Getty ImagesAccording to research conducted by the US-based Pew Research Center, Indians who immigrate have drastically different religious compositions from those who remain there.
About 80% of people in India are Hindu, but they form only 41% of emigrants from the country, the survey on the religious composition of the world’s migrants says.
In contrast, about 15 % of people living in India are Muslim, compared with 33 % of those who were born in India and then live abroad.
Christians make up only about 2 % of the Indian population, but 16 % who have left India are Christian.
Getty Images” Some more Muslims and Christians have migrated to India than to India. People of another, smaller sects, like Sikhs and Jains, are also disproportionately likely to have left India”, Stephanie Kramer, a direct scholar of the research, told me.
More than 280 million persons, or 3.6 % of the country’s population, are foreign workers.
As of 2020, Christians comprised 47 % of the global migrant population, Muslims 29 %, Hindus 5 %, Buddhists 4 % and Jews 1 %, according to Pew Research Center’s analysis of UN data and 270 censuses and surveys.
The church affiliated, including atheists and agnostics, made up 13 % of global workers who have left their country of delivery.
People who migrated abroad as a child or adult, from newborns to the most senior adults, is included in the analysis ‘ immigrant population. As long as they are still intact, they could have been born at any time.
According to the analysis, India’s spiritual make-up is significantly more similar to that of the country’s total population.
Getty ImagesAdditionally, Hindus are disproportionately underrepresented among international migrants ( 5 % ) compared to their share of the global population ( 15 % ). Around the world, there are roughly one billion Hindus.
This appears to be because there are so many Hindus in India, and those who were born there are very unlikely to depart, according to Ms. Kramer.
More people who were born in India than people from any other country of origin reside somewhere, but only a small percentage of the country’s population is made up of these thousands of migrants.
About 99 % of Hindus lived in Asia back in 2010, almost entirely in India and Nepal, and researchers say they would n’t expect that share to drop much, if at all.
Since partition, India hasn’t experienced a mass migration event, and many of those who migrated then are no longer alive.
” In comparison, other religious organizations are more dispersed worldwide and experience more press factors that drive emigration”, Ms Kramer said.
Getty ImagesSo are Hindus some sort of a global outlier in this respect?
Hindus do, according to experts, stand out in comparison to the various religious groups being studied.
They are less likely than people of other faiths to leave their homes, and their movement designs generally depend on who moves to India and arrives, as opposed to a large number of nations, as does Ms. Kramer.
Hindus travel the most range between India and the US and the UK, with an average movement length of 4, 988 kilometers (3, 100 miles ).
This is attributed to the absence of current crises that have forced Hindus to flee to nearby nations, according to researchers. Rather, most are financial migrants seeking employment opportunities, often in distant places.
India is undoubtedly unique from other countries in that it has an emigrant people with a different theological makeup than those who still reside there.
Hindus are over-represented among migrants from Bangladesh, according to the study.
Less than 10 % of Bangladesh’s population is Hindu, according to the study, but 21 % of those who have left are.
Getty ImagesAround 90 % of people living in Bangladesh are Muslim, but 67 % of emigrants from Bangladesh are Muslim.
Hindus make up only about 2 % of Pakistan’s population, and 8 % of people who were born in Pakistan and now live elsewhere are Hindu.
In comparison to its expat people, Myanmar has a lower proportion of Muslims in its inhabitants of inhabitants. Muslims make up about 4 % of Myanmar’s resident population and 36 % of its emigrant population.
Clearly, Muslims also migrate out of majority-Muslim countries. But religious minorities in those countries often migrate more.
What does the Pew review generally reveal about the spiritual makeup of the country’s workers?
According to Ms. Kramer,” we find that people frequently travel to areas where their faith is well-known and that those who belong to minority spiritual sects in their country of birth are more likely to left.”