Long-term demographics of Muslims in West Bengal | Number Theory

The concluding part will look at the issue of just demographics for Muslims in the state and put it in a wider context

The first and second part of this series looked at the importance of Muslim votes for the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal and the long-term trends in Muslim politics in West Bengal. The concluding part will look at the issue of just demographics for Muslims in the state and put it in a wider context.

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  West Bengal is the second largest when it comes to both state-wise and all-India population share of Muslims

  27% of West Bengal’s population was Muslim in the 2011 census. This makes it the second largest state after Assam in terms of Muslim share. In absolute terms, West Bengal had 24.7 million Muslims in 2011, making it the second largest state by Muslim population after Uttar Pradesh, which had 38.5 million Muslims.
• How has the share of Muslims changed in West Bengal historically?

  There are two ways to answer this question. The first is to look at the share of Muslims in West Bengal’s population from pre-independence days. Calculations, based on census data, as published in a London School of Economics PhD thesis by Nahid Kamal show that the population share of Muslims in what is today West Bengal fell in the immediate aftermath of independence but has risen again to reach pre-independence levels.
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  What about the political geography of the Muslim population in the state?

  West Bengal’s Muslim population is not distributed evenly across the state. But how has the Muslim population in the state changed when mapped as per the state’s political geography? One way to look at this question is to compare district-wise Muslim population share with district-wise share of assembly constituencies (ACs) in the state. A comparison between 1971 and 2011 shows that the share of ACs with a higher Muslim population has increased in the last four decades. 1971 and 2011 are the earliest and latest year for which we have district-wise Muslim population share data. This makes Muslims more salient in the state’s politics today than five decades ago.
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  West Bengal has seen a rising Muslims share because Hindu Population has grown at a slower pace than all-India

  What really explains the growing share of Muslim population in West Bengal? HT has compared district-wise compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of Hindus and Muslims in West Bengal between 1971 and 2011 with all-India numbers for this period. Data shows that while Muslim population in West Bengal shows the same growth as all-India growth for Muslims in this period, it is the state’s Hindu population which has grown at a much slower rate.
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  Why Bangladeshi stereotyping of Muslims is flawed

  “Bangladeshi infiltrators” are now an indispensable part of BJP’s electoral lexicon in many Indian states. West Bengal and Assam is where this peaks. Both Assam and West Bengal have experienced a large influx of refugees from what is today Bangladesh. This includes both Hindus and Muslims. And not all Muslims in West Bengal likely came from its eastern flank. Some might have come from its western borders too. The best proof of this is in language data as seen in the census. 1.8% of West Bengal’s population reported its mother tongue as Urdu – a language spoken by Muslims in north India. A district-wise reading of the share of Urdu speakers and the Muslim population – census does not provide public data to cross-tabulate the two – shows that the Urdu speakers constitute as much as 11% of the Muslim population in at least six of the state’s 19 districts. In Kolkata, this number is 63%. Muslims form a large part of the West Bengal’s population, but portraying most of them as Bangladeshis is just a travesty of the truth.
• This is the last of a three-part data journalism series on Muslims in West Bengal politics. The first and second parts examined the importance of Muslims for the TMC and long-term trend of Muslims in West Bengal’s politics.