A study by the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM) has revealed shocking statistics regarding the alarming decline in the Hindu population in countries across the world.

The study titled “Share of Religious Minorities: A Cross-Country Analysis (1950-2015) analyzes the shifts in religious demographics in countries across the world, taking 1950 as the base year. The study calculates both the percentage of increase or decrease of religious minorities within the overall population composition from 1950 to 2015,and the percentage of increase or decrease of the majority religious practitioners of a country within the overall population composition.

According to the study, the population share of the majority religion in Bharat, that is Hindus witnessed a sharp decline of 7.8 percent between 1950 and 2015. While the Hindu population of Bharat shrunk significantly within this time period, the population share of minorities like Christians and Muslims witnessed growth, according to the report.

Between 1950 and 2015, the Muslim population share of Bharat increased by 43.15 percent, while the Christian population share in the country saw a 5.3 percent rise, according to the study.

What emerges as most alarming from the findings of the report is that the population share of Hindus in many countries has come down drastically, irrespective of whether they are in the majority or minority. The study itself says that as a general trend, the population of the majority has gone down over the years in most countries, reflecting a greater degree of heterogeneity in population composition, and government policies conducive to the flourishing of minorities. However, if one looks at the country-wise data, the Hindu population in many countries, where they are already a minority, has gone down even further.

The sharpest decline in the Hindu population can be seen in Bangladesh, according to the study. The report itself terms this decline as “abnormal”. It says that the Hindu population of Bangladesh declined by 66 percent from 1950 to 2015, that is, Hindus who constituted 23 percent of the population of Bangladesh in 1950 shrank to 8 percent in 2015. This, as the study itself says, “helps us understand the scale of demographic shock that the Hindu population in Bangladesh was subjected to over the 65-year-period from 1950-2015”. Yet, the Western media rarely talks about the persecution and forced conversion of Hindus in Bangladesh. All it does is create propaganda regarding the ostensible mistreatment and oppression of minorities in Bharat, whereas, as the findings of this report clearly show, minorities like Christians and Muslims are thriving in Bharat.

Interestingly, in the case of Bangladesh, says the report, the “fate of other minorities in Bangladesh was markedly different”. According to the study, while the Hindu population of Bangladesh witnessed an alarming decline, the Buddhist population of the country remained stable at 0.63 percent while the share of the Christian population tripled to 0.53 percent.

In Bhutan, Hindus who constituted the second largest population group in 1950 at 23 percent shrank to a mere 11 percent in 2021, says the report. That is, the Hindu population of Bhutan witnessed a 50 percent decline during the period.  

In Sri Lanka as well, the Hindu population reportedly comprised the second-largest demographic group in 1950. Hindus comprising 20 percent of the country’s population in 1950 shrank to around 15 percent by 2015, a stark decline of 28 percent, says the report.

Pakistan witnessed the greatest percentage of decrease in Hindu population by 80 percent from 1950 to 2015, says the report. Hindus who constituted 13 percent of Pakistan’s population share in 1950 shrank to barely 2 percent in 2015. These findings are alarming. In fact, the nature of the decline in the Hindu population in countries like Bangladesh and Pakistan, as demonstrated by this study, is so worrying that the word alarming would be an understatement. Yet, the international organizations seem more concerned about the supposed violation of human rights of Kashmiri Muslims post the abrogation of Article 370 rather than the horrendous plight of Hindus in Muslim majority countries of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.

Nepal and Bharat are the only Hindu-majority countries in the world, and in both countries, as the study demonstrates, the Hindu population has gone down sharply over the years.

Nepal witnessed an approximately 4 percent decrease in the share of its majority Hindu population from 1950 to 2015, says the report. That is, Hindus who constituted 84 percent of Nepal’s population in 1950 shrank to 81 percent in 2015. While the majority community of Hindus witnessed a decline in their population share, the share of minority communities Muslims and Christians in the overall population of Nepal increased from 1950 to 2015, according to the report.

Another important finding of the study is that even though the general trend observed is that of a decrease in the majority religion’s population share in most countries, in the case of Muslim-majority nations, the trend is of the majority religion’s population going up. 25 out of 38 countries that reported being Muslim majority in 1950 have witnessed an increase in share of the majority religious group, says the study.

In all SAARC countries included in the study, all Muslim-majority countries witnessed an increase in the share of the majority religious group, except Maldives where the share of the majority group (Shafi’I Muslims) declined marginally, according to the report.

The analysis raises valid concerns about the dwindling demographics of Hindus, particularly in South Asia. The report doesn’t specifically talk about the percentage of increase or decrease of the Hindu population in Western countries, but the overall trends demonstrate that the Hindu population even in countries where Hindus are in a minority, has been shrinking. It’s alarming and calls for urgent interventions in the form of recognition of Hinduphobia and creating a conducive atmosphere globally for a fair discussion on issues concerning Hindus.

Nepal and Bharat are the only two Hindu-majority countries in the world. Yet, the Western media portrays the championing of the rights of Hindus as some kind of exercise in promoting “fascism” and “violent majoritarianism”. The West goes on amplifying its rhetoric against the Modi government by calling it a “Hindutva majoritarian” regime promoting saffron terror and what not. Yet, ironically enough, the minorities are flourishing in Bharat, as the report shows. It is, on the contrary, the majority community in Bharat that is struggling to protect its identity in the face of blatant anti-Hindu propaganda and the sophisticated conversion industry facilitated by the Abrahamic ecosystem.

Christian conversions in Bharat are happening at an alarming pace. Yet, the mainstream media rarely covers these stories. You get to hear about Christian conversions either through individual testimonies, social media accounts and testimonies, or through niche nationalist publications. Be it the issue of love Jihad or Christian conversions, the mainstream media always tries to discredit these issues, even if it covers them.

One can see many biased and one-sided stories in social media where people belonging to Hindu outfits are accused of threatening the Church or people who converted, etc. But the background context of such happenings is never given. That is, the media never reports on what actually happened initially that triggered such a backlash. The background stories silenced by the mainstream media are of coercive tactics adopted by the missionary ecosystem in facilitating the conversion of hapless Hindus. Such background stories are rarely reported. What one gets to see instead are biased half-truths where Hindus are portrayed as villains for resisting the conversion mafia.

According to a report published in Organizer in February 2024, Hindu organizations intervened in an event being held in Bharatpur, Rajasthan within the premises of a hotel, as reports surfaced of an alleged attempt to convert hundreds of people to Christianity. Upon learning about the event, “Hindu organizations swiftly mobilized and converged at the hotel escalating tensions between the two groups”, reported Organizer.

Hindupost itself has done a series of stories on busting various Christian conversion rackets. In April 2023, the income tax department raided the properties of self-styled pastor Ankur Narula in Punjab over irregularities in cash transactions, Hindupost reported.

“Ankur Yoseph Narula, the self-styled ‘healing’ pastor founded “Church of Sign and Wonders” at Khambra village in 2008, after leaving his family business. He gained fame by claiming to exorcize evil spirits and perform miracles of healing diseases through prayers. In his own words, he started off with 3 followers in 2008 and had 3 lakh followers with the church spread over 60 acres in 2018. His church has 15 branches across Bharat and other countries”, says the article.

Hindupost earlier conducted an interview with Jerome Anto, a practicing Christian, who is a politico-religious observer and an anti-conversion campaigner. Jerome Anto alerted the readers to the dangers of the Christian conversion industry and said that the only way possible for peaceful coexistence in Bharat was the creation of a Hindu Rashtra.

Jerome Anto had filed a PIL in the Supreme Court questioning fraudulent conversions allegedly being undertaken of Hindus and minor children. The PIL requested the apex court to issue directions to the government to bring a law to control religious conversions in Bharat. The Supreme Court however dismissed the PIL saying that if there were a live challenge and someone was prosecuted, we could have entertained but what kind of PIL is this.

Supreme Court lawyer Ashwini Upadhyay has also in the past filed many petitions requesting the courts to instruct the government to pass a central anti-conversion law. However, since the court directed the government to come up with data regarding the status of religious conversions in Bharat, there has been no concrete action to date.

The biggest obstacle to curbing the rampant religious conversion of Hindus is the lack of concrete data. There are numerous testimonies and accounts of fraudulent conversions of Hindus to Christianity or Islam available online. However, due to the lack of a formal study, it’s hard to construct a valid case and argue.

That is because most sophisticated research projects concerning Bharat are sponsored by elite Western think tanks and educational institutions that have no stake in this topic. Therefore, if you google the term “Christian conversions in India”, you’ll get a plethora of articles claiming that Christian minorities in Bharat are being tortured by Hindu nationalists. Such is the ecosystem; it doesn’t encourage an impartial academic investigation into the slimy underground of Christian conversions in Bharat.

Thus, the government of Bharat must undertake an exhaustive study documenting all evidence related to fraudulent conversions in Bharat. If not directly, the government should at least sponsor concerned research organizations to undertake such a study. Unless we have concrete data laying out systematic evidence regarding the fraudelent conversion of Hindus to Abrahamic religions like Christianity and Islam, we can do little to change the ground reality of the dwindling Hindu population.