What is the religion of India? Hinduism and minorities in numbers.

The numbers from the 2011 census

The last completed census in India is the one from 2011. It counted about 1.21 billion people and recorded the religion each one declared.

The figures are rounded from the values of the Office of the Registrar General of the Census, which publishes them in “crores” (1 crore equals 10 million).

What the table does not show

First, the trend. According to Pew Research Center, Hindus were 84.1% of the population in 1951 and 79.8% in 2011, while Muslims went from 9.8% to 14.2% over the same period. The change is slow and takes place over six decades, not one generation.

Second, the average hides very different maps. In Nagaland, Mizoram and Meghalaya, Christians are the majority. In West Bengal, they are 0.7%. The breakdown by state is in how many Christians there are in India and where they live.

Third, the census records what a person declares, not what they practice. Someone who declares themselves Hindu may follow a local tradition, worship a regional deity or take part in the festivals of another religion. One example is the festivals that bring everyone together, such as those described in Diwali and Holi and in the festival calendar.

Hindus, Muslims and the other minorities

Hinduism has no single founder and has several sacred texts, and it brings together traditions that differ greatly from one another, with many deities and schools. So when the census says that 79.8% of Indians are Hindu, it groups together very different ways of believing. Muslims, at about 172 million, form the largest minority. The category “other religions and persuasions” adds up to about 8 million people, a number that includes local traditions, many tied to tribal peoples.

Buddhism, now at 0.7%, has a part of its recent history tied to caste: in 1956, the Dalit leader B. R. Ambedkar converted to Buddhism in Nagpur, together with hundreds of thousands of followers, in protest against the caste system.

India has no official religion

Contrary to what some texts claim, Hinduism is not the country's official religion. The Constitution defines India as a secular republic (the word “secular” was added to the Preamble in 1976, by the 42nd Amendment), and Article 25 guarantees all persons freedom of conscience and the right to profess, practice and propagate religion. In practice, several states have created anti-conversion laws that restrict a change of faith, and the result of this tension shows up in the persecution figures.

Beliefs that cross religions

A Pew Research Center survey of nearly 30,000 adults, conducted between November 2019 and March 2020, shows that the line between religions is less sharp than the table suggests. The same share of Hindus and of Muslims, 77%, say they believe in karma. The idea that the Ganges River purifies was accepted by 81% of Hindus, 32% of Christians and 26% of Muslims. Reincarnation, in turn, is accepted by 40% of Hindus, 29% of Christians and 27% of Muslims.

For those who follow the church in India, this has a practical consequence: many Indian Christians came from a setting in which these ideas are part of the family culture, and biblical training has to deal with them carefully and respectfully.

The caste system crosses religions

Declared religion alone does not explain social life. Caste also shapes marriage, work and access to rights, including for Christians and Muslims. The caste system shows why a Dalit who becomes a Christian loses, under the law, benefits that he would keep if he were Hindu, Sikh or Buddhist.

What changes in the 2027 census

India's next census is the first to be carried out by digital means and takes place in two phases. The first, the listing of households and housing conditions, was scheduled for April to September 2026, with a 30-day period in each state. The second, the enumeration of the population, is planned for February 2027, with a reference date of March 1, 2027. In it, every person will be asked about religion and about caste. Until the 2011 census, only the groups classified as Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes were systematically counted; recording the caste of the whole population is something a national census has not done since 1931.

The results of the religion question should appear only after the enumeration is complete. Until then, the 2011 figures remain the latest official data.