Sunday 28 December 2014

Muslim Population Of India: According To The Censuses Of 1941 and 2001

Demographics of a country play a very important role in shaping its culture and history. India is no exception. India  is a land of very diverse geography, terrain and weather. Its ethnic composition is a even more diverse, with hundreds of ethnically different peoples inhabiting it, speaking many languages. 

The subject of my this post is also about the demographics of India, but confined only to the Muslim population and its distribution in India. This aspect of Indian demographics played the most important part in shaping the modern history of India in the twentieth century. Muslim population and its aspirations were the most important issue of the five or six decades leading to the independence. And when the independence came, it determined the borders of the modern states in the subcontinent.

I chose the data from the census of 1941, the last census before the partition. But the real problem was to make a map of India during the British Raj. India during the raj was a complicated mosaic of provinces, directly governed by the British and about 565 princely states. These were of various sizes, biggest of these was Hyderabad with an area of 213000 km.sq. But hundreds of them were so small that it was very difficult to show them even on a large size map. To make the matter worse for a cartographer, many of them were divided into several non-contiguous territories. I shall probably make no exaggeration if I say that even the viceroy would not have a map of India, clearly showing all the the political units of India. 

I luckily found on internet a map published by National Geographic Society in 1946. But on this map they have been able to show less than 200 princely states. I have used the same map to make my map given below. So although this map is accurate as far as British provinces are concerned but gives just a rough idea of the princely states and their boundaries, especially the smaller ones. However, it gives a fairly accurate idea of the distribution of Muslim population in India in 1941. 


 The above map shows the distribution of Muslim population in India according to the census of 1941. It shows British administered provinces,with districts and the princely states. Please note that just one third of the total 565 states are shown.
(Click the map for the larger view)


 The above map shows the British provinces and some of those princely states, which were ruled by Muslim rulers. 
                                                    (Click the map for the larger view)


The tables given below show the population of Muslims in the provinces of British India. By that means the areas that were ruled and administered directly by the British government in Delhi. 





































Below are the tables which give the Muslim population in the princely states. These princely states were attached to different provinces, or grouped together to form agencies, ruled by local rulers but supervised by the representatives of the paramount power of the government of the British India. 













































The following tables show the population of Muslim in each district of all the states, according to the census of 2001.







































































So finally this post is complete and ready to be published. It proved to be a hard task and took me much more time to publish it than I expected. How successful I am, you will decide. I have not analyzed the data or tried to draw any conclusion, that I would leave to readers. Your comments are most welcome. 

Tariq Amir
Doha – Qatar.
December 28, 2014.

28 comments:

  1. Salam Alaikum, firstly this is a wonderful blog with great research done. I have spent hours studying the maps and charts you have made. I have one small suggestion which is as follows: in the first map for example, instead of having completely different colours representing each percentage of Muslims, you should have it as shades of one colour like green. The darker you get the higher the percentage and lighter is lower percentage.

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  2. This is fabulous, painstaking work and you are to be commended.

    My father in law and parents lived through both a train massacre, as well as killings on their very doorstep. But of Muslims.

    My father-in-law is a staunch Hindu nationalist and fauji who hates Pakistan, but grew up in Sialkot and came over as a refugee. My parents were South Indian Brahmins who lived in Delhi. They were more philosophical about Partition.

    This helps greatly in settling silly debates with family and friends about Pakistan having been ethnically cleansed, but not the India side.

    It helps to remember, also, that the killings started in late June, and were done by rural Sikhs in East Punjab, trying to scare Muslim neighbors away and take their land.

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    1. Thank you for your comments. I wish peace and prosperity to people on both sides of the border. It is my great wish to one day visit Incredible India!

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    2. There is mistake in 1st table. U mentioned 4% Muslim % population. 9.5 crore of 38 crore is not 4%

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    3. Thank you for drawing my attention to this mistake. It is actually 24.08 and I have corrected it. Regards.

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  3. You have not mentioned the percentage of Muslim in present Pakistan district wise in 2014

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  4. great blog ...I appreciate your efforts

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  5. Excellent work Tariq Amir. It will help a lot to answer many questions and debates. Commendable work indeed.

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  6. There are 1.8 billion Muslim people worldwide and an estimated 3.45 million Muslims living in the United States. Islam is currently the second largest religion in the world next to Christianity. Despite the fact that there are so many Muslims in the world, in many places there is a lack of understanding truth about muslims people and Islam.

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  7. Please update India Muslim database States & district cense 2011.Thank you for advanced

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  8. Tariq, I am very impressed with your diligence on this. However, you made one typographical error that I found. For the total population of West Bengal in the 2001 census, you apparently left out a digit, and only listed the total population as approximately 8.000,000 as opposed to the correct figure of approximately 80,000,000. But good work overall - very helpful to understand the demography that led to partition, and helps to explain some of the current issues.

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    1. Dear Mr Greg,

      Thank you for your appreciating comments and drawing my attention to a mistake. I shall try to correct it as soon as possible.

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  9. Very good effort. This is very informative.

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  10. Dear Tariq this is very informative however a few suggestions:
    1. You haven’t added the figures of Berar in both CP and Berar and in the total figures of British India
    2. You haven’t mentioned the figures of FATA (tribal areas of NWFP) in the tables
    3. It would have been great if you would have used a colour scheme of different tones of fading green colour to show the districts with Muslim populations of less the 50% rather then Different colours like blue red etc. That would have helped to analyse the Muslim population distribution much better
    Still you have done an amazing job . Excellent work!

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  11. Dear Tariq this is very informative however a few suggestions:
    1. You haven’t added the figures of Berar in both CP and Berar and in the total figures of British India
    2. You haven’t mentioned the figures of FATA (tribal areas of NWFP) in the tables
    3. It would have been great if you would have used a colour scheme of different tones of fading green colour to show the districts with Muslim populations of less the 50% rather then Different colours like blue red etc. That would have helped to analyse the Muslim population distribution much better
    Still you have done an amazing job . Excellent work!

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  12. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  13. Dear Sir,

    1. I have added the figure for Berar and CP in the totals for India.
    2. Actually figures were not given in the census report for 1941.
    3. It is a good suggestion. I could use proper colours due to my limited knowledge of graphic desigining.

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  14. There is a seperate table for Berar and CP in the province section however the total given for CP and Berar combined in the main table of british India give the figures for only CP. should it be a sum of both CP and Berar figures

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  15. Great and detailed article; thanks for writing it up.

    A couple comments and questions below:

    Since this article is analyzing the Muslim population of British India and comparing it with the contemporary population, I believe it would be more prudent to compare it with the present-day India/Pakistan/Bangladesh, rather than just present-day India in order to keep the comparison geographically accurate. Otherwise you're comparing apples to oranges, since present-day India does not include Pakistan and Bangladesh, while British India did.

    Additionally, if one was to compare the 1941 and 2011 Muslim population & percentage of all states/districts of India based on present day borders, what would those numbers look like?

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    1. Not a bad suggestion. Actually now Pakistan and Bangladesh are so overwhelmingly Muslim, that no district is non Muslim majority. Anyway, I shall try to keep your suggestion in mind for any such article in the future. After all it is 2021 and India must be conducting a new census.

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    2. Yeah, to address that first point, it really is sad how much the religious demographics were completely altered in just a few months across regions where the borders were ultimately drawn (Pakistan, Bangladesh and surrounding areas in present-day India). I suppose much of the Indian heartland was able to retain a lot of its Muslim population (especially in comparison to Pakistan) as it was quite densely populated, many lacked the ability to relocate, and was relatively spared the deadly massacres and riots that plagued Punjab and Jammu.

      Anyways, I digress. Thanks for the reply, and once again, great work! Compiling so much data (especially historical data in a region like South Asia) is a monumentous task and I applaud the effort. I'll be looking forward to that potential future article!

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  16. Great job! I was wondering if it is possible to have access to the shapefile for this?

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  17. Can you make a blogpost for situation if Muslim and Sikh are united in 1947 partition. What happen with Punjab and 2ndly why there is no Muslim majority region or strong Muslim minority in Pakistan India international border region of India
    Means west Bengal and asaam has still strong Muslim minority whereas indian Punjab and haryana has very weak Muslim majority what is the reason behind this and and only Kutch and jasailmer has strong Muslim minority which is very less if we compare to Bangladesh bordering region of India means only those region which are non Muslim influence region region before partition are still non Muslim influence region

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    1. I shall consider the idea of writing a blog on the effect of Sikhs siding with Pakistan in 1947. Your second question is regarding the the significant Muslim population in the border regions of India with Bangladesh. The basic reason is that no widespread riots were witnessed in Bengal in 1947. On the other hand, in Punjab it was a total ethnic cleansing on both sides.

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  18. Can u make a table of muslim and hindu population from b4 mughal empire to british census of 1901 to 1947 to indian census of 1951 to 2011 in one table..Need to know if hindu and muslim population and how much it retained

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  19. That would be very difficult. Because as far as I know modern census operations only started during the British times. Especially from mid 19th century onward, we have reliable data.

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