Is Kiren Rijju's statements merely rhetorical or is religious conversion by Christian evangelists causing fundamental changes in the state's demographic composition.

We reproduce key summary of work done by J.K Bajaj , Director, Centre for Policy Studies and author of several books including the landmark Indian Demographics.

Arunachal Pradesh constitutes one of the main stories of the Religion Data of Census 2011. In the course of the last decade of 2001-11, the proportion of Christians in the population of the state has risen from less than 19 to more than 30 percent, and they now form a majority or near majority of the population in several districts. The share of Christians in the Scheduled Tribes population of the state and the districts is even higher.

Arunachal Pradesh, unlike other hill states of the Northeast, had escaped widespread Christianisation until 1981 and, to a large extent, even until 1991. Christian presence in the state began to acquire serious proportions in 2001. The Religion Data of Census 2011 indicates that the state is now well on its way towards near-complete Christianisation of the Schedule Tribes population as it happened within the first decade or two of independence in Nagaland, Mizoram and Manipur and, to a significant extent, in Meghalaya.

Religious Demography of Arunachal Pradesh, 1971-2011

Almost the entire population of Arunachal Pradesh is divided among Other Religions and Persuasions (ORPs), Hindus, Buddhists and Christians. Besides these, there are also 27,045 Muslims counted in 2011, as compared to only 842 in 1971.



The most remarkable change, however, in these four decades has occurred in the number and proportion of Christians.