The Hindu Business Line : Religion is the word

WHAT has been feared till now is official; that the Muslims of India have grown at the highest rate in the decade between 1991-2001 at 36 per cent. This is a 1.5 per cent rise over the 1991 census data.

The religion wise classification of the 2001 Census data puts the Muslim population in the country at 13.4 per cent (138 million) against 80.5 per cent Hindus (828 million) in a total population of 1,028 million.

During 1991-2001, the rate of growth of the Hindu population came down from 25.1 per cent to 20.4 per cent, while that of the Muslims and the Christians went up. Christians form the third largest religious group in the country at 24 million (23 per cent) followed by 19 million (1.9 per cent) Sikhs, 8 million Buddhists and 4.2 million Jains.

While predictably the VHP and the BJP said how "alarmed" they were at the rate at which the Muslim population was growing, it is the Muslim community that needs to worry about the numbers that have just been published.

Take for instance literacy rates. Muslims have a literacy rate of 59.1 per cent against an all-India literacy rate of 64.8 per cent, and only half of Indian Muslim women are literate (50.1 per cent).

Unfortunately, this is one area where the Hindus can't be proud either; Hindu women have a literacy rate of 53.2 per cent against the overall Hindu literacy rate of 65.1 per cent. So the gap between literate Hindu men and Hindu women is even wider.

But Muslim women have a much lower literacy rate across different States, the lowest being in Haryana at 21.5 per cent (overall 40 per cent). Bihar comes next at 31.5 per cent (42 per cent), followed by Nagaland at 33.3 per cent (48.2 per cent) Jammu & Kashmir at 34.9 per cent (47.3 per cent) and Uttar Pradesh at 37.4 per cent (47.8 per cent).

Surprisingly a progressive State like Punjab is not so progressive when it comes to Muslim women's literary which is only 43.4 per cent. The Hindu women of Punjab are much better off in this area with 68.3 per cent literacy.

No prizes for guessing that Muslim women in Kerala have the highest rate of literacy at 85.5 per cent and are very close to the Hindu women of that State, 86.7 per cent of whom are literate.

But the real surprise is in Tamil Nadu on the literacy front and it makes you recheck the data a couple of times. According to the census data, Muslims in Tamil Nadu - both men and women - are far more literate than the Hindus.

The overall Muslim literacy rate in this southern State is 82.9 per cent and that of the Muslim women 76.2 per cent compared to 72 per cent overall literacy rate for Hindus and only 62.4 per cent for Hindu women.

One hopes the VHP and the BJP will also object to the low levels of Muslim participation in the work force. Despite the high literacy in Kerala, only 23.2 per cent of Muslims work against 35.7 per cent Hindus. In Tamil Nadu, against the 45.9 per cent work participation rate of Hindus, Muslims have only a 31.8 per cent presence. One wonders what happens to their higher literacy levels here! At the all-India level, Hindus have a work participation rate of 40.4 per cent against 31.3 per cent in Muslims.

An interesting nugget from the data: About seven lakh ( 0.7 million) persons have not stated their religion in a country where one's religious identity is so important.