Has India’s Muslim population really exploded?

A new government report claims that the country’s Muslim population share has increased 43 percent since 1950, fuelling an unfounded conspiracy theory.

New Delhi, India – The share of Indian Muslims in the country’s population has soared by more than 43 percent since 1950: That’s the key takeaway from a new working paper published by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Economic Advisory Council (EAC).

Amid India’s heated national election campaign, as Modi has increasingly painted scary scenarios of Muslims backed by opposition parties taking over the nation’s resources, the report has sparked criticism over its timing. Sections of Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have amplified the findings of the paper to emphasise a narrative long peddled by the Hindu right that the community’s religious majority in the country is under threat.

So, what does the paper claim and what do the facts say? Is India’s Muslim population actually growing exponentially faster than that of other communities – including Hindus? And why is the report facing criticism?

The report looks at global demographic trends between 1950 and 2015. It relies on statistics from the Association of Religion Data Archive (ARDA), a free online database of global religious data.

It concludes that in the period studied, the share of the Muslim population in India increased by 43.15 percent, from 9.84 percent to 14.09 percent. By contrast, it says, the share of the majority Hindu population decreased by 7.82 percent between 1950 and 2015, from 84.68 percent to 78.06 percent.

The share of India’s Christian population rose from 2.24 percent to 2.36 percent – an increase of 5.38 percent; and the Sikh population by 6.58 percent, from 1.74 percent in 1950 to 1.85