu
women provide better antenatal care as well as immu-
nization to their kids according to these surveys.
The literature does not have clear answer for explain-
ing the Muslim advantage but one can still list some of
the important factors6 . The most important ones are,
firstly, Muslim mothers usually stay more at home thus
conferring survival advantage to their kids compared to
the Hindu women who work outside more. Secondly,
Muslims probably have better access to public health
care in case of diarrhoea or other water borne diseases
(urban effect as more Muslims are urbanized). Thirdly, it
can also be due to higher fertility among Muslims. Since
fewer Muslim children are first-borns or, relatedly, fewer
are born to very young mothers, which confers higher
survival advantage. Fourthly, Muslim women are taller,
indicating long term health benefits, and hence giving
birth to better nourished kids. Whether this is related to
excessive vegetarianism among Hindu mothers is a point
to think about.
6
Bhalotra et. al, Religion and Childhood Death in India
144 4. TFR POLITICS
But even after accounting for all these above men-

tioned factors, being a Muslim gives survival advantage
to the young children. This implies that we are probably
missing some other important variable which is highly
correlated with being Muslim and conferring survival ad-
vantage to their new borns.
Nevertheless, irrespective of whether we know or not,
this difference in mortality rates between Hindus and
Muslims has conferred further advantage to the Mus-
lim demography. This difference (from NFHS3) in infant
mortality rates will shave off another 0.1% from Hindu
demography and add to the Muslims. Although, it is not
as big a drag on the Hindu demography as the female
foeticide, but it is nevertheless an important differential,
which one should look into. When one is losing demog-
raphy, every 0.1% matters. Also, the aggregate deaths of
>6% are still huge and should be brought down to near
zero as has been achieved in the rest of the world.
4.4 Other Myths

One of the popular myths surrounding the Muslim pop-
ulation explosion is that it is growing because they have
more children from multiple wives. The growth is sup-
posed to come from the practise of polygamy among Mus-
lims. But is this inference supported in the data? Or
even more fundamentally, can polygamy generate higher
population growth?
Firstly, the number of children depends on the num-
ber of females in a community, so one man having mul-
tiple wives does not directly impact the number of kids
a female can bear. Secondly, multiple wives can mat-
ter when Muslim men increasingly marry Hindu women
thus increasing the total pool of females raising Muslim
4.4. OTHER MYTHS 145
kids and decreasing it for Hindus. Although there is no

data on it and probably there are many instances of love
jihad, but census numbers cannot throw light on cases
of love jihad. Thus blaming polygamy for high Muslim
fertility is wrong if we cannot prove that polygamy leads
to poaching of Hindu women. Thirdly, this is not true in
the data as Muslim men do not practise polygamy any
more than Hindus.
NFHS3 collected information on the number of wives
as it asked the respondents whether they know if their
husbands have other wives. The results of this question
are shown in table 4.9. More than 97% of both Hindus
and Muslims are in monogamous relationship. Although,
slightly higher percentage of Muslims have more than one
wife but it is not so huge as to generate the population
explosion that some Hindus would like to believe. Thus
given this information it is not correct to attribute high
Muslim fertility and population growth to polygamy.
Although, it is still possible that permission for polygamy
in Muslim Personal Law gives more leverage to Muslim
men to demand more children from their wives. Easy di-
vorce and permission for polygamy definitely brings down
the bargaining power of Muslim women in fertility deci-
sions. But as it stands in the data, this threat seems to
be covert and not overtly executed by Muslim men. So,
it would not be polygamy but permission of polygamy
per se in Islam that can lead to higher Muslim fertility.
Before we close this discussion on TFR politics, we
can look at the last but equally important information
which can be obtained from the NFHS data. It is a sub-
jective question and quantifies the ideal number of kids
as reported by the families. If Hindus do not want to
get sterilized, there is no way government can force their
females to get sterilized. Similarly, if they do not want to
get restricted to one child, there is no reason to consider
146 4. TFR POLITICS
Number of Wives Hindu Muslim Christian Sikh

1 97.98 97.08 96.51 99.64
2 1.48 2.21 2.48 0.26
3 0.12 0.30 0.49 0.00
4 0.02 0.03 0.05 0.00
5 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
6 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
7 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Don’t know 0.21 0.15 0.34 0.05
Table 4.9: Number of wives by religion (NFHS3)
Ideal Number Percentage

of children Hindu Muslim Christian Sikh
0 1.20 1.19 1.85 3.10
1 9.43 3.48 8.16 15.14
2 61.24 46.61 59.72 65.20
3 18.53 24.36 14.41 8.59
4 6.40 14.94 8.16 2.12
5 0.81 2.65 2.15 0.07
6+ 0.39 1.49 1.65 0.00
Table 4.10: Ideal Number of Children (NFHS3)

4.4. OTHER MYTHS 147
Ideal Number Secondary (%) Higher (%)

of children Hindu Muslim Hindu Muslim
0 0.92 1.52 0.94 0.95
1 23.21 8.84 27.93 11.24
2 70.07 65.61 65.92 68.05
3 4.11 16.71 3.24 11.95
4 0.48 4.56 0.62 4.38
5 0.05 0.28 0.08 0.47
Table 4.11: Ideal number of Children by education

(NFHS3)
female child as a burden and practise female foeticide. In

both these cases, Hindus have themselves to blame and
no one else.
The dedication to preserve/alter the demography clearly
gets reflected in the number of kids each community
wants to have in an ideal scenario. NFHS3 collected the
response on the ideal number of kids for each respondent
and it can be used to answer this question. The results
for this question are shown in table 4.10. It shows that
majority of Hindus i.e. 61.2% prefer 2 children, compared
to only 46.6% Muslims. A significantly large number of
Hindus want to restrict themselves to 1 or 2 children,
while the number stays fairly high for Muslims even at 3
or 4 children. A lower child preference among Hindus is
potentially driven by their higher education levels, but it
does not completely disappear even after controlling for
education.
The results for ideal number of kids by highest levels
of education (secondary completed and higher) are shown
in table 4.11. Compared to the previous table, here one
can see that 93% of Hindus have listed their ideal num-
148 4. TFR POLITICS
ber of children below or equal to 2. The most dramatic is

the sharp increase in the number of Hindus whose ideal
number of kids is 1, which goes up from 23.2% to 27.9%
as one gets more educated. In comparison, the percent-
age of Muslims who want only 1 kid is very small. Also
noticeable are a significant number of Muslims who list 3
or more as the ideal number of kids. This table makes it
clear that Muslim preference for kids stays higher than
Hindus even after achieving higher education which is
being reflected in the dedicated number of community
members who stick to having large families.
While education drastically reduces the Hindu pref-
erence for children, it stays more or less high for a signif-
icant portion of Muslim population. It is these dedicated
members among the Muslim community who are creating
most of the TFR difference between Hindus and Muslims.
And it is this group of people, who would not change their
mind even after becoming richer or more educated. Al-
though, ideal number of kids is a subjective measure but
this information in NFHS3 reflects the important reason
behind high Muslim fertility and the TFR gap between
the two religions.
4.5 Exodus Experts

There is a set of Hindu intellectuals, who prefer to put
the blame on various governments for their lackadaisical
policies leading to the ethnic cleansing of Hindus in many
regions. While it is true that in the case of Kashmiri Pan-
dits and some other regions, targeting Hindus happened
under the watch of successive governments with a tacit
approval, but it would not explain rapid demographic de-
cline in other regions with heavy to moderate majority
of Hindus.
4.5. EXODUS EXPERTS 149
Once a region gets high Muslim population, it is pos-

sible to expect out migration of Hindus due to demo-
graphic pressure by the Muslims through outright tar-
geting of kids and women.7 Of course, one cannot find a
bigger and better example than the exodus of Kashmir
Pandits, the only case in independent India where the
victims have not yet been able to return back to their
home state.
In the last chapter we amply demonstrated how the
Hindu fertility has crashed in Kerala and seems to be
the prominent reason behind falling Hindu demograph-
ics in that state. Similar trends have been observed else
where but there is a particular class of exodus experts
who do not want to pin the blame where it lies i.e. on
Hindus themselves for their low fertility (or government
for rampant sterilization campaigns). Such experts look
for exodus as an explanation for fall in Hindu population,
specially in the case of red zone areas. But is exodus re-
ally the main reason behind the falling demography? We
think that it is one of the reasons but cannot explain the
falling demography of Hindus everywhere in the whole
country. If exodus was the main culprit, then all regions
will not see similar erosion of Hindu demography from
Kashmir to Kanyakumari.
To make this point clear, we can again look at the
fertility data available in the Census 2011. It reports
number of births in a year in each district. This dis-
trict level data can then be used to generate district level
TFR. As a case study, we can look at TFR data from west
UP districts. To understand whether exodus is really the
biggest reason for the fall in Hindu demography in west
7
For example- In the case of Muzzafarnagar riots in 2013, the
primary reason for the spark was eve-teasing of Hindu girls by some
Muslim men.
150 4. TFR POLITICS
UP, let us look at the TFR of four districts in west UP

given in table 4.12. Baghpat is significantly Hindu, Muz-
zafarnagar and Saharanpur are moderately Hindu while
Rampur is majority Muslim.
The reason for this case study is two fold. One, these
districts lie in the high Muslim concentration areas of
western UP and hence exodus should be high in these
districts. For exodus hypothesis to hold, we will expect
young Hindus to migrate and thus bring down the overall
Hindu TFR and fertility.8 Two, the districts are close to
each other and would have Hindus similar to each other
in the whole region. Same will be true for Muslims as
well. This is to avoid bias in comparing Hindus from one
region with Hindus of another region as they might be
very different from each other. Since the four districts
are neighbouring, this bias would be minimum as the
cultural norms are not expected to change completely in
the neighbouring districts. So, we have a good way to
compare fertility decisions of Hindus and Muslims and if
exodus hypothesis holds.
If exodus were true in case of west UP demographic
demise, then we would expect lower Hindu fertility in
the districts with low Hindu population because these
are the districts where Hindus are under greatest demo-
graphic pressure from the Muslims. On the other hand,
districts with high Hindu population should not show
any such constraint and have high fertility because the
young population from there has not migrated under de-
mographic pressure. But is it the case?
8
Kairana in Shamli district from the same region had many
news on Hindu migration out of the city. Exodus is possible in
pockets within the districts itself, but the question we are asking
is whether it led to the complete demise of Hindu population share
in west UP. Did Hindu demography crumble due to exodus alone
or there are other possible factors as well?
District Hindu Hindu Muslim

Share(%) TFR TFR
Baghpat 70.41 2.39 3.99
Muzzafarnagar 57.51 2.34 3.62
Saharanpur 56.74 2.33 3.26
Rampur 45.97 3.01 2.96
Table 4.12: Comparison of district TFR for UP
Looking at table 4.12, it does not seem so.9 The dis-

tricts are arranged in decreasing order of Hindu popu-
lation with Baghpat at the top with 70% Hindus and
Rampur at the bottom with 46% Hindus and Muzza-
farnagar and Saharanpur in the middle and borderline
Hindu majority.
What you can see is that the Hindu TFR is no dif-
ferent in case of Baghpat, Muzzafarnagar and Saharan-
pur. While the first district is 70% Hindu and the latter
two only borderline Hindu majority. Surprisingly, Hindu
TFR is the highest (=3.01) in Rampur, the district which
is Hindu minority among these four. This shows that
Hindus are having fewer kids in this region out of choice,
otherwise how will comparatively high majority district
like Baghpat has similar TFR as other low Hindu ma-
jority districts? Rampur on the other hand shows high
TFR though it is a Hindu minority district. With the
current dataset, it is difficult to say whether Rampur is
an outlier or the Hindus there are consciously trying to
out-breed Muslims.
9
It must be mentioned that district level TFR measures can be
a bit more noisy than the measures at state/national level due to
population variations at the district level which can bias estimates.
Such issues average out at bigger levels. But nevertheless it is the
best measure for district level TFR.
152 4. TFR POLITICS
On the other hand, the Muslim TFR in this region

shows a consistently decreasing pattern with the share of
Hindu population in the district. It is highest in Baghpat,
with 70% Hindu population, and lowest in Rampur, with
46% Hindus. Also, the decrease is huge and goes down
from 3.99 to 2.96 i.e. by almost 1 unit. Given that these
are neighbouring districts, it is a very shocking statistic
to say the least. Either there are some very deep un-
derlying differences in the Muslim populations in these
districts or Muslims really change their fertility pattern
once close to achieving majority.
Since this fertility calculation is done based on those
who were present in the household, it raises serious ques-
tions on the exodus hypothesis for the borderline Hindu
majority districts. For all practical purposes, a fertility
difference of 1.4 as in case of Baghpat translates to 58%
fertility differential between Hindus and Muslims. If we
do the population projection for Baghpat as done in the
last chapter, given the current 62% Hindus in 0-4 age
cohort (it is less than total 70%) and 58% fertility differ-
ential, Hindu population of Baghpat will be only 49.4% in
25 years in the 0-4 age group. Thus Baghpat will mimic
the other neighbouring districts in roughly 25 years even
without any out-migration of Hindus. Thus table 4.12 is
a big evidence against exodus hypothesis in the case of
current west UP. The demographic demise of western UP
at least can be explained by low TFR of Hindus alone.
The purpose of this section is not to undermine the
whole idea of exodus, as it might happen after the Muslim
share in the whole population reaches a certain threshold.
And may be there is some exodus even in the western UP
region but given the data on TFR differential, one does
not need exodus to reduce the Hindu share in the 0-4 age
cohorts. When the fall in TFR can easily explain demo-
graphic shift even in districts with high enough Hindu
population share, exodus seems only a way to shy away

from the personal responsibility. Hindus are losing 5-10%
share in so many districts that it seems to be driven by a
bigger underlying cause. And according to the data, it is
the low Hindu TFR. No matter which way you slice the
data, this underlying factor never goes away.
154 4. TFR POLITICS
5
Conclusion
“It is the most intolerant person who imposes

virtue on others precisely because of that intol-
erance”
– Taleb 1
To say that the information provided in Census 2011

on religious demographics is alarming, would be an un-
derstatement. During the course of this book, we have
extensively covered the demographics information from
various angles and each angle only showed a dismal po-
sition of Hindu demography.
When one looks at data there are usually outliars and
anomalies in the overall trends, but the growth in Muslim
concentration in districts has just one trend (and it is
upward). We showed in chapter two that districts only
change one way i.e. jump to a higher bracket of Muslim
share in 0-4 age when compared to 50-54 cohort. There is
not even a single district, which for example had 20-30%
Muslims in 50-54 age cohort and their numbers decreased
below 20% in 0-4 cohort. And it is true for all districts
1
Nassib Nicholos Taleb: The most intolerant wins: The dicta-
torship of the small minority. Chapter from "Skin in the Game".
155
156 5. CONCLUSION
in each share bracket. Generally, there can be a few

exceptions to such regularity in data but not with respect
to Muslim population share increase.
Now the question is- how can you justify such regu-
larity? The rich Hindu-poor Muslim, advantaged Hindu-
disadvantaged Muslim, majority Hindu-minority Muslim
and other similar dichotomies cannot and should not hold
true for all districts in India. The TFR difference has two
components- Hindu and Muslim fertility. So, even if Hin-
dus might be reducing their fertility at faster rate, why
is it that in no district Muslims decreased it more than
Hindus so as to lead to a decrease in Muslim population
share in some district?
Thus it is no longer justified to assign high compara-

tive Muslim fertility to all social factors other than being
a Muslim. These various factors have a role to play but
one cannot explain away the identity of being a Muslim
driving these trends. One can no longer discount the fact
that Muslims have Islamic mandate to grow numerically
and dilute others’ population share. And no where else
would it matter more than under democracy with "one
person, one vote".
Given the sensitive nature of information uncovered

in this book there would be many attempts to dilute this
analysis by the usual suspects i.e. Islamophilic social
scientists. A section of social scientists will engage in
monkey balancing (statistical) exercises to discount the
findings that we have reported in this book. So, it is
essential to bust the statistical charade of these social
scientists before they even decide to refute the findings
here. The next section will pre-emptively put to rest any
such exercises in the future.
5.1. STATISTICAL GYMNASTICS 157
5.1 Statistical Gymnastics

Statistical gymnastics is nothing but the usage of fancy
statistical modelling techniques to hide the information
which is unpalatable to the secular intelligentsia who in
their attempt for ideological purity don’t want to believe
that religion can be the most important driving force for
decision making in an individual’s life. But the lived ex-
perience of these ivory tower intellectuals, who have at
most shared a biryani with a Muslim friend, is very dif-
ferent from the experience of those on the ground who ev-
eryday realize the increasing number of skull caps on the
roads, in the markets and in their neighbourhoods. And
hence statistical chicanery can hide demographic facts for
a brief period of time but not forever.
So, when true demographic facts are presented, it
does not go down well with a large section of social scien-
tists in this country. Then begins the efforts to somehow
hide this explosive demographic information. This situ-
ation has been faced by other authors, who have worked
on this topic before and tried to present the true demo-
graphic picture.
One such example is the counter article by Jayaraj
and Subramaniam in 2004 to counter the claims made
by J K Bajaj and co-authors in their book Religious De-
mography of India 2 .
As is typical of liberal attack in such cases, rather
than scientifically disprove the thesis of Bajaj and co-
authors, Jayaraj and Subramaniam first tried to destroy
their credentials. This personal attack is evident right
at the beginning of their paper in EPW and is quoted
below:
"The book under review, written by A P Joshi, M D Srini-
2
Jayaraj and Subramaniam, Abusing Demography, EPW, 2004.
158 5. CONCLUSION
vas and J K Bajaj (two of whom, we understand, are

physicists, and one is a metallurgist), is a product of re-
search from the Centre for Policy Studies, Chennai."
There are two reasons to be wary about this type of

attack. First, if the thesis put forth by Bajaj et al is
so superficial and improbable, there is no reason for a
counter article in EPW. Second, if you consider it im-
portant enough to denounce, you do not have to mention
the educational qualifications of the authors concerned
to further your point. The technical details of the paper
should have been strong enough to counter Bajaj et al,
thus leaving no room for personal background and abuse.
But lets put aside the history of above controversy
and look at the current scenario and how our book settles
most of these debates. There are different ways to con-
tribute excess fertility among Muslims to various factors
like income, education level, caste etc., but we saw in pre-
vious chapter that religion remains the most important
one. As a final step, we will now pre-emptively answer
most of the roundabout questions that will be raised by
the demography data deniers in the future. Here is a
laundry list of such questions and relevant answers:
1. The first two chapters of our book completely side-

step the discussion on projection by using the age
information present in the Census 2011. While to-
tal population does matter, but if we already know
how the future generations would look like, it is not
smart to look at those aggregate numbers.
If Muslims account for 22% of 0-4 age cohort in ur-
ban population, we know they will be 22% youth in
coming 2-3 decades. No amount of statistical pol-
ishing will change this fact. Using age information
on district level, we have thus shown which regions
will have high Muslim concentration in the very

near future thus decreasing the need to depend on
projections for the next few decades.
2. For the future projections, we have used current

fertility and base population levels for the two re-
ligions. Once again, we sidestep any discussion on
how regression curves fit the past data. We use the
latest information on TFR and population shares
to make the cohort predictions. Those who control
the youth, control the future and hence we stick to
predicting just the next cohort shares. Hence, we
do not have to make strong assumptions needed for
predicting whole population shares and how they
have changed in the past.
There are two important differences (or benefits) of

using this method. Firstly, we are not predicting
total population shares but population shares in
the 0-4 age cohorts so we need fewer assumptions.
Secondly, for future prediction as reported in chap-
ter 3, the main assumption is on percentage dif-
ferential of TFR between the two religious groups
and current cohort ratios. If the current differen-
tial remains valid in the near three-four decades
our predictions will come out to be true. Also, the
chances of this second assumption to hold true is
much higher because for the percentage differen-
tial to go down, Muslim fertility has to decrease
more than Hindus in absolute terms (which has not
happened in cases like Kerala, the HDI paradise!).
Given the trend of rapid decrease in Hindu fertil-
ity, it becomes even more difficult for the Muslims
to decrease their fertility at even greater levels to
match the TFR shredder Hindus.
160 5. CONCLUSION
3. The level of absolute TFR difference does not mat-

ter, what matters is the percentage differential. So,
if the percentage differential continues to be large,
the Muslim population share will continue to rise
at the same speed. A difference of 1 at Hindu TFR
of 4 is less damaging to demography than at TFR
of 2.
Why is the above point very important? We have
seen fertility decrease for both religious groups over
the years, but that is only in levels. But as shown
in table 3.4, although the fertility levels have gone
down for both Hindus and Muslims, the percentage
differential between the two still stands at 30% (it
actually increased in NFHS3 from NFHS2, where it
was 29%). For population shares to stay constant
the percentage TFR gap between the two commu-
nities should go down. So if absolute Hindu fertil-
ity decreases by 0.5, the Muslim fertility has to go
down even more to decrease the percentage gap.
Once again, Kerala is a perfect example for this
where Hindu fertility has gone down to 1.5. For
population shares to stay constant, Muslim fertil-
ity in Kerala should also go down to 1.5, but instead
it is stuck at 2.4 (still lower than Indian TFR but
enough to turn Kerala into Islamic majority). This
has created a big percentage differential and Hindu
population share keeps falling at a much increased
pace in Kerala, as compared to the past. If in the
future Hindu fertility continues to hover below the
replacement level, Muslims can overtake them eas-
ily by maintaining a small difference in levels.
4. It is true that there are many associated factors for

high fertility and hence each of them can contribute
significantly to high Muslim fertility. But neverthe-

less, being Muslim is a significant factor even after
controlling for these numerous factors. Even if one
controls for various socio-economic factors, religion
is predominant and explains more than three quar-
ter of difference in Hindu-Muslim TFR.3
The statistics, no matter which way you split, ge-
ographically or by social status, as presented in
the last chapter always result in higher fertility for
Muslims. There must be some underlying Muslim
factor which must be driving these consistent re-
sults everywhere. Even globally, Muslims have a
higher fertility than other religions in all the re-
gions. It is impossible for some other nuanced fac-
tors to explain such statistical consistency every-
where in all places and all the time for all social
groups.
On top to corroborate, we have two other measures,
which point towards why Muslims might have high
fertility. First is a subjective measure-ideal num-
ber of kids. The average of ideal number of kids
reported by Muslims is higher everywhere. Once
again, even after looking at the results by educa-
tion levels, we consistently find Muslim preference
for more kids in the data. A significantly large per-
centage of highly educated Muslims continue to re-
port 3 or 4 kids as an ideal number of children.
Second is the objective measure of sterilization, that
we have presented in the book or contraception
adoption in general as reported in other studies.
Muslims are consistently less sterilized all across
3
A good discussion on Hindu-Muslim TFR differences is given
in Bhat and Zavier (2005). They use both NFHS-1 and NFHS-2 to
show that religion is the primary reason for high Muslim fertility.
162 5. CONCLUSION
the country. If they were so deprived and poor

as claimed by the left, they should respond more
to government sops that come with sterilization.
But Muslims consistently avoid sterilization in the
whole country. These two trends are well estab-
lished in the literature such as Dhamalinga et al
(2005). They establish both these trends hold for
data from NFHS2. Similar results were found by
Iyer and Joshi (2013) for the later waves of NFHS3.
4
Given these finding we can argue that only ex-

tremely biased individuals will ignore such consis-
tency in the data and look for sophisticated non-
explanations to mask the high comparative Muslim
fertility and population growth.
5. Even after acknowledging the various factors re-

sponsible for high Muslim fertility, one cannot com-
pletely ignore that one of the reasons for Muslim
disadvantage on different social indicators is rooted
in their bigger families.
If we are to believe this disadvantage hypothesis
for having more kids, then it generates a vicious
cycle of more kids leading to worse social outcomes
and then worse outcomes leading to more kids in
the next generation of Muslims. If this feedback
loop continues for the next few generations, which
is very possible, the demography of India would be
left completely in disarray.
Whether one believes that high Muslim fertility is
4
Dharmalinga et al., Muslim-Hindu fertility differences, EPW,
2005.
Iyer and Joshi, Missing Women and India’s Religious Demogra-
phy, Journal of South Asian Development, 2013.
rooted in Islamic theology or social deprivation, the

end result is the same. By the time this issue is re-
solved in a few decades (i.e. if one waits for Muslims
to achieve same social level as Hindus), Muslims
would have already altered the Indian demography
completely as shown in the second and third chap-
ters.
6. There is another important piece of non-quantitative

evidence which is completely ignored by the Nehru-
vian brand of intellectuals and western specialists,
which is the decree given in Islamic jurisprudence
and as upheld by the regular fatwas. The regu-
lar Muslims are very well aware of the their goal
to convert the Dar-al-Harb into Dar-al-Islam and
womb jihad is one of the easy and silent ways to
achieve this objective.
While as a social scientist, one should avoid the
pitfall of giving full weight to such decrees issued
by the Mullahs and the Maulavis, in order to con-
clude about the decision making process of com-
mon Muslims. But not giving any weight at all to
the Muslim religious duties, as is common among
many scholars, is also equally problematic for true
scientific inquiry.
One survey after another has proved it beyond doubt
that Muslims form one of the most zealot religious
groups on this planet. Their zeal for religious ad-
herence is the strongest as reflected in their sup-
port for implementation of Sharia or other barbaric
practices in repeated surveys across the globe. Does
it befit any social scientist to ignore this mounting
amounts of evidence which goads ordinary Muslims
into having more children and convert every place
164 5. CONCLUSION
into Dar-al-Islam in any way possible?

Also, some scholars might try to brush aside this
argument by citing numerous Hindu leaders who
too have talked about increasing Hindu TFR in the
past. While stray Hindu leaders might be found
speaking in favor of more children by Hindus, but
it is no where as close to the Muslims. Firstly, Hin-
duism is not monolithic like Islam (even though
Islamic practices might be diverse within India)
when it comes to the concept of defining the other
non-believers (kaffir). Secondly, Hinduism is not a
proselytizing sect as the other Abrahamic religions,
one of them being Islam. Thirdly and most im-
portantly, most of these Hindu leaders, who might
have spoken in favour of high fertility, probably do
not have grand standing within the Hindu commu-
nity itself. Had it been the case, Hindu TFR would
have been high as well! Just because Hindus do
not follow the decree from their religious or politi-
cal leaders, it does not mean that Muslims neither.
And hence this line of debate is vacuous. Fourthly,
if such leaders from Hindus or BJP were to be be-
lieved to carry out their agenda, one would expect
lower sterilization rates for females at least in the
BJP ruled states like Gujarat. But that’s not true
in the data.
7. Lastly, even if mental gymnastics can lead some

people to believe in the sophisticated statistics rather
than consistency of high Muslim fertility everywhere
in India (even more valid in more educated states
like Kerala), they cannot run away from the fact
that some of the regions are already beyond point
of no return. 29 districts out of 594 already have
50%+ Muslim population in 0-4 age cohort, plus
another 18 have 40-50% and another 16 with 30-

40%. This makes 63 very sensitive districts in In-
dia, with a significant Muslim population (here it
is worth pondering that at the time of partition in
1947 Muslim population was mere 26%). Assam,
Kerala, West Bengal and West UP are already sit-
ting on a tinderbox, just waiting for the right mo-
ment to explode. One should not be too surprised
if big ethnic tensions grip these states in the near
future, the way it happened in Jammu & Kashmir
in the 90s when Kashmiri Pandits were driven out
of their homeland.
The above list of counterarguments will need to be

updated at regular intervals as given the nature of men-
tal gymnastics potential of the intellectuals with Islam-
ophilic bent, it is expected that they will definitely come
up with some half baked ideas to refute the findings pre-
sented here. Sadly, the 2011 census data, through its in-
formation on age cohorts, reveals more information than
they expected. The persistence of current trends for the
next few decades are sufficient to completely alter the
demography forever.
The damage to the demography has already been
done in many states, specially in Kerala, West Bengal,
Assam and West UP. No amount of TFR debate aimed at
proving how it is not rooted in Islamic theology but social
economic conditions of Muslims, is going to change the
demographic future of these areas. Given the splendid
record of how the Indian state has handled the Kash-
mir problem in the last seven decades, one can only feel
sorry for the mess that the future generations will inherit
in these other states which are staring at their future of
becoming another Kashmir.
166 5. CONCLUSION
5.2 Under or Over-breeding

The vices of modernity and consumerism has hardly left
any corner of the world untouched. Moving to non-
primary sectors of economy (primary sectors being agri-
culture, mining etc.) has reduced the dependence on
children for accomplishing tasks and made them econom-
ically unproductive for modern families. Under these cir-
cumstances having a kid is more of a lifestyle choice than
a survival necessity. Also, given that the children these
days need not only more investment but also need it for
a longer duration before they can find any meaningful
employment, has made parenting a costly job. Thus it
would not be an over-statement to say that for many
modern couples kids are glorified pets and the decision
to have/not have one depends completely on the individ-
ual’s lifestyle choice.
Taking cognizance of this scenario, one can now raise
the question whether the increasing fertility gap (in per-
centage terms) between Hindus and Muslims is due to
Hindus under-breeding or Muslims over-breeding. The
TFR has gone down for both religions, but more so for
the Hindus.
By looking at the quantum of reduction in fertility for
Muslims and ignoring Hindu fertility, one can say that
modernity has affected them as well at some level. If the
value of kids has reduced for Hindus, it also seems to
have reduced for Muslims as reflected by small reduction
in their fertility.
It is difficult to think of a situation where the entire
Muslim community coordinates to have one child more
than the Hindus everywhere, irrespective of the level of
Hindu TFR. For it to work, Muslim leadership will have
to keep a tab on Hindu fertility levels everywhere and
then direct their community members on the exact and
5.2. UNDER OR OVER-BREEDING 167
optimal number of children. If it were completely under

the control of Mullahs, Muslims will bridge the popula-
tion gap much more quickly by having even larger families
and sustaining the fertility levels as in the 1980s. But it
has not happened and although the percentage gap be-
tween Hindu-Muslim TFR has remained the same, the
absolute fertility of Muslims has come down neverthe-
less. As a directive it is easier for the Mullahs to exhort
the Muslims to have bigger families, but planning and
coordinating on the precise number of children seems a
bit too far fetched.
By this argument, one cannot attribute the complete
TFR gap to over-breeding by the Muslims. The Muslim
TFR has gone down, but the Hindu TFR have plunged
even further. The fertility level for maintaining a stable
population is 2.1, but the Hindu TFR has gone below
that in many regions.
Given the current fertility trends, Hindus can’t even
maintain their current population levels in most states.
The Hindu fertility has reduced below 2.1 in most re-
gions which is even worse than many European nations.
The age pyramids are becoming top heavy and Hindu
population will start to reduce in few years. Except UP
and Bihar, it seems that Hindu population might have
already peaked in many states.
So, is it justified to blame only the Muslims for the
Hindu population debacle? If one group cannot even
maintain replacement level fertility, is it fault of the other
more aggressive group which puts more weight on having
a decent sized family?
For example- Hindus in Kerala have known for a while
how they are losing demography to the Muslims in the
state. And although TFR of Kerala Muslims is only 2.5
(not the highest in the country), their Hindu counterparts
have consistently had below replacement level fertility for
168 5. CONCLUSION
a very long time. So, who is to be blamed here- Muslim

over-breeding or Hindu under-breeding?
The fertility gap between rural Hindus and Muslims
is not as dismal as their urban counterparts. Both the
absolute and percentage gap is lower in the rural areas.
Not surprisingly it is in the urban areas that the Muslims
are closing the population gap at a much alarming rate.
5.3 Optimal Response

Given the information presented here, the immediate fol-
low up question for anyone reading this book will be-
what should be the ideal response of Hindu society un-
der this persistent Islamic womb jihad?
The response to this question can vary, but there are
two stages to any kind of problem resolution. The first
stage is problem recognition, while the second stage is
actually finding a solution. Sadly, the Hindu society still
seems to be stuck on the first stage.
The liberal and Islamophilic intellectuals in this coun-
try have no sympathy for any Hindu cause, so it would be
too much to expect them to have even a passing discus-
sion on this issue. They will remain silent or rather sup-
press any demographic information from reaching com-
mon Hindus. The troubling part is that Hindu intellec-
tuals too have not formed any credible opinion on this
subject. The regular Hindu intellectuals although aware
of the demographic loss do not realize the extent of loss
which has already happened.
This book fills up the gap on providing the informa-
tion on the extent of demographic loss, but it will take
some time to come to grips with this data. And once the
Hindu society absorbs this information, the question will
still linger whether they can stand up face to face with
5.3. OPTIMAL RESPONSE 169
this problem and do something about it.

Quantity has a quality of its own. No one demon-
strated it better than the Allied forces during the sec-
ond world war when they won it by pitting sub-standard
tanks and war planes against more modern but heavily
outnumbered German war machines. So, if one can win a
world war by pitting quantity against quality, there is no
reason to expect different outcome in a democracy where
the game is rigged in favour of the numbers. And this
game is being played out in front of everyone’s eyes for
the past seven decades in India, but Hindus fail to recog-
nize what holds for their future if they do not put sands
in the wheels of Muslim demographic jihad machine.
Just to reiterate the importance of demographics, let’s
look at the map of Bangladesh below to see how demo-
graphics were altered for forever in our neighbourhood.
The colour has consistently changed to dark green for
younger population i.e. Hindus have gone below 5% of
the population in almost all districts now as shown in
the figure 5.15 . The dark green represents highest Mus-
lim share (lowest Hindu share) in the regional population,
while red the lowest (highest Hindu share). The graph is
shown for different age cohorts.
Bangladesh has a Hindu minority but still the Mus-
lims there ensured that they decrease their percentage
share further. It also shows that just being a minority
under threat (like the Hindus in Bangladesh) was not a
good enough reason for Hindus there to over-breed the
majority. Unlike the minority in India i.e. Muslims, the
minority in Bangladesh i.e. Hindus consistently under-
bred or possibly migrated. The results are more than
clear in 5.1, where gradually the whole of Bangladesh has
removed the Hindu population share in lower age cohorts.
5
Information taken from 2011 Bangladesh Census
170 5. CONCLUSION
Figure 5.1: Hindu Demography of Bangladesh
Whether this is fertility difference or out-migration of

Hindus under threat is an interesting question to pursue,
but it will need a full book on its own.
Hindus in India will face similar future in large num-
ber of areas if they do not understand it even now. And
those in the Hindu fold who cry about secular politics to-
day can only imagine what holds for them in the Muslim
majority neighbourhoods of tomorrow. So, what is the
way forward to handle this issue.
There seem to be only two solutions:
• Restricted one child policy for Muslims
• Hindus counter-breeding Muslims
While policy 1 would be an ideal and less costly choice,

but given general lack of spine among Hindus in India
and pandering to secular agenda, it is almost impossible
to implement. The law enforcement agencies are already

scared to police minority dominated areas, so policy 1 is
a cropper even before starting. One can give long argu-
ments in favour of policy 1 but given the current circum-
stances one can almost rule it out. What can happen
is that under the garb of restricting overall population,
one child norm is enforced on whole population, which
Hindus will comply while Muslims will flout. So, ratio-
nal Hindus are left with nothing but policy 2 as the only
remedy till some other better solution can be found or
Muslims somehow are reduced back to one-digit figure.
The only other nation which has understood this prob-
lem seriously and taken the bull by its horn is Israel. The
Muslim TFR went down from 8-9 in 1960s to about 4.6
in 1980s but has stayed there almost since then. Israel
being a democracy faced similar problem as India and
the presence of a large number of liberals ensured that
policy 1 was rejected there as well. So, the orthodox Jews
took it upon themselves to stem the tide of demographic
reversal and started counter breeding Muslims to remain
relevant in the Israeli politics. The current demographics
6
show that they have been more than successful in their
initiative as can be seen in the table 5.1. It is worthwhile
to mention here that the orthodox Jews had no support
from the liberal crowd in Israel, but they still manged to
stem the demographic tide on their own.
What does this mean for the future of Israel? The
orthodox Jews have not only successfully countered the
problem of high TFR of Muslims but have also com-
pletely altered the political landscape of Israel. Given
the small weight that liberals put on their fertility, they
are increasingly replaced by the more orthodox sections
6
Friedlander: Fertility in Israel-Is the transition to replacement
level possible?
172 5. CONCLUSION
Group TFR
The Jewish non-religious group of both
ethnicities (67-70%) 2.0-2.2
The Arab Christian population (2%) 2.6
Arab Moslems and Druze (16%) 4.0
The Jewish ultra-orthodox and

the National Orthodox (12-15%) 6.0-7.0
Israel’s overall TFR 2.9
Table 5.1: Fertility in Israel
of Jews. This means that in the future Israeli politics will

move more to the extreme right and given the fact that
orthodox Jews will control the politics, they would be in
a position to implement policy 1 if needed. So, Hindus
who go in an over drive to support every misadventure of
Israel will do much better if they learn something from
the orthodox Jews rather than extend blanket support to
all policies of Israel.
Once Hindus realize the gravity of the situation, they
will have to put in huge efforts to implement this solution.
They will face a lot of flak from the women activists who
would fight it tooth and nail and give argument of quality
over quantity. But sadly in a democracy there is just
one vote both for the enlightened Hindu feminist as well
as the fanatic Muslim. No amount of fact digging from
the scriptures and history that Hindu seers and other
iconic figures had just one or two but quality offspring
can change the fact that numbers matter in a democracy
more than anything else. And India will continue to be
a democracy in the foreseeable future.

Also, one should not forget that unlike other civiliza-
tions Hindus had never been overly nihilistic or individ-
ualistic in their history, which helped them keep a demo-
graphic surplus in the face of Abrahamic onslaught for
thousands of years. Unlike other Pagan civilizations, one
reason for the survival of Hindus was their focus on family
values and having enough offsprings. This is equally or
even more important today in this democratic age where
you lose your policy making powers the day you lose your
numbers.
Having decided to go forward with policy 2, one still
needs to overcome the implementation hurdles. Sacrifices
will be needed by both men and women who have to give
up many of their individualistic freedoms to help nurture
bigger families. Also, it cannot be implemented at the
cost of quality and it will need a big collaboration to
subsidize education of these children. Again, one can
learn from orthodox Jews who have successfully achieved
it by developing their own institutions where they provide
cheap education and jobs to their community members.
This gives another reason to repeal discriminating laws
like RTE (Right to Education Act), so that in the future
when Hindu consolidation takes place, the state does not
impose increasing costs on the Hindu institutions.
The ball is now in the court of rational Hindus who
understand that increased Muslim numbers is a problem
for their survival in the long run. Burying their heads in
the sand or waiting for successive BJP governments to
do something will not solve this problem. Since policy
2 does not require the support of all Hindus, it can be
easily implemented if a critical mass of Hindus can come
together.
The only need will be to develop supporting institu-
tions which can take care of this burgeoning Hindu popu-
174 5. CONCLUSION
lation. In the end, 20-30% of Hindu population is enough

not only to counter-breed Muslims, but to also make fu-
ture Indian politics more pro-Hindu as this young pop-
ulation will replace the current generation of anti-Hindu
liberals. The only question that remains to be answered
is whether Hindus are ready to realize their Dharma and
rise up to this challenge and beat the Muslims at their
own game.
5.4 The Future

The history of the past seven decades has shown a linear
movement in one direction. Will the future be any dif-
ferent? The immense damage that the government man-
dated population policy has wreaked on Hindu demogra-
phy cannot be overstated. Thus it would be foolhardy to
expect that the current dispensation in Delhi will heed
any advice on the demographic situation. Worse, they
will not even like to be woken up from the deep slumber
and will wilfully ignore the writing on the wall.
Demography is destiny and those who ignore it, their
future generations pay the cost for this ignorance. In the
last five chapters, we have documented the historic ex-
plosion of Muslim population growth in India and how it
remained hidden till now. It is left to the reader to make
his own conclusions based on the material presented here.
It is less likely that things will change in any way in the
near future and they will be difficult to change as long
as there in no acknowledgement that the problem exists.
Sadly, the political and ideological hysteresis built into
post independence India will only make such acknowl-
edgement difficult.
The Hindu of current generation needs to realize that
digging his head into the sand or running away from the
5.4. THE FUTURE 175
battlefield like Arjuna, is not going to teleport away his

problems. The demographic debate may look ugly and
uncivilized to his modern ethos but it is here to stay and
will only grow important with each passing day.
176 5. CONCLUSION
6
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List of Figures
1.1 Muslim Population share across age groups

(Census 2011) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.1 Muslim (%) in Age group (50-54 yrs) . . . 23

2.2 Muslim (%) in Age Group (0-4 yrs) . . . . 24
2.3 Percentage of Muslims in Assam . . . . . . 36
2.4 Percentage of Muslims in West Bengal . . 39
2.5 Percentage of Muslims in Kerala . . . . . . 41
2.6 Percentage of Muslims in UP . . . . . . . 47
2.7 Percentage of Muslims in Bihar . . . . . . 48
2.8 Percentage of Muslims in Uttarakhand . . 53
2.9 Percentage of Muslims in Haryana . . . . . 56
2.10 Percentage of Muslims in Jharkhand . . . 60
2.11 Percentage of Muslims in Maharashtra . . 61
2.12 Percentage of Muslims in Karnataka . . . 65
2.13 Percentage of Muslims in J & K . . . . . . 68
2.14 Percentage of Muslims in Rajasthan . . . . 72
2.15 Percentage of Muslims in Gujarat . . . . . 73
2.16 Percentage of Muslims in MadhyaPradesh 74
2.17 Percentage of Muslims in Andhra Pradesh 75
2.18 Percentage of Muslims in Tamil Nadu . . . 76
2.19 Chicken Neck: Top(50-54 yrs), Bottom (0-
4yrs) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
2.20 Mughal Corridor: Top(50-54 yrs), Bottom
(0-4yrs) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
181
182 LIST OF FIGURES
2.21 Christians in the North East . . . . . . . . 84
3.1 Projection: 0-4 age group in India . . . . . 104

3.2 Top Panel:Urban, Bottom Panel:Rural India105
3.3 Top Panel:Assam, Bottom Panel:Kerala . . 107
3.4 Top Panel:West Bengal, Bottom Panel:UP 108
3.5 Bihar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
3.6 Two Scenarios: if Muslims have kids at
younger age compared to Hindus . . . . . 116
3.7 Distribution of mother’s age at first birth
(NFHS3) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
5.1 Hindu Demography of Bangladesh . . . . . 170

List of Tables
1.1 Population in the Indian Subcontinent (In-

dia, Pakistan and Bangladesh) . . . . . . . 4
1.2 Religious demographics in Pakistan, Bangladesh
and India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.3 Population figures from Census 1941 . . . 8
1.4 Religious demographics in pre-partition Pak-
istan and Bangladesh . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.5 Religious population in different census . . 11
1.6 Population by age group (Census 2011) . . 13
2.1 State wise Muslim Population . . . . . . . 21

2.2 No of districts with share of total Muslims
in a given percentage bracket and under
different age cohorts. . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.3 No of districts with share of Muslims in a
given percentage bracket and under differ-
ent age cohorts in urban areas. . . . . . . . 28
2.4 Muslim population (%) in red zone states
in various census . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
2.5 Total Muslim Population (%)- Census 2011 32
2.6 Rural Muslim Population (%)- Census 2011 33
2.7 Urban Muslim Population (%)- Census 2011 34
2.8 Assam districts- Muslim population (%) . 37
2.9 West Bengal districts- Muslim population
(%) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
183
184 LIST OF TABLES
2.10 Kerala districts- Muslim population (%) . 42

2.11 Kerala: % of Religions (Census 2011) . . . 44
2.12 UP districts- Muslim population (%) . . . 49
2.13 Bihar districts- Muslim population (%) . . 51
2.14 Mewat Region- Muslim population (%) . . 57
2.15 South Jharkhand- Muslim and Christian
population (%) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
2.16 Maharashtra- Muslim population (%) . . . 62
2.17 Karnataka districts-Muslim population (%) 66
3.1 Worldwide Fertility by region 2015-2020.

Source: Pew Research Center Demographic
Projections. "The Changing Global Reli-
gious Landscape". . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
3.2 Total Fertility Rate (TFR) by States . . . 91
3.3 TFR Rural vs Urban (Source: NFHS3) . . 91
3.4 TFR difference between Hindus and Muslims 93
3.5 TFR based on Census 2011 . . . . . . . . 95
3.6 Impact of TFR on growth ratios . . . . . . 100
3.7 Data used for projection . . . . . . . . . . 102
3.8 Simulation of 0-4 age cohort according to
our model taking 2011 population for 0-4
age group and NFHS3 TFR difference . . . 112
3.9 Mother’s age at first birth (NFHS3) . . . . 121
4.1 Female Sterilization in India . . . . . . . . 128

4.2 Age at Sterilization (out of those Sterilized)-
NFHS3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
4.3 Percentage of females sterilized- NFHS3 . 130
4.4 Sterilization rate (%) by education and re-
ligion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
4.5 Female Sterilization Rate by State- NFHS3 133
4.6 Not told that Sterilization is irreversible-
NFHS3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
LIST OF TABLES 185
4.7 Population share by sex and age group

(Census 2011). Column (5)= (1) - (3) and
Column (6) = (2) - (4). . . . . . . . . . . 140
4.8 Infant Mortality rates (Source: Footnote 5) 143
4.9 Number of wives by religion (NFHS3) . . . 146
4.10 Ideal Number of Children (NFHS3) . . . . 146
4.11 Ideal number of Children by education (NFHS3)147
4.12 Comparison of district TFR for UP . . . . 151
5.1 Fertility in Israel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172

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Truth About Muslim

3.7 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122

4 TFR Politics 125

Democracy is all about numbers, so if you have lost num-

ately) did not release the religious data of 2011 census.

Why is Demography important?

low to which Indian strategic thought and real-political

bec in Canada, Christian country of Lebanon vs Islamist

their domain, like how the Muslims converted the re-

will be shattered the moment any party on the lines of

be outright flawed as the highly educated Muslims there

• Introduction: It gives a broad overview of the changes

• The Explosion: This chapter shows the extent of

regions of the country. We have extensively uti-

• Future Projections: This chapter presents the lat-

• TFR Politics: In this chapter, we analyze the rea-

• Conclusion: This section provides future course of

Although it will be interesting to present data on

more difficult to get the complete picture of the growth

formation from National Family Health Survey 3 (NFHS-

a tight rope as it is fairly difficult to balance these two

“Pakistan and Bangladesh are their fixed de-

The liberal discourse in India hates to talk about

fertility will decline for both Muslims as well as Hindus.

Hindu to sleep and go with earning his daily bread.

1.1 Religion in the Indian Sub-

Year Population (millions) Percentage

Table 1.1: Population in the Indian Subcontinent (India,

contrast, the Muslim population jumped from 5 crores to

To understand the evolution of demographics in the

Year Population (,000) Percentage (%)

Table 1.2: Religious demographics in Pakistan,

of demographics in the history of Indian subcontinent.

and less anti-Hindu than Pakistan, this disappearance

State Population (,000) Muslim

Table 1.3: Population figures from Census 1941

three provinces completely went to Pakistan, while the

would have been a non-starter.

Year Population (,000) Percentage (%)

Table 1.4: Religious demographics in pre-partition Pak-

environment which suppresses any talk on demography

in the centre and J&K, have failed to rehabilitate the

1.3 India since independence

Year Dharmics Muslims

Table 1.5: Religious population in different census

The Muslim and Dharmic population change over the

three decades and totalling up to roughly four percent-

1.4 Numbers can hide reality

group, so we can gauge the extent of future Muslim pop-

Age Group Muslims Hindus

Table 1.6: Population by age group (Census 2011)

Before we look at table 1.6 for analysis, some clarifi-

can see, the percentage of Hindus has fallen from roughly

Figure 1.1: Muslim Population share across age groups

Muslims almost form one quarter of the 0-4 year olds in

“The future belongs to those who show up.”

The last chapter gave a snapshot about the overall

number, a lay Hindu would not argue further. Secondly,

2.1 India level trends