036. 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. It is a land of highly diverse geography, terrain, and climate. Its ethnic composition is even more diverse, with hundreds of distinct peoples inhabiting it and speaking many different languages.

The subject of this post is the demographics of India, with a focus on the Muslim population and its distribution. This aspect of Indian demographics played a significant role in shaping the modern history of India in the twentieth century. The Muslim population and its aspirations were among the most important issues in the five or six decades leading up to independence. When independence came, it was the distribution of the Muslim population that largely determined the borders of the new states in the subcontinent.

For this analysis, I have used data from the 1941 census, the last census conducted before partition. However, the real challenge was to create a map of India during the British Raj. At that time, India was a complicated mosaic of British-ruled provinces and about 565 princely states. These princely states varied greatly in size. The largest of them was Hyderabad, covering an area of 213,000 square kilometers. But hundreds of them were so small that it was almost impossible to show them even on a large map. To complicate matters further, many of them were divided into several non-contiguous territories. I would not be exaggerating if I said that even the Viceroy himself might not have had a map showing all the political units of India in clear detail.

Fortunately, I found a map published by the National Geographic Society in 1946. Even this map shows fewer than 200 princely states. I have used it as the base for the map provided below. While the British provinces are accurately depicted, the princely states, especially the smaller ones, are only roughly represented. Nevertheless, this map gives a reasonably accurate picture of the distribution of the Muslim population in India in 1941.

 The map above shows the distribution of the Muslim population in India according to the 1941 census. 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, we mean 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.