If the current population growth trends persist, it is very likely that followers of Indian religions will become a minority in the Indian subcontinent by around 2081. The Centre For Policy Studies (CPS), a New Delhi-based think tank that made this claim in a recent note, has regularly published its analysis of demographic data from the 2011 census.

Defining ‘Indian Religions’ (IR) as a term to collectively ‘refer to religions that have originated in the Indian Subcontinent’, the note analyses census data from 1881 to 1941, and then looks at the next fifty years and offers a projection up to 2081 and beyond.

The pre-independence period – 1881 to 1941

Relying mostly on British-era census data compiled and published by Kingsley Davis, the report presents the religious composition of the Indian population. While IR adherents constituted 79.32 per cent of the total population in 1881, the number declined by 5.51 per cent to 73.81 per cent by 1941. The biggest gains went to Islam, with adherents growing by 4.31 per cent. Christianity, on the other hand, grew by 1.2 per cent.

Curiously enough, the IR population grew by 3.8 percentage points during this period. This appears to be a result of large-scale migration of Sikh cultivators into areas that are part of Pakistan today.