Though leaders belonging to minority communities express their apprehensions over the safety of their communities in the country, Tamil Nadu has emerged as an exception to this rule. A research by a team of demographic scientists have found that Tamil Nadu is the most favourable State in India for the growth of Christianity.
The study by AP Joshi, MD Srinivas and JK Bajaj of the Centre for Policy Studies, a Chennai think-tank, has found that the Christian community recorded the most remarkable growth of population during the 1951 to 2011 period. The three experts analysed the census results from 1951 to 2011 which threw out the interesting findings.
As per the 2011 census, there are 2.78 crore Christians in India. The Christian population in Tamil Nadu is 44 lakh. “This constitute 6.12 per cent of the total population in the State (7.2 crore). Their number and share in Tamil Nadu is the highest of all major States except the adjoining Kerala,” said Prof JK Bajaj while explaining the salient points of the findings.
Tamil Nadu and Kerala together account for more than one crore Christians in the country, pointed out Prof Bajaj and Srinivas, both theoretical physicists-turned-demographic scientists. While the Christians constituted only 4.74 per cent of the Tamil Nadu population in 1951 when the first census was held, it increased in an impressive manner over the last six decades to 6.12 per cent. “The last decade (2001 to 2011) saw the Christian population growing up by 16.73 per cent,” said Prof Bajaj.
At the same time the population of Hindus which constituted 90.47 per cent of the State’s population in 1951 has come down to 87.58 per cent by 2011. Though the Christian population is spread out across the State, they are more concentrated in southern Tamil Nadu, especially in the districts of Kanyakumari, Tirunelveli and Thoothukudi. The district of Kanyakumari has 46.8 per cent Christians as per the 2011 census, pointed out Prof Bajaj.
Interestingly, all the six Assembly constituencies in the district were swept by the DMK-Congress alliance in the last assembly election in the backdrop of the call given by the various Churches to elect the DMK-Congress combine. The researchers believe that a study on the growth in Christian and Muslim population and the decrease in the Hindu population could throw out some more interesting facts which would be of importance to policy makers.
