Study: Indian Muslims Worse Off Than Untouchables and Falling Further Behind

[Riaz Haq]

A recent Dartmouth study by three researchers has reported that "Muslims (in India) now have considerably worse upward mobility (29) today than both Scheduled Castes (37.4–37.8) and Scheduled Tribes (32.5–32.7). The comparable figure for African Americans is 34."

The research paper titled "Intergenerational Mobility in India: Estimates from New Methods and Administrative Data" says that "higher caste groups (in India) have experienced constant and high upward mobility over time, a result that contradicts a popular notion that it is increasingly difficult for higher caste Hindus to get ahead".

Dartmouth researchers' analysis focuses on two mobility measures: (i) the expected outcome of a child born into the bottom half of the parent outcome distribution (upward interval mobility, henceforth referred to as upward mobility); and (ii) the expected outcome of a child born into the top half of the parent distribution (downward interval mobility).

Indian Muslims at Bottom in Social Mobility. Source: Dartmouth College

Panel A  in the above figure presents bounds on trends in upward interval mobility, or the average rank among sons born to fathers in the bottom half of the father education distribution. Panel B presents bounds on trends in downward interval mobility, or the average education rank among sons born to fathers in the top half of the father education distribution. Panel C presents bounds on trends in the proportion of sons completing primary school, conditional on being born to a father in the bottom half of the education distribution. Panel D presents bounds on trends in the proportion of sons attaining a high school degree, conditional on being born to a father in the bottom half of the education distribution. 

The Dartmouth paper by Sam Asher, Paul Novosad and Charlie Rafkin confirms what an Indian government commission headed by Justice Rajendar Sachar found back in 2006 by saying that "Muslim disadvantage has been widely noted, including by the well-publicized federal Sachar Report (2006)".  Here's an excerpt of the paper:

"India’s Muslims constitute a similar population share as the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (14% for Muslims vs. 16.6% for SCs and 14% for STs). Muslims have worse socioeconomic outcomes than the general population (Sachar Committee Report, 2006). While Muslim disadvantage has been widely noted, including by the well-publicized federal Sachar Report (2006), there are few policies in place to protect them and there has not been an effective political mobilization in their interest. Muslims have also been frequent targets of discrimination and even violence."

The discrimination and violence against Muslims that the paper refers to has only gotten worse since the election of Hindu Nationalist leader Narendra Modi to India's highest office in India in 2014.

Earlier this year, an 8-year-old Muslim girl Asifa Bano was locked in a Hindu temple, drugged, gang-raped for several days and then bludgeoned to death in Indian occupied Kashmir, according to a report in a leading American newspaper.

Gang Rape Victim: 8-Year-Old Asifa Bano

Support of Rapists: 

The horror of a Muslim child's rape and murder was made even worse when the ruling BJP-affiliated right-wing Hindu lawyers marched in defense of her attackers. Prime Minister Narendra Modi reluctantly condemned the crime after waiting for several days. His belated acknowledgment came in response to international outrage.

Is this just another rape in India? Did the child's Muslim faith make her a target? Has Islamophobia gone mainstream in India?  To answer these questions, let us put some context to what is happening in Modi's India.

India saw about 39,000 rape cases reported in 2016, a 12% jump over the prior year, according to Indian crime statistics.  Children were reported as victims in 42% of the cases.

It is hard to say how many of the rape victims were Muslim.  What is known, however, is the exhortation by iconic Hindutva leaders to rape of Muslim women.  Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, one of the founders of right-wing RSS who Prime Minister Modi describes as "worthy of worship", is among them. After getting elected to the highest office in India, Modi paid tribute to Savarkar by laying flowers at his portrait that hangs in India's Parliament.

VD Savarkar, in one of his books titled Six Glorious Epochs of Indian History, elaborates on why raping of Muslim women is not only justified but encouraged.

Savarkar has used revisionist Hindutva history to exhort his followers to rape Muslim women as payback for historic wrongs he believes were committed by Muslim conquerers of India. “Once they are haunted with this dreadful apprehension that the Muslim women too, stand in the same predicament in case the Hindus win, the future Muslim conquerors will never dare to think of such molestation of Hindu women,” he writes.

Hindutva Revisionist History: 

American history professor Audrey Truschke, in her recently published book "Aurangzeb: The Life and Legacy of India's Most Controversial King" has argued that colonial-era British historians deliberately distorted the history of Indian Muslim rule to vilify Muslim rulers as part of the British policy to divide and conquer India.  These misrepresentations of Muslim rule made during the British Raj appear to have been accepted as fact not just by Islamophobic Hindu Nationalists but also by at least some of the secular Hindus in India and Muslim intellectuals in present day Pakistan, says the author.  Aurangzeb was neither a saint nor a villain; he was a man of his time who should be judged by the norms of his times and compared with his contemporaries, the author adds.

Truschke says the original history of the Mughal rule was written in Persian. However, it is the English translation of the original work that are often used to distort it. Here's what she says about it in her book:

"The bulk of Mughal histories are written in Persian, the official administrative language of the Mughal empire but a foreign tongue in India today. Out of necessity and ease, many historians disregard the original Persian text and rely instead on English translations. This approach narrows the the library of materials drastically, and many translations of the Mughal texts are of questionable quality, brimming with mistranslations and abridgments. Some of these changes conveniently served the agendas of the translators, especially colonial-era translations that tend to show Indo--Muslim kings at their worst so that the British would seem virtuous by comparison (foremost here is Elliot and Dowson's History of India as Told by Its Own Historians). Such materials are great for learning about British colonialism, but they present an inaccurate picture of Mughal India."

Modi's Record: 

In 2002 when Narendra Modi was chief minister of the Indian state of Gujarat, hundreds of young Muslim girls were sexually assaulted, tortured and killed.  These rapes were condoned by the ruling BJP, whose refusal to intervene lead to the rape and killing of thousands and displacement of 200,000 Muslims.

Since his election to India's top elected office, Modi has elevated fellow right-wing Hindu extremists to positions of power in India. Yogi Adiyanath, known for his highly inflammatory anti-Muslim rhetoric, was hand-picked in 2016 by Modi to head India's most populous state of Uttar Pradesh.

Adiyanath's supporters brag about digging up Muslim women from their graves and raping them. In a video uploaded in 2014,  he said, “If [Muslims] take one Hindu girl, we’ll take 100 Muslim girls. If they kill one Hindu, we’ll kill 100 Muslims.”

Yogi wants to "install statues of Goddess Gauri, Ganesh and Nandi in every mosque”.  Before his election, he said, “If one Hindu is killed, we won’t go to the police, we’ll kill 10 Muslims”.  He endorsed the beef lynching of Indian Muslim Mohammad Akhlaque and demanded that the victim's family be charged with cow slaughter.

Madhav S. Golwalkar, considered among the founders of the Hindu Nationalist movement in India, saw Islam and Muslims as enemies. He said: “Ever since that evil day, when Moslems first landed in Hindusthan, right up to the present moment, the Hindu Nation has been gallantly fighting to shake off the despoilers".

In his book We, MS Golwalkar wrote the following in praise of what Nazi leader Adolf Hitler did to Jews as a model for what Hindus should do to Muslims in India: "To keep up the purity of the Race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races -- the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by."

Social Hostility Against Minorities in South Asia. Source: Bloomberg

Rise of Hindu Nationalists: 

The situation for India's minorities, particularly Muslims, has become a lot worse in the last two years with Hindu mobs raping and lynching Muslims with impunity. The 2016 election of anti-Muslim radical Hindu priest Yogi Adiyanath as Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state, is seen as a clear signal from Mr. Modi that his anti-Muslim policies will continue.

Mohammad Akhlaq is believed to be the first victim of Hindu lynch mobs claiming to be protecting the cow. He was accused of consuming beef. For more than a week Prime Minister Narendra Modi remained silent over the incident and even after he spoke about it, he did not condemn it outright. The ruling BJP officials even tried to explain it as the result of the genuine anger of the Hindus over the slaughtering of a cow.

Pew Research Report:

A Pew Research report from data collected in 2015, about a year after Modi rose to power, found that the level of hostility against religious minorities is "very high". In fact, it said India scores 9 for social hostilities against religious minorities on a scale of 0-10.   Other countries in "very high" category for social hostilities include Nigeria, Iraq and Syria. Pakistan's score on this scale is 7 while Bangladesh is 5.5.

Pew Research Report on Religious Freedom

History of Anti-Muslim Riots in India:

Paul Richard Brass, professor emeritus of political science and international relations at the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington, has spent many years researching communal riots in India. He has debunked all the action-reaction theories promoted by Hindu Nationalists like Modi. He believes these are not spontaneous but planned and staged as "a grisly form of dramatic production" by well-known perpetrators from the Sangh Parivar of which Prime Minister Modi has been a member since his youth.

Here's an excerpt of Professor Brass's work:

"Events labelled “Hindu-Muslim riots” have been recurring features in India for three-quarters of a century or more. In northern and western India, especially, there are numerous cities and town in which riots have become endemic. In such places, riots have, in effect, become a grisly form of dramatic production in which there are three phases: preparation/rehearsal, activation/enactment, and explanation/interpretation. In these sites of endemic riot production, preparation and rehearsal are continuous activities. Activation or enactment of a large-scale riot takes place under particular circumstances, most notably in a context of intense political mobilization or electoral competition in which riots are precipitated as a device to consolidate the support of ethnic, religious, or other culturally marked groups by emphasizing the need for solidarity in face of the rival communal group. The third phase follows after the violence in a broader struggle to control the explanation or interpretation of the causes of the violence. In this phase, many other elements in society become involved, including journalists, politicians, social scientists, and public opinion generally. At first, multiple narratives vie for primacy in controlling the explanation of violence. On the one hand, the predominant social forces attempt to insert an explanatory narrative into the prevailing discourse of order, while others seek to establish a new consensual hegemony that upsets existing power relations, that is, those which accept the violence as spontaneous, religious, mass-based, unpredictable, and impossible to prevent or control fully. This third phase is also marked by a process of blame displacement in which social scientists themselves become implicated, a process that fails to isolate effectively those most responsible for the production of violence, and instead diffuses blame widely, blurring responsibility, and thereby contributing to the perpetuation of violent productions in future, as well as the order that sustains them."

"In India, all this takes place within a discourse of Hindu-Muslim hostility that denies the deliberate and purposive character of the violence by attributing it to the spontaneous reactions of ordinary Hindus and Muslims, locked in a web of mutual antagonisms said to have a long history. In the meantime, in post-Independence India, what are labelled Hindu-Muslim riots have more often than not been turned into pogroms and massacres of Muslims, in which few Hindus are killed. In fact, in sites of endemic rioting, there exist what I have called “institutionalized riot systems,” in which the organizations of militant Hindu nationalism are deeply implicated. Further, in these sites, persons can be identified, who play specific roles in the preparation, enactment, and explanation of riots after the fact. Especially important are what I call the “fire tenders,” who keep Hindu-Muslim tensions alive through various inflammatory and inciting acts; “conversion specialists,” who lead and address mobs of potential rioters and give a signal to indicate if and when violence should commence; criminals and the poorest elements in society, recruited and rewarded for enacting the violence; and politicians and the vernacular media who, during the violence, and in its aftermath, draw attention away from the perpetrators of the violence by attributing it to the actions."

Summary:

A recent Dartmouth study by three researchers has reported that "Muslims (in India) now have considerably worse upward mobility (29) today than both Scheduled Castes (37.4–37.8) and Scheduled Tribes (32.5–32.7). The comparable figure for African Americans is 34."  The Darthmouth paper adds that " (Indian) Muslims have also been frequent targets of discrimination and even violence."

India is seeing a spate of gang rapes and lynchings of Muslims by Hindu mobs who have been emboldened by the rise of anti-Muslim Hindu Nationalist leader Narendra Modi since his 2014 election to the highest office in India.  In their writings, iconic Hindutva leaders like Savarkar have encouraged rape of Muslim women. The elevation of radical Hindu Yogi Adiyanath to the top job in Uttar Pradesh by Mr. Modi has further alarmed India's Muslim minority. University of Washington's Professor Emeritus Paul Brass, who has documented the history of anti-Muslim violence in India,  describes it as "a grisly form of dramatic production" by well-known perpetrators from the Sangh Parivar of which Prime Minister Modi has been a member since his youth. Pew Research report on religious violence confirms India's status as a country with "very high" levels of social hostilities against religious minorities.  There appears to be no relief in sight for them at least in the foreseeable future.

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Islamophobia Goes Mainstream

700,000 Indian Troops vs 10 Million Kashmiris

Muslim Lynchings in Modi's India

Yogi Adiyanath as UP CM

Hindu Nationalists Admire Hitler

Hinduization of India Under Modi

Muslim Victims of Gujarat 2002

India's Superpower Delusions: Modi's Flawed Policies

What Do Modi and Trump Have in Common?

[Riaz Haq]

Indian American Muslim Council
@IAMCouncil
The Muslim community is less differentiated within, along class and caste lines. But they experience clear collective deprivation, write
@jaffrelotc
and Kalaiyarasan A

https://twitter.com/IAMCouncil/status/1695232087526113388?s=20

---------

BJP’s Pasmanda Muslim outreach: It’s not as divided as you think
The Muslim community is less differentiated within, along class and caste lines. But they experience clear collective deprivation
Written by Christophe Jaffrelot , Kalaiyarasan A
Updated: August 25, 2023 17:20 IST
Newsguard

https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/christophe-jaffre...


A couple of months ago, in his address to BJP workers in Bhopal, Prime Minister Narendra Modi emphasised that the party’s outreach to poor Muslims could take advantage of the “extreme exploitation of backward Pasmanda Muslims” by upper-caste Muslims and the parties playing the game of vote bank politics. This speech and the recent co-option of Pasmanda Muslims by the BJP have renewed the debate on caste among Muslims in India. While one cannot deny or disown the persistence of caste among Indian Muslims, in terms of socio-economic inequality, it is much less significant than among Hindus.

There are three broad groupings of Muslim castes — Ashrafs, Ajlafs and Arzals — which approximate to upper castes, OBCs and Dalits respectively. However, Dalit Muslims don’t self-identify as Scheduled Castes in survey data as they don’t enjoy reservation. Their castes are usually listed in the OBC category. OBCs constitute about 60 per cent of Indian Muslims, followed by 38 per cent of upper castes and the remaining 2 per cent constitute SC/STs. These groups, however, are unevenly distributed geographically. Pasmandas, comprising OBCs and Dalits, constitute 76 per cent of Muslims in UP and Bihar, for instance.

Drawing on the latest All India Debt and Investment Survey (AIDIS) and Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS), we use multidimensional variables — wealth consumption, access to jobs and educational attainment — to evaluate social inequalities among Indian Muslims and to compare them with the situation prevailing among Hindus.

The average per capita wealth among Hindu upper castes was Rs 8,64,984 in 2019, as against Rs 4,27,149 for OBCs, and Rs 2,28,437 for Dalits. The figures for upper-caste Muslims and OBCs were Rs 3,43,014 and Rs 3,10,922, respectively. In other words, on average, the wealth of Hindu upper castes was more than three times that of Dalits and twice that of OBCs, while this gap was just 10 per cent among Muslims. In Bihar, where Pasmanda Muslims are in large numbers, wealth inequality among Muslims is insignificant — just 2 per cent — and in Madhya Pradesh, Pasmanda Muslims do better than Ashrafs in wealth accumulation by 14 percentage points. By contrast, the gap is 43 per cent in UP, where there are remnants of landed Muslim aristocracy. However, if we compare the wealth gap among the Hindus of UP, on average, the Hindu upper castes own almost twice as much wealth as OBCs and three times as much as Dalits.

A similar trend can be observed in consumption, too. In 2021-22, the average per capita monthly expenditure among the Muslim upper castes was Rs 2,180, as against Rs 2,151 among Pasmandas, a margin of 1.4 per cent. The corresponding figures for Hindus were quite different: Upper castes, with Rs 3,321, consumed 40 per cent more than OBCs (Rs 2,180) and 57 per cent more than Dalits (Rs 2,122). The gap among Muslims was rather small in UP (6.2 per cent) and Bihar (10 per cent), while it stood at, respectively, 48 per cent for the Hindu upper castes vis-à-vis OBCs and 60 per cent vis-à-vis Dalits in UP, and 27 per cent and 48 per cent in Bihar.

[Riaz Haq]

The Muslim community is less differentiated within, along class and caste lines. But they experience clear collective deprivation

by Christophe Jaffrelot

https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/christophe-jaffre...

In terms of educational attainment too, Ashrafs and Pasmandas are not so different. In 2021-22, the percentage of upper caste Muslim youth (18 to 23 years) attending higher educational institutions was the same as the Pasmandas: 19.8 per cent. By contrast, the percentage of Hindu youth in higher education among upper castes was as high as 46.5 per cent, while it was 36 per cent for OBCs and 26 per cent for Dalits. Interestingly, in UP and Madhya Pradesh, Pasmandas do even better than their upper-caste counterparts. In fact, in UP, Muslim upper castes are experiencing negative growth in educational attendance. As a result, their enrollment came down to 12 per cent in 2021-22, as against 14 per cent in 2011-12 — an unprecedented development in the history of India so far as we know, simply because every group, so far, has experienced greater access to higher education.

Muslims’ lower access to education gets reflected in access to regular jobs. The percentage of salaried workers among Muslims is 19.3 per cent as against 21.5 per cent for Hindus. But, again, there is no difference between Muslim upper castes and Pasmandas. In contrast, the percentage of salaried workers among Hindu upper castes is 33 per cent as against 19.9 per cent for Hindu OBCs and 21.5 per cent for Dalits. In states such as UP, Bihar, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, Pasmanda Muslims do better than their upper-caste counterparts, whereas Hindu upper castes still control most of the coveted jobs.

In sum, Muslims are less differentiated along class and caste lines than Hindus: While Hindus form an extremely unequal community, with upper castes being very resilient net gainers, Muslims are experiencing collective deprivation. That said, BJP leaders may still “divide and rule” Muslims by co-opting Pasmandas — the way they have done with Shias and Bohras — as well as by exploiting status-related faultlines, which remain strong even if class-based distinctions are much less visible than on the Hindu side. In UP, during the recent local body elections, the BJP nominated 395 Muslim candidates and 61 won. Three-fourths of these 395 candidates were Pasmandas. By contrast, in the previous local elections, the party had fielded only 180 Muslim candidates, with only one winning.

[Riaz Haq]

Muslims are the poorest religious group in India
By
Abhishek Jha
,
Roshan Kishore
Jun 30, 2023 09:22 AM IST

An HT analysis of unit level data from the latest AIDIS and PLFS shows they have the lowest asset and consumption levels among major religious groups in India

https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/muslims-in-india-the-poor...

An HT analysis of unit level data from the latest AIDIS and PLFS shows they have the lowest asset and consumption levels among major religious groups in India
The first of this two-part data series looked at intra-religious inequality among Muslims and found that they are as unequal a society as Hindus in India. These measures of inequality do not tell us about the material well-being (or lack of it) of Muslims as a whole vis–a-vis other religious groups in India. An analysis of the relevant numbers shows that they are the poorest religious group in the country. Here are four charts which explain this in detail.
Muslims have the lowest asset/consumption levels among major religious groups…

An HT analysis of unit level data from the latest All India Debt and Investment Survey (AIDIS) and Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) shows that they have the lowest asset and consumption levels among major religious groups in India. Average consumption and asset values for Muslims are 87.9% and 79% of the all-India average and 87.8% and 79.3% of the average values for Hindus. Religious groups which have a population share of less than 1% have been clubbed in the “others” category.

Which means that they over-populate the ranks of the poor in India

There is often a lot of dog-whistling about the population of Muslims increasing at a higher pace than other religious groups in India. While most such commentary is ill-informed – this was discussed in detail in these pages (https://tinyurl.com/2mhjxnn2) — Muslims do have an overrepresentation problem when it comes to their relative share in population among the poor. A comparison of relative share – among every decile class by assets ; it basically measures the share in a given decile class divided by overall share in population – shows that Muslims are concentrated in the bottom half of India’s population and outnumber the Hindus in relative terms in each of the bottom six deciles.

Even Muslim upper castes are poorer than Hindu OBCs

A comparison of average asset/MPCE values across social groups among Hindus and Muslims shows this clearly. The average asset value for non-SC/ST/OBC Muslims – they are the non-Pasmanda Muslims – is not just lower than the average value for non-SC/ST/OBC Hindus but also lower than that of Hindu OBCs, which shows that the claims of Muslim upper castes enjoying disproportionate economic power are just not true.

Poor employment and educational opportunities seem to be the primary cause of economic backwardness for Muslims

The PLFS gives data on both the status of workers (whether regular wage, self-employed, or casual) and the type of enterprise (such as government, public and private limited companies) at which a worker is employed. This shows that even non-SC/ST/OBC Muslims have a low share in regular jobs (the average wage in such jobs is the highest) compared to other religions. A comparison with caste groups among Hindus shows that non-SC/ST/OBC Muslims only do better than ST and SC Hindus. The disadvantage for Muslims becomes even bigger if one looks at their share in government jobs, a fact which has been pointed out by the Sachar Committee among others. To be sure, the low share of Muslims among the better jobs in India need not necessarily be a result of discrimination in the hiring process. Rather, it could be the result of Muslim job-seekers lagging in terms of educational qualifications, which is bound to have a big role in employability.

[Riaz Haq]

India’s hidden COVID deaths: Was the toll in 2020 eight times higher? | Health News | Al Jazeera


https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/7/20/did-covids-first-wave-kill...

Indian Muslims suffered the worst: Their life expectancy went down by 5.4 years in 2020.


These communities had lower life expectancy at birth relative to high-caste Hindus even before the pandemic, the study noted. “The pandemic exacerbated these disparities,” it added. “These declines are comparable or larger in absolute magnitude to those experienced by Native Americans, Blacks, and Hispanics in the United States in 2020.”
---------

India had nearly 1.2 million excess deaths in 2020, new data shows. The life expectancy of Muslims fell the most among all Indians – by more than five years.

New Delhi, India – India’s actual death toll during the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic that ravaged the world’s most populous country could be eight times higher than the government’s official numbers, reveals a new study.

While that initial wave of the virus caught the world off guard, leaving governments and health systems scrambling for responses, India, after implementing a strict lockdown, appeared to have escaped the worst of its effects. The country was devastated by the delta variant in 2021 when hospitals ran out of beds and oxygen, people died gasping outside healthcare facilities and rows upon rows of smouldering pyres chequered cremation grounds across the country.

But the new research suggests that the first wave, while not as deadly as the one in 2021, wrought far greater devastation than has been acknowledged until now.

What does the new research show?
The study, co-authored by 10 demographers and economists from elite international institutes, found that India had 1.19 million excess deaths in 2020, during the pandemic’s first wave, compared to 2019.

That’s eight times India’s official COVID-19 toll for 2020, of 148,738 deaths. The study was published Friday in the Science Advances publication.

The numbers in the research, based on the Indian government’s 2019-21 National Family Health Survey (NFHS), a comprehensive report on the state of the country’s health and family welfare, are also 1.5 times the World Health Organization’s (WHO) estimate for India’s COVID-19 death toll in 2020.

India’s own total count of deaths from the virus until the end of 2021 stands at 481,000.

But the new research also uncovers deep inequalities among the pandemic’s victims – based on gender, caste and religion.

Did COVID kill some communities disproportionately?
The research found that in 2020, the life expectancy of an upper-caste Indian of the Hindu faith went down by 1.3 years. By contrast, the average lifespan for people from ‘scheduled castes’ – communities that for centuries faced the worst discrimination under the caste system – went down by 2.7 years.

[Riaz Haq]

What migration reveals about religion in India

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm23n23dwx3o

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2024/08/19/the-religious-compo...

The religious composition of Indians who emigrate differs significantly from those who stay in India, analysis by the US-based Pew Research Center has found.
About 80% of people in India are Hindu, but they form only 41% of emigrants from the country, the survey on the religious composition of the world's migrants says.
In contrast, about 15% of people living in India are Muslim, compared with 33% of those who were born in India and now live elsewhere.
Christians make up only about 2% of the Indian population, but 16% who have left India are Christian.

"Many more Muslims and Christians have left India than have moved there. People of other, smaller religions, like Sikhs and Jains, are also disproportionately likely to have left India," Stephanie Kramer, a lead researcher of the analysis, told me.
More than 280 million people, or 3.6% of the world’s population, are international migrants.
As of 2020, Christians comprised 47% of the global migrant population, Muslims 29%, Hindus 5%, Buddhists 4% and Jews 1%, according to Pew Research Center's analysis of UN data and 270 censuses and surveys.
The religiously unaffiliated, including atheists and agnostics, made up 13% of global migrants who have left their country of birth.
The migrant population in the analysis includes anyone living outside their birthplace, from babies to oldest adults. They could have been born at any time as long as they are still alive.
As far as India is concerned, the analysis found that the religious make-up of the population who have moved to India is much more similar to that of the country's overall population.

Also, Hindus are starkly under-represented among international migrants (5%) compared with their share of the global population (15%). There are about one billion Hindus around the world.
“This seems to be because Hindus are so concentrated in India and people born in India are very unlikely to leave,” said Ms Kramer.
“More people who were born in India are living elsewhere than from any other country of origin, but these millions of emigrants represent a small fraction of India's population.”
About 99% of Hindus lived in Asia back in 2010, almost entirely in India and Nepal, and researchers say they wouldn't expect that share to drop much, if at all.
Since partition, India hasn't experienced a mass migration event, and many of those who migrated then are no longer alive.
“In contrast, other religious groups are more dispersed globally and face more push factors that drive emigration,” Ms Kramer said.