INDIA, May 10, 2017 (Center for Policy Studies India by Dr. JK Bajaj): We have posted our 44th and 45th notes in the series on the Religious Demography of India and the World. These notes describe the changing distribution and share of the three older religion of Asia, namely Hinduism, Buddhism and Chinese Religions in different regions and countries of Asia. The first of these notes narrates the changes that have taken place between 1900 and 2010 and the second shows these changes graphically in Maps. It would be instructive to read the two notes together.
The three religions that we describe here are largely confined to South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia. Hindus (including Sikhs and Jains), who form about a quarter of the population of Asia, are confined almost entirely to South Asia. During the last 110 years, they have lost about 10 percentage points off their share in South Asia and by a similar amount in India according to the Census data. They have suffered a loss of about 10 percentage points in Sri Lanka and Nepal also. The loss has been much bigger in Pakistan, where their share has declined from nearly 17 to merely 1.3 percent, and in Bangladesh, where they have declined from 33 to 9.5 percent of the population. With these losses, Hindus have been contracting to the boundaries of what currently constitutes India and they are losing their share even within those shrunken boundaries.