The Muslim community has registered a moderate 0.8 per cent growth to touch 17.22 crore in the 10-year period between 2001 and 2011, while the Hindu population showed a decline of 0.7 per cent at 96.63 crore during the period, the latest census data on religion shows.
While the census figure on religion was released on Tuesday, more than four years after compilation of the data, the caste data is yet to be made public.
RJD, JD(U), SP, DMK and some other parties have been asking the government to release the caste census figure. The data on socio-economic status was released on July 3.
The total population in the country in 2011 was 121.09 crore.
The population of Christians stood at 2.78 crore (2.3 per cent); Sikh 2.08 crore (1.7 per cent); Buddhists 0.84 crore (0.7 per cent); Jain 0.45 crore (0.4 per cent), other religions and persuasions (ORP) 0.79 crore (0.7 per cent) and religion not stated 0.29 crore (0.2 per cent).
The proportion of Sikh population has declined by 0.2 percentage points (PP) and the Buddhist population has declined by 0.1 PP during the decade 2001-2011.
There has been no significant change in the proportion of Christians and Jains.
As per the 2001 census, India’s total population was 102 crore of which Hindu population comprised of 82.75 crore (80.45 per cent) and Muslims were 13.8 crore (13.4 per cent). The population growth rate in the decade was 17.7 per cent. The growth rate of population of the different communities in the same period was Hindus: 16.8 per cent; Muslim: 24.6 per cent; Christian: 15.5 per cent; Sikh: 8.4 per cent; Buddhist: 6.1 per cent and Jain: 5.4 per cent.