The large numbers counted under the category of Religion Not Stated
One of the striking features of the Religion Data of Census 2011 is the unusually
larger number of persons counted under the category of “Religion Not Stated”
(RNS). In 2001, there were 7.3 lakh persons in this category; the number in
2011 is 28.7 lakhs. Some quick analysis in the media has tried to portray this
as the spread of “atheism” in India.
The
data compiled below shows interesting attributes of the RNS group. One, the
rise in their numbers has been particularly marked in Andhra Pradesh, Uttar
Pradesh, Bihar, and Punjab. Two, the level of literacy, female literacy and
urbanisations among the RNS is somewhat higher than the average in India and in
different States, but the number of children per hundred of population in the
RNS populations is considerably higher than the average in almost all States.
At the all India average level, there are 5 more children per hundred of the
population among the RNS; the gap in Bihar is of as many as 7 children per hundred
and in Arunachal Pradesh it rises to more than 11.
This
profile of the RNS population does not seem to suggest that this is some random
group of people who have individually taken the decision to become “atheists”.
Atheism, in general, is a phenomenon of the highly educated and highly urban,
who are unlikely to have high fertility. The peculiar attributes of the RNS
population suggest the rise of some new groups in some States. The rise in the RNS population during 2001-11 is large, though the overall numbers are still small. It is important to study the phenomenon in detail, because it seems to have acquired a vigour of its own.
Population
under Religion Not Stated, 1951-2011
Numbers of RNS, 1961-2011
|
||
Census
|
Persons
|
%Share
|
1961
|
1,11,007
|
0.03
|
1971
|
36,083
|
0.01
|
1981
|
60,217
|
0.01
|
1991
|
4,15,569
|
0.05
|
2001
|
7,27,588
|
0.07
|
2011
|
28,67,303
|
0.24
|
In the Table here, we have
compiled the population of persons counted under the category of Religion Not
Stated (RNS) since 1961. Before that this category did not exist, and persons
under this category and those later counted as Other Religions and Persuasions
(ORPs) were combined together under “Others”. As seen in the Table, the numbers
of RNS began rising after 1981. As we have been noticing, the decade of 1981-91
seems to mark a milestone in the changing religious demography of India in many
respects. The RNS population rose to 4 lakhs in 1991 and again to more than 7
lakhs in 2001. In 2011, it has abruptly risen to nearly 29 lakhs; and the share
of RNS in the population of India has risen to a non-negligible, 0.24 percent;
in other words, one person in every 400 has been counted under this category.
Distribution
of the RNS population
In the Table below, we have
compiled the numbers of persons counted under RNS in 2001 and 2011 in those
States, where they have a significant share in the population and where there
has been remarkable change during 2001-11. The States listed here account for about
24 of the 29 lakh persons counted under RNS in 2011.
Number and share of RNS in different States
|
||||
2001
|
2011
|
2001
|
2011
|
|
INDIA
|
7,27,588
|
28,67,303
|
0.07
|
0.24
|
Uttar Pradesh
|
69,440
|
5,82,622
|
0.04
|
0.29
|
Andhra Pradesh
|
94,934
|
4,04,100
|
0.12
|
0.48
|
Maharashtra
|
97,713
|
2,86,290
|
0.10
|
0.25
|
Punjab
|
4,468
|
87,564
|
0.02
|
0.32
|
Bihar
|
37,817
|
2,52,127
|
0.05
|
0.24
|
Jharkhand
|
25,387
|
68,343
|
0.09
|
0.21
|
West Bengal
|
54,895
|
2,28,267
|
0.07
|
0.25
|
Tamil Nadu
|
59,344
|
1,88,586
|
0.10
|
0.26
|
Karnataka
|
1,20,247
|
1,66,087
|
0.23
|
0.27
|
Kerala
|
25,083
|
88,155
|
0.08
|
0.26
|
Arunachal Pradesh
|
9,302
|
6,648
|
0.85
|
0.48
|
Manipur
|
1,057
|
10,969
|
0.05
|
0.38
|
Meghalaya
|
7,015
|
9,578
|
0.30
|
0.32
|
Sikkim
|
1,168
|
1,828
|
0.22
|
0.30
|
Andhra
Pradesh
Among the larger States,
Andhra Pradesh (including Telangana) has the highest share of RNS in its
population; one in every 200 persons there has been counted in this category.
The number of RNS in the State has increased from less than 1 lakh in 2001 to
more than 4 lakhs in 2011. The highest proportion of RNS is in Hyderabad and
Rangareddy districts, where they form 1.58 and 1.15 percent of the population,
respectively. The proportion of Hindus in Hyderabad has declined drastically
from 55.4 to 51.9 percent during 2001-11; much of the loss has been towards the
gain of Muslims, but a part of it seems to have accrued to the category of RNS.
The RNS proportion is relatively high also in Adilabad at 0.81 percent.
Incidentally, Andhra Pradesh
has been seeing a decline in the proportion of Christians since 1971, when the
share of Christian in that State had reached a peak of 4.2 percent and had
become as high as 15 percent in Guntur and 11 percent in Krishna. Since then
their share has been consistently declining and has reached negligible proportions.
It is said that this has happened because of the converted persons turning “crypto-Christians”.
Could the RNS be another form of crypto-Christians?
Punjab
Punjab has experienced the
largest increase in the number and share of the RNS population. Their number
has increased from 4.5 thousand in 2001 to 87.6 thousand in 2011; and their share
in the population has gone up from 0.02 to 0.32 percent.
The largest share of RNS in
Punjab is in Gurdaspur, where they form 0.66 percent of the population; 15
thousand of about 88 thousand RNS in the State are in this district.
Incidentally, Gurdaspur also has nearly 8 percent Christians in its population,
which is the highest presence of Christians in any district. Amritsar
accommodates another about 11 thousand of RNS with a share of 0.44 percent;
Amritsar adjoins Gurdaspur and has the second highest share of Christians in
the State at 2.2 percent.
Besides, Gurdaspur and
Amritsar, there is high presence of RNS in Ludhiana, Moga and Nawanshahar
(Shahid Bhagat Singh Nagar); in all three of these the share of RNS is 0.45
percent or more and the three together accommodate about 23 thousand of RNS.
The share of RNS in Jallandhar is also relatively high at 0.39 percent. The
growth of RNS numbers in these districts needs to be studies at the
micro-level.
Uttar
Pradesh
Uttar Pradesh has the largest population
of RNS in the country. Of 28.7 lakh RNS in India, 5.8 lakh are in Uttar
Pradesh. They form 0.29 percent of the population. There were only 69 thousand
persons counted under RNS in 2001.
There is a significant
presence of RNS in almost all districts of the State. Their highest share,
however, is in Gautam Buddha Nagar, where 1 in every hundred has been counted
in this category. Gautam Buddha Nagar is also the district with the highest
share of Christians in the State at 0.45 percent of the population. Besides Gautam
Buddha Nagar, Agra, Bareilly, Firozabad, Aligarh, Meerut, Allahabad and
Sonbhadra have a relatively higher share of RNS; they form more than 0.5
percent of the population in each of these districts, in Agra their share is
0.83 percent.
Maharashtra
In Maharashtra, 2.9 lakhs have
been counted under RNS; there were about a lakh in this category in 2001 also.
They have the highest share in the populations of Gadhchiroli (0.63%), Gondiya
(0.50%), Jalgaon (0.49%) and Nandurbar (0.44%). All of these districts have a
substantial presence of the Scheduled Tribes. The RNS share is relatively high
in Yavatmal, Thane, Bid and Osmanabad also.
Bihar
and Jharkhand
The proportion of RNS has
increased considerably in Bihar and Jharkhand. In Bihar, the highest share of
RNS is 0.53 percent in Sheohar. Their share is relatively high also in Gaya,
Patna, Nawada and Muzaffarpur. In Jharkhand, the RNS are spread across the
State, but their share seems relatively high in the Ranchi region.
West
Bengal
In West Bengal, the number of RNS has
increased from about 55 thousand to 2.3 lakhs during 2001-11; their share in
the population of the State is now 0.25 percent. Their highest presence is in
Kolkata, where they form more than 1 percent of the population. About 49 thousand
persons have been counted under RNS in Kolkata in 2011; their number in 2001
was 8.5 thousand.
Tamil
Nadu
In Tamil Nadu, the numbers
counted under RNS have increased from less than 60 thousand in 2001 to about
1.9 lakhs in 2011. The share of RNS in the State is the highest in Chennai
(0.83%), Kancheepuram (0.55%), Thiruvallur (0.51%) and Ramanathapuram (0.48%).
Incidentally, the former 3 are the only districts with a significant presence
of Christians outside their older concentrations in the Kanniyakumari,
Tirunelveli, Thoothukudi, Ramanathapuram region and in the Nilgiris.
Karnataka
In Karnataka, there was a
significantly high share of RNS already in 2001; in 2001-11, it has risen
marginally from 0.23 to 0.27 percent. The highest share of RNS in the State is
in the northern districts of Gulbarga (0.71%) and Bidar (0.60%); and in Dharwad
(0.40%) and Bangalore (0.43%). As we have noticed in the previous note,
Gulbarga and Bidar have seen much religious demographic change during the last
couple of decades.
Kerala
In Kerala, the number of RNS
has gone up from about 25 thousand in 2001 to 88 thousand in 2011, and their
share in the population has risen from 0.08 to 0.26 percent. The highest share
of RNS in the State is in Thiruvananthapuram at 0.67 percent.
Arunachal
Pradesh
Unlike in other parts of the
country, the number of RNS in Arunachal Pradesh has declined from 9.3 thousand
in 2001 to 6.6 thousand in 2011. As many as 6.9 thousand of 9.3 thousand RNS in
2001 were in Tirap; now there are only 622 RNS counted in the district, while
the share of Christians in that district has risen from around 50 percent in
2001 to 75 percent in 2011. In this State at least, the RNS seems to have been
some kind of a halfway house to being counted as full Christians.
Manipur,
Meghalaya and Sikkim
In these States, the total
number of RNS is small, but in all of these they have a presence of more than
0.3 percent. In Manipur, this level of presence is new; the other States had a
similar presence in 2001.
Demographic
attributes of persons counted under RNS
Slightly
higher literacy and higher urbanisation
In the demographic attributes
of literacy and female literacy, the RNS population of India is slightly better
than the average, as seen in the Table below. This seems to be true in all
States, except in some of the States of the northeast. The level of
urbanisation of RNS populations is also higher than the average in most States.
At the all India level, about 43 percent of RNS population is urban compared to
the average of 31 percent for the total population. But, yet there are
sufficiently large numbers of RNS counted in the rural areas. Of 28.67 lakh
persons counted in this category in India in 2011, 16.44 lakh are rural and
12.24 lakh are urban. The rise in the numbers of RNS is clearly not confined to
urban areas alone.
Much
higher fertility
The really significant
parameter differentiating the populations counted as RNS from others is the
much higher level of children below the age of 6 among them. At the all India average
level, there are 18.4 children per hundred of the RNS population, the
corresponding number for the total population is 13.6 children per hundred.
Thus there are nearly 5 extra children per hundred in the RNS population.
| Literary, Child Ratio, WPR and Urban Ratio of RNS: INDIA 2001 | ||||||||
| Religion | Lit | Lit-M | Lit-F | 0-6% | WPR | WPR-M | WPR-F | UR |
| Total | 72.98 | 80.88 | 64.63 | 13.59 | 39.80 | 53.26 | 25.52 | 31.14 |
| RNS | 74.69 | 81.95 | 67.31 | 18.44 | 31.31 | 38.37 | 23.98 | 42.68 |
| Andhra Pradesh 2011 | ||||||||
| Total | 67.02 | 74.88 | 59.15 | 10.81 | 46.61 | 56.98 | 36.16 | 33.36 |
| RNS | 72.63 | 80.37 | 65.42 | 15.04 | 35.26 | 40.61 | 30.13 | 53.90 |
| Uttar Pradesh 2011 | ||||||||
| Total | 67.68 | 77.28 | 57.18 | 15.41 | 32.94 | 47.71 | 16.75 | 22.27 |
| RNS | 70.01 | 78.37 | 60.84 | 19.48 | 27.38 | 35.42 | 18.37 | 34.17 |
| Bihar 2011 | ||||||||
| Total | 61.80 | 71.20 | 51.50 | 18.38 | 33.36 | 46.47 | 19.07 | 11.29 |
| RNS | 64.28 | 74.02 | 54.10 | 25.72 | 25.62 | 29.49 | 21.44 | 15.97 |
| Arunachal Pradesh 2011 | ||||||||
| Total | 65.38 | 72.55 | 57.70 | 15.33 | 42.47 | 49.06 | 35.44 | 22.94 |
| RNS | 62.89 | 70.78 | 55.78 | 26.79 | 25.20 | 24.12 | 26.18 | 23.77 |
| Lit:Literary Ratio; Lit-M: Male Literacy Ratio; Lit-F: Female Literacy Ratio; 0-6%:Percentage of population in 0-6 year age group; WPR: Work Participation Rate;WPR-M: Male WPR; WPR-F: Female WPR; UR: Urban Ratio in percent. | ||||||||
The pattern is repeated across
almost all States, including those in the northeast. And in many of the States,
the gap in the number of children is much larger. Thus, in Bihar, there are 7
extra children per hundred of the RNS population, and in Arunachal Pradesh, the
difference is of more than 11 children per hundred.
This consistently high number
of children in the RNS populations across all States cannot possibly be a
matter of chance. Notice that the higher fertility of RNS populations persists
irrespective of whether they have higher or lower levels of general and female
literacy. And the gap in fertility is generally too large to be explained by
the much smaller gap in literacy or urbanization.
Summing
Up
There has been a sudden rise
in the number and share of persons counted under the category of “Religion Not
Stated” (RNS). The data compiled above indicates that this is not some random
counting or statistical issue. It seems to be a systematic phenomenon. It is
important to study it in detail to understand the underlying sociological or
political causes of this sudden spurt in the RNS numbers.
One of the purposes of
collecting extensive demographic and socio-economic data through large-scale
Censuses is to be forewarned about the important issues likely to arise in a
society in the future. But this is possible only when the data is taken
seriously and significant phenomena that show up in the data are followed up
through large-scale and micro-level surveys and studies. We urgently need to
undertake such surveys and studies to understand the decline of Sikhs, Jains
and Buddhists, the changes in the proportion of ORPs and the rise of RNS.
With this note, we close our
analysis of the relatively minor religious categories of the Religion Data of the
Census. We shall now return to further study the more significant interplay between
the three largest religious groups in India, the Muslims, Christians and the
Indian Religionists. It is the relative proportions of these three that have
determined the history, sociology and politics of India for several centuries.
Appendix:
Distribution of the population counted under Religion Not Stated in 2011
