2011 religion census and comparisons with 2001

I broke down the data into 35 States and Union Territories (AP and Telengana treated as one state as was the case in 2011) to parse the trends in each State/UT separately between 2001 census and 2011 census. All numbers in the above table are percentages of each religious denomination in the State/UT's population.

Main conclusions: 
1) Most states appear to have reasonably stable religion figures, modulo small fertility differentials between Hindus, Christians, Sikhs and Muslims.
2) Two major states (Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh) saw the Hindu percentage drop below 80% for the first time, even though Buddhists' numbers have been historically high in Maharashtra courtesy of Ambedkar. It is indeed surprising that the land of Mayawati has barely any Buddhist numbers.
3) Kerala, Assam, West Bengal and Jharkhand seem to be slowly in the path of religion-driven turmoil of an existentialist kind that comes with instability and differentials across religions.
4) Goa appears to have stabilized due to constant migration from Maharashtra.
5) Northeastern states are a seething cauldron of changing affinities, often quite dramatically as in the case of Arunachal Pradesh. Almost always, Hindus appear to be losing out to Christianity. This does not lead to any form of transactional stability and soon Arunachal Pr. could have its own religion-driven terrorist outfit apart from NSCN(K).

6) Evangelical money networks could only keep the Christian numbers stable in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Delhi, Maharashtra, it could not prop these numbers up dramatically. One could argue that the very fact that their numbers have held stable is because of the moneys pumped in. In any case, someone who is pumping the cash from foreign shores has to wonder about the value for his/her money.
7) Modulo conversions to Christianity, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists and Christians are decimating themselves proportionately via family planning.
8) Bangladeshi immigration seems to have had a major impact on Assam alone, but not on West Bengal or Tripura like I would have expected. Either this must mean that the West Bengali Muslims do not enjoy a fertility differential that their counterparts elsewhere in the country do not enjoy (more unlikely) or that West Bengal must be seeing Bangladeshi Hindu immigration in proportionate numbers to compensate for the fertility differential.
9) The rise of tribal affinities in Chattisgarh is probably a direct effect of the Maoist menace.
10) Of course, all of this is based on gross numbers and not based on localized data. So the reality could be far different on a microscopic scale, across districts and tehsils.

Approximately stable states in terms of religious figures modulo small religion-based fertility differentials 
1) Andaman & Nicobar Islands
2) Bihar
3) Dadra and Nagar Haveli, 1.2% Christians down, 1.2% Muslims up
4) Daman & Diu, 1.2% Christians down, 1.2% Hindus up
5) Delhi, 0.5% Hindus down, 0.5% Sikhs down, 1% Muslims up
6) Goa, 0.4% Hindus up, 1.5% Muslims up, 1.6% Christians down
7) Gujarat
8) Haryana, 0.7% Hindus down, 0.5% Sikhs down, 1.2% Muslims up
9) Himachal Pradesh
10) Jammu & Kashmir, 1.2% Hindus down, 1.3% Muslims up
11) Jharkhand, 0.7% Hindus down, 0.7% Muslims up, small changes from tribal affinities to Christianity

12) Karnataka, 0.5% Buddhists down, 0.5% Muslims up
13) Lakshadweep, 1% Hindus down, 1% Muslims up, small base
14) Madhya Pradesh
15) Maharashtra, 0.5% Hindus down to less than 80%, 0.5% down from Christians, Buddhists and Jains put together, 1% Muslims up
16) Orissa
17) Pondicherry
18) Rajasthan, 0.6% Muslims up, 0,45% Sikhs and Jains down
19) Tamil Nadu
20) Uttar Pradesh, 0.8% Hindus down to fall below 80%, 0.7% Muslims up
21) Uttarakhand, 2% Hindus down, 2% Muslims up
22) West Bengal, 2% Hindus down, 1.7% Muslims up

Unstable/Outlier regions: Part I 
1) Assam, 3.5% Hindus down, 3.5% Muslims up -- most likely due to Hindu-Muslim differential and Bangladeshi immigration
2) Chandigarh, 3% Sikhs down, 2% Hindus up, 1% Muslims up -- Hindu-Muslim vs. Sikh fertility differential
3) Kerala, 1.5% Hindus down, 0.9% Christians up, 0.6% Muslims up -- Christian-Muslim vs. Hindu fertility differential
4) Punjab, 1.5% Hindus up, 2.2% Sikhs down -- Hindu vs. Sikh fertility differential

Unstable/Outlier regions: Part II 

1) Arunachal Pradesh, 4.5% Sanamahi down, 5.5% Hindus down, 1.5% Buddhists down, 11.5% Christians up 

2) Chattisgarh, 1.5% Hindus down, 1.5% tribal affinities up -- probably propped by the Maoists
3) Manipur, 4.5% Hindus down, 2.5% Others down, 7% Christians up
4) Meghalaya, 1.7% Hindus down, 2.8% Others down, 4.5% Christians up
5) Mizoram, 0.75% Hindus down, 0.5% Buddhists up
6) Nagaland, 1% Hindus up, 0.7% Muslims up, 2% Christians down
7) Sikkim, 3.1% Hindus down, 3.2% Christians up, 0.7% Buddhists down
8) Tripura, 2.2% Hindus down, 1% Christians up, 0.3% Buddhists up, 0.6% Muslims up

Claims to Extraordinary Exceptionalism

On a more esoteric realm, a famous writer (Rajiv Malhotra of "Breaking India" fame) writes the following on his yahoo-group:

If a drunkard walks on to a busy road and gets run over by a bus, he is reaping the effect of his actions. No one, even Aamir Khan, would disagree with this. No one will flinch in explaining how the momentum of the bus transferred to the drunkard in a very short moment caused the harm to the drunkard. It is, after all, an impartial, non-judgmental, universal, natural law. No one can blame the bus driver for drunkard's foolish and unfortunate behavior.

No one needs to be angry and upset with the drunkard's thoughtless behavior. As a witness to this event, would Aamir Khan say "Drunkard is reaping the fruit of his stupidity. I will therefore be a callous and indifferent person." Of course, Aamir would not. Aamir Khan, as the humanist, would step up and try to do the best to help him. Nothing changes the fact that the drunkard might sustain irreversible damages.

What does Karma theory say? Drunkard had choices for his actions. He made a choice, did his actions (karma), and should expect to reap the rewards of his actions.
...
An atheist would explain it as random chance. Dharmic traditions have no issue with this explanation.

A Muslim or Christian will tell you that God does things for reasons that we cannot understand and that God is not bound by morality. A rational mind cannot accept a loving, compassionate, omnipotent God leading to this outcome. Dharmic traditions do not accept this explanation.

While the author claims such superlatives that make Karma an impartial, non-judgmental, universal and natural law, one really believes that such a law (presumably exceptional!) would allow itself to be put under a microscope and be examined in its various dimensions. For one, extending the mundane drunkard example to the level of sophistication in terms of the grandness of the infinite past (not in its mere hypothetical existence, but in its impact on the current) a) is fundamentally unverifiable, b) is not seen in almost all reasonable physical sub-systems even under arbitrarily infinitesimal measurement accuracy since most sub-systems are of finite memory, c) can be and has often been easily prostituted to explain away/justify/make peace with human conditions.

c) The prostituted part is of immediate importance to me in understanding (subject to caveats below) conflicts that arise from a "kindling of the consciousness": how does one reconcile a philosophy where time (that matters) stretches all the way to minus infinity with rationalism that is so immediate, often instantaneous, and fits the Occam's Razor better.
b) But more incredulously, the possibilities that:

1) Not all things that happen around us need explanations;
2) Not all things that need to be explained have to be explained;
3) Not all things that need to be explained can be explained by an observer who is also a part of the system;
4) Not all things that can be explained by an observer who is a part of the system can be explained correctly, etc.,

do not seem to have made much of an impact on the postulate. In some sense, Karma is the Theory of Everything that physicists have been hunting for.
a) Fortunately, a candidate for the ToE can be put under test. Without any verification, Karma being the universal dictum falls strictly under the realm of belonging to the fervent imagination of the individual(s) concerned just as many other hypotheses of the religious kind belong. In other words, faith in the hypothesis that Karma is universal is an integral part of the postulate. In this sense, a rhetoric of your theory vs. my theory can be expected and thus it may appear that the claims to extraordinary exceptionalism on the part of either theory fails. However, the distinct possibility that either (or even both) theory(ies) could be wrong is best reconciled by a philosophy that is adaptive and grows with information and time, rather than a stasis of fear-mongering, remembrances of the past that only one party in a two-way conversation can see, and claims to extraordinary exceptionalism that should be self-invoking and self-referential rather than explicit and in-your-face.

PS: I expect the question: "why such an esoteric title for your blog when nothing is exceptional about anything?" Good question, I wish I knew the answer other than a blase "its my dharma that I peddle, not something I peddle as a virtue for anyone." For the more earthly, please see: Linky.

FDI in Religion: 2010-2010 State Wise Topper

The top association that received over one crore rupees in the Financial Year 2010/2011- State Wise list.

Data pulled from the MHA's FCRA website. The name of the entity leaves no room for doubt, if you have just bing. Yeah, it is possible, and is true, that the total money poured into a state would be more than the money received by the top recipient. However, if you look at the data, it is evident that many of these associations are Christian institutions. Clearly the inflow of money is skewed towards Christianity.

Jainism in South India

Ennaayaram Malai, Tamil Nadu

No, this is not a post about one religion versus another. This is about history of Jainism in India's Southern regions and to discover the patronage it received in the South. The Bhakti Movement in the South is very well known, so is the presence of Jains, Buddhists and Ajvaiks in the South. However, the extent to which Jainism reached prominence is mentioned only by some authors and historians. The book "Jainism in South India" b Prof. S.K.Ramachandra Rao narrates the patronage Jainism received by dynasties and individual Kings in the South. His sources are good. K.A.N. Sastri's books are listed in his notes and bibliography.  I used Prof S.K.Ramachandra Rao's book and KAN's monumental work "A History of South India" to write my crude summary. I highly recommend both books. My only grudge with Prof. S.K.Ramchandra Rao is his position on Tirukural - the tamil literary classic. He cites legends to narrate it as a work of the Jaina monk - Kondakunda. His views are if that legends are incorrect, Tiruvaluvar - the sage to whom Tirukural is now attributed -  could have been a Jaina monk himself. Or he was heavily influenced by Jainism. In his defense the Professor does say the debate on this subject is hot. Other than that, I thought it was a marvelous book.

Note: I don't cover the copious Sanskrit, Prakrit, Kannada, Tamil and Telugu literature that were written or influence by Jaina monks and Kings. You will have to pay me to read about all that give you nice summary, because I would have to take some time off my day job.

Happy reading, and keep your Wikipedia and Atlas nearby.

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Srilanka, cricket, politics and religion

Sometimes it is just better to give a link to another article than trying to summarize it and lose the context and nuances. So here you go: Dilshan's name change. However, I leave you with a gentle teaser:

Religious practice in Sri Lanka involves a considerable measure of cross-fertilization. Devotees from the different religions propitiate deities and saints from other religions. Arguably, the Muslims are the least likely to cross boundaries; but this proviso extends mostly to those of Moor heritage. From my experience and reading, the Malays in Sri Lanka have not only intermarried more, but also taken to syncretistic forms of devotion to a far greater degree.