Al Jazeera’s Revolutionary New Method for Analyzing Population Data!

Image courtesy: Times Now

Editor’s Note: A version of this article was originally published here. We can also note that almost all Western media and think-tank sources as well as “mainstream” Indian media ignore the change in Indian population demographics by making such claims as “Hindus are the largest group in most Indian states” (Pew Research Center), or “All of India’s largest religious groups have grown substantially since the 1950s) (Pew Research Center), or “Why the Myth of Muslim Population Overtaking Hindus is Unfounded” (Outlook India).

I passed my SSC (Secondary School Certificate) examination in 1975 in Mumbai. It was a transitional year in which the old educational regime of the 11th standard SSC was replaced by a new educational regime of the 10th standard SSC. That year, 1975, was the last year of the old 11th standard SSC and also the first year of the new 10th standard SSC. At that time, I remember the phrase “New Mathematics” being bandied around as being the mathematics that was being taught to the 10th standard SSC students. I don’t know (or don’t remember) what exactly was the “new” part, but I remember the label “New Mathematics”.

Fortunately, I am living at a revolutionary point of time in history when a genuinely “new mathematics” has been invented by Al Jazeera at least for the analysis of Indian population demographics.

I came across an article on Al Jazeera about demographic changes in the religious population in India from 1951 to 2015, about what it calls “a new government report” that “claims that the country’s Muslim population share has increased 43 percent since 1950, fuelling an unfounded conspiracy theory”.

The article, of course, contains the usual nonsense one would expect on this (or any other Muslim-related) subject from Aljazeera, rejecting the conclusion of the “new government report” saying it is a pre-election ploy by the Bharatiya Janata Party (not an implausible conclusion), and then quoting all kinds of leftist and anti-Hindu academics from all over the world who want us to reject the actual data and to believe in Al Jazeera’s conspiracy theory — that a false report is being circulated. Strangely enough, the article itself uses the phrase “conspiracy theory,” but only to suggest that it is Hindu elements who are promoting a conspiracy theory to show that Muslims are taking over India!

Let us ignore the rest of the idiocy in this article. What strikes one is the new method invented by Al Jazeera to show that it is not Muslims but Hindus who are growing at a faster rate in India!

We can posit that this is a revolutionary new way of looking at population demographics to show which religious population is stealing a march over which other religious populations in the matter of growth. And Al Jazeera, or else the author of this article — the left-leaning, or just plain Hinduphobic Yashraj Sharma — should be given some kind of a prize for this new and revolutionary method: hope the folks who decide the Fields Medal winners will take note!

In his attempt to show that the Muslim population in India is not exploding, the author mentions, but later ignores, the basic facts about the Muslim and Hindu populations in India: “The share of the Muslim population in India increased by 43.15 percent, from 9.84 percent to 14.09 percent. By contrast, it says, the share of the majority Hindu population decreased by 7.82 percent between 1950 and 2015, from 84.68 percent to 78.06 percent.” These basic facts are not what some stray report “says”: it is exactly in line with what every recorded Indian Census since 1951 has shown!

The author tries to discredit the population figures saying they are not based on the official census: “The report relies on data from a survey, not the decadal national Census that was last conducted in 2011.” But this is a brazen lie! The official data is available to anyone to check – from the Census of India website to Wikipedia! A simple Google search using “religious population of India census 2011” will get you the following: “According to the 2011 census, 79.8% of the population of India practices Hinduism, 14.2% adheres to Islam, 2.3% adheres to Christianity, 1.7% adheres to Sikhism, 0.7% adheres to Buddhism and 0.4% adheres to Jainism”.

The figure of 78.06% for Hindus may be the estimate of the “new report” taking 2015 as the base. But we need not take the data in this report. The Census of 2011 gives us the following figures: “The share of the Muslim population in India increased by 69.29 percent, from 9.84 percent to 14.2 percent. The share of the Hindu population decreased by 6.92 percent between 1950 and 2011, from 84.68 percent to 79.8 percent.”

In short: Yes, as per the official census figures, the rise in the percentage of Muslims and the fall in the percentage of Hindus between 1951 and 2011 shows that the population of Muslims in India has “exploded”.

But then comes this revolutionary “New Mathematical Method” of judging the results: “The paper, its critics say, overlooks the actual rise in the Hindu population in this period – and how that compares to the Muslim population increase in this period. Between 1951 and 2011, the Muslim population rose from 35.4 million to 172 million. The Hindu population rose from 303 million to 966 million in the same period – a five times greater increase.”

According to this paper, you are not supposed to conclude based on percentage figures: you are supposed to draw conclusions based on actual figures in numbers.

Thus the “award-winning,” blinkered, “math-challenged” writer arrives at this conclusion:

• Muslims increased from 4 million to 172 million, and thus this is only an increase of 136.6 million Muslims.
• Hindus increased from 303 million to 966 million, and thus this is a whopping increase of 663 million Hindus.
• Therefore, Hindus have a “five times greater increase” as compared to Muslims.
• Therefore, it is the population of Hindus in India that has “exploded,” and not that of Muslims.

The Fields Prize committee will surely take note of this revolutionary new technique of arriving at the correct results of population changes, and invent a suitable category of a prize to award Al Jazeera for platforming such nonsense, or to Yashraj Sharma, the “award-winning,” too-clever-by-half trickster.

In case you are likely to spend a lot of time pondering over this, let me offer my revolutionary contribution to the process of arriving at the correct results of demographic changes in the Indian population (Hindus vis-à-vis Muslims) and put myself forward as another candidate for the Fields Prize (although unfortunately my method is also based on the old-fashioned method of using percentages rather than the revolutionary new method of using actual figures in numbers):

• In 1951, the percentage of Hindus in India was 84.68% and the percentage of Muslims was 9.84 percent. So, there were 8.60 Hindus for every Muslim in India in 1951.
• In 2011, the percentage of Hindus in India was 79.8% and the percentage of Muslims was 14.2 percent. So, there were 5.61 Hindus for every one Muslim in India in 2011.
• Therefore, between 1951 and 2011, the number of Hindus for every single Muslim has fallen from 8.60 to 5.61.
• This means that 2.99 Hindus (for every one Muslim still living) have been wiped out from India in this period of 60 years.
• It also means that the percentage of Hindus (for every Muslim still living) in India has fallen by 34.767 percent in this period of 60 years.
• Remember: all this is only about India. The figures for the whole Indian Subcontinent (or Akhanda Bharat) will be even more stark!