Changes in Kerala’s Religious Demography — An Amateur looks at the Evidence
In 1901 the population of Kerala was 6.39 million. Of this Hindus made up 68.5%, Muslims 17.5% and Christians 13.9%.
The last national census was carried out in 2011. The 2021 census was delayed due to Covid and it is now planned for 2024 post the general elections.
Vide the 2011 census, the population of Kerala Hindus was 33.41 million. Hindus formed 54.73% of the population, Muslims 26.56% and Christians 18.38%. The remainder are composed of Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Others (who profess some other minor religion) and a minuscule number who did not state their religion.
So in a period of 110 years. the Hindu population was reduced by about 14%, Muslims increasing by 9% and Christians by about 5%. On the face of it, the reduction in the Hindu percentage has been made up by an increase in the percentage of Muslims and Christians.
The relative strengths of adherents to these religions will have changed in the interval between 2011 and the present day. From past trends we can deduce that the percentage of Hindus and Christians will have dropped while that of Muslims will have increased.
The Kerala Govt Annual Vital Statistics 2021
The Kerala Govt Annual Vital Statistics for 2021, the latest available, makes for interesting reading.
In Table B15(a) on Pg 90 (shown above), the number of live births by age of mother and order of child is given religion-wise. This is shown as Table II below.
To give one example in the section of the table for Hindus and the row giving information on mothers aged 30–34.
Reading off the table for child birth order 1 to 10, we get successively figures of 9977, 22826, 5426, 846, 122, 35, 16, 7, 4 and 1.
This means that there were 9977 children born to Hindu mothers aged between 30 and 34, for whom this was their first child. Similarly there were 22826 children born to Hindu mothers in the same age group for whom this was their second child.
Continuing, there were also 16 children born to similarly aged mothers for whom this was their seventh child, seven children born to mothers for whom this was their eighth child, four to mothers for whom this was the ninth child and one child born to a Hindu mother for whom it was her tenth child.
Note that all these were live births of Hindu children born to 30–34 year old mothers as registered with the authority.
Looking at the table for mothers below 15 years of age, we note that one Hindu child was born to a mother less than 15 years old. This was her first child. I am guessing that this was probably due to rape or incest.
Now that we get the drift, we can read the live birth data for all the religions in Kerala from the table.
From the table above we see that in the year 2021, 181396 Hindu children were born while in the same period 169296 Muslim and 59766 Christian children were born.
We see that most Hindu first child births take place to mothers between 20–24 years of age. Most Muslim mothers too give birth to their first child in the interval 20–24 years. However, Christian mothers have their first child in the next interval 25–29 years. This could mean that they marry later and therefore have their first child later. This could also mean that they are working women and hence have delayed conception.
From the total number of children born in each religious group, we can see that first-born Hindu children form 51.9% of all births, whereas such children form 39.4% of births among Muslims and 48.8% among Christians. This is a pointer to the fact that Hindus have much smaller families than those belonging to the other two faiths.
Again the total number of children born as the first and second children in Hindu families were 91 percent of the total born. For Muslim and Christian families, these percentages work out to 70.8% and 85.3%. This points to the fact that Hindus and Christians prefer smaller families, unlike Muslims.
Like for Hindus, most children were born to Christian women in the age group 25–29. For Muslim women, most children were born to women aged between 20–24, pointing to earlier marriages in this community.
In 2021, there were 1991 still births and 79 maternal deaths recorded in Kerala. This is an extremely low figure by any standards and indicates the high quality of healthcare available to the masses in Kerala.
Analysis of Table III
In the analysis below, we will mainly look at the population data for Hindu, Muslim and Christian religions, the rest being negligible.
Table III gives data about child birth in various religious groups in the period 2005–2021.
In the year 2021, 181396 Hindu children were born. In the same period 169296 Muslim and 59766 Christian children were born. Using the data for the Census year 2011 after which the census has not been conducted, we see that Hindus constitute 54.73% of the population, Muslims 26.56% and Christians 18.38% of the population respectively. The child births as a percentage of the total work out to 43.21% for Hindus, 40.33% for Muslims and 14.24% for Christians.
It is evident that Hindus while constituting 54.73% of the population contribute 43.21% of the child births, while Muslims at 26.56% of the population contribute 40.33% of the childbirths. Christians at 18.38% of the population are responsible for 14.24% of the child births.
It is clear that the number of child births in the Muslim community is roughly comparable to the Hindu community’s despite their population being less than half that of the Hindus.
Since census data is collected decade wise, the population in the inter-decadal period is not available. Therefore the same figures have been used unchanged just for comparison. It is evident that all populations will have increased in the interim. Without too much cogitation, we can agree that the Muslim population will have increased the most in this period as evident from the birth data.
Examining data for the years 2005 to 2021 as given in Table III, we immediately see that the Muslim share of child births is much higher than its population percentage for every year in the table. The difference between the Muslim population percentage and its share of the new born population is as much as 13 percent on average for every year in this table. The Hindu community has been increasing its population by 11 percent less than its population share in this period. The Christian community too has been replacing itself by a margin of 2.3 percent less than its population percentage.
Muslim Child Births already Higher than Hindu
From the table we see that the number of Muslim child births surpassed Hindu from 2016 onwards despite a population less than half the size. In fact 2021 was bit of an aberration since that year Hindu births exceeded Muslim for some reason.
So effectively Muslims are increasing their population share by 13 percent every year. Hindus are decreasing at 11 percent every year and Christians decreasing by 2 percent every year. Cumulatively this will make a huge difference, and its impact will be felt within the next ten years or perhaps even five.
The Total Minority Births Already Outnumber Hindu Births
The sum of the Christian and Muslim birth percentages has been higher than 50 percent in every one of the years under review. This means that Hindus are possibly well on the way to becoming a minority in Kerala, or perhaps already are. However they will, thanks to our secular state be treated as if they are still a majority. Like a previous PM from the Congress said, “Minorities have first claim on the resources of the state”.
Analysis of Table IV
To round off our analysis, in addition to the live birth rates above, we also need to look at the death rates of all communities. Again we restrict ourselves to the most reliable data set — that of Census 2011
Factoring in the death rates for the largest communities, we obtain the Net Growth Rates for each community.
We find that the death rate for the Muslim community is the lowest. Why is this so? The answer could be that the Muslim community has a large number of youngsters and a relatively lower number of aged people in its population pyramid and so percentage wise, the death rate is comparatively low. The Muslim community is aging slower than both Hindus and Christians.
This tells us that the Muslim community is growing at the fastest rate 1.90% compared to 0.55% for Hindus and 0.72% for Christians. Again we see that the Hindus are the slowest growing community.
As a percentage of population, Muslims are growing at 0.505 percent while Hindus are growing at 0.301 percent and Christians at 0.133 percent. We can see that the Muslim growth rate is greater than the combined Hindu and Christian growth rate.
Remember that this data is 13 years old. By the time the next census report tentatively planned in 2024 after the general elections, is released, a sea change will indeed have occurred in Kerala’s demography.
What is not in dispute is that Kerala’s Hindus are well on the way to becoming a demographic minority, in the land they once dominated.
In the Indian subcontinent, any Hindu population becoming a local religious minority has been subjected to unpleasant consequences. Everyone knows what happened to the Kashmiri Pandits in 1989/90. Despite the supposedly secular nature of the state, the Kashmiri Pandits get no assistance and continue to languish in refugee camps. The abolition of Article 370 has made no practical difference to their lives.
Kerala is no stranger to religious strife. The Moplah Rebellion of 1921 flared up in North Kerala’s Malabar region during the Khilafat agitation foolishly sponsored by Mahatma Gandhi as an exercise in improving Hindu-Muslim relations. Foolish because the agitation aimed to restore the Caliphate which had been abolished by Mustapha Kemal Ataturk in his reform of a hopelessly backward Turkey after the Ottoman Empire was dissolved post-World War I. A Turkish issue became an Indian issue with Indian Muslims viewing the abolition as a personal insult. Hindus had no dog in this fight, but Gandhi persuaded them that they had to support the Indian Muslims in this retrograde demand out of solidarity.
What was the result? A peaceful agitation became a religious jihad as crazed Moplah Muslims killed fellow Hindu citizens, men women and children, in an orgy of religious fanaticism and converted thousands of Hindus to Islam before they were finally defeated.
The Muslim extremist group, the Popular Front of India originated in Kerala. It is only the latest in a series of extremist Muslim groups which have grown in Kerala, fostered by the communal votebank politics of India’s supposedly most literate state.
The PFI has despatched groups of Malayali Muslims to Pakistan for training. It organised camps in Kerala’s Muslim majority Malappuram district where according to the NIA, cadres were provided training in making Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), unarmed combat and firing sophisticated weapons. One such very large training camp functioned for at least twenty years with the knowledge of the state police. When the PFI was banned by the Centre in September 2022, the NIA warned that at least 900 of its members had infiltrated the state police.
Many Malayalis Muslims enamoured of the jihadi lifestyle moved to Syria and Afghanistan to join ISIS. Some Hindu and Christian girls were brainwashed into converting to Islam and marrying these hard-core jihadis before moving to Syria. A Malayali Muslim doctor blew himself up in a suicide attack on a gurudwara in Kabul which killed 25 worshippers. Another Kerala Muslim PFI group proceeding to POK for training battled the Indian army in Kashmir on its way there. Five of its members were killed. Most people in India do not know all this. The Kerala Story is not all fiction.
It is also known that the PFI has connections with drug and gold smuggling through Kerala’s many international airports. It also runs killer gangs to eliminate political enemies. Post the ban, these were dormant for a time, but are active again.
The PFI has made no secret of its intentions. It wants a sharia state in India by 2047. Despite the ban on the PFI in 2023, it’s cadres have infiltrated the police, the administration and the ruling Communist party in Kerala. It is clear that these extremists enjoy official patronage, witness the lethargic manner in which the state’s official machinery moved against it after the ban.
Despite the ban, the PFI’s political arm, the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI) continues to function in Kerala. It is in alliance with the ruling CPI(M).
What will happen to the Hindus of Kerala once they become a minority?
