India's Muslim and Christian minority communities are growing at a faster rate than the Hindu majority in the country of more than one billion people, a new census report shows.
Hindus, whose growth rate has declined in the past decade, constituted 80.5 percent or 828 million while Muslims made up 13.4 percent or 138 million, according to religion-based data posted on the census commission's website Tuesday.
Christians comprised 2.3 percent or 24 million of the population, and grew at a rate of 22.6 percent in the decade to 2001.
"Among the six major religious communities the decadal growth of the Muslims is the highest at 36.0 percent," the commission said.
"The growth rate of the Hindu population has come down from 25.1 percent in 1981-1991 to 20.4 percent in 1991-2001," it noted, without analysing why.
The lowest growth in population over 10 years from 1991-2001 was recorded among the Sikh community at 18.2 percent, the data showed. India's Sikh population stood at 19 million.
In a country where baby girls are often considered an unwanted burden, the sex ratio for adults among different religions showed marked variations. Christians had the best comparative figures of 1,009 females per 1,000 males.
The ratio among Muslims was 936, slightly higher than the national average of 933, while for Hindus the comparative figure stood at 931. The sex ratio among Sikhs was the lowest, at 893.
"One of the alarming facts that emerged from the 2001 census is the declining child sex ratio (female to male) in the age group 0 to 6 in many states," the census commission said.
The Sikh population recorded the lowest ratio of 786, well below the national average of 927 for those ages.
Christians had the highest child sex ratio of 964 followed by Muslims at 950.
The data also showed that India's miniscule Parsi community - followers of the Zoroastrian faith - numbered 69,601 in the 2001 census, down from 76,382 in the previous headcount in 1991.
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