Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India, A.D. 1000–1800 c6.s2.6

c6.s2.6

The Indian Census Reports are authentic and provide a detailed analysis of population trends from 1881 onwards. The demographic patterns marked out by them help in guaging the situation prior to 1881 and indeed for the medieval times. But these reports have only a limited value for us. If it were not so, our task would have become very easy. On the basis of the known statistics, say of the Muslim population between 1881 and 1941, we could have calculated regressively to find the Muslim numbers in the year 1781, 1681, 1581, 1500, 1400 or, for that matter, for any single year in the medieval period. But when this was done on the electronic computer, the results obtained were fantastic. (Calculation in regression on the electronic computer showed that 94 million Muslims of 1941 or 49 million of 1881, would have been 510 in A.D. 1401 and only 10 in A.D. 1241—an absolutely wrong result.) Moreover, Indian census figures have not always been unimpeachably reliable. Uneducated and even educated but superstitious parents have sometimes been found reluctant to truly disclose the number of their children as a protection against the 'evil eye of the jealous'. In the 1941 census population figures were inflated on account of communal rivalry; and the Pakistan census report of 1951 estimates that the inflation of Muhammadans in 1941 was of the order of 10 per cent.