'Christians in India have more women than men'

Hindus have biggest gender gap, say Census data

While women outnumber men among Indian Christians, majority of Jains live in urban areas unlike in other religions, the census on religion released on Tuesday revealed.

Among 2.78 crores Christians living in India, a little more than 1.4 crores are women while men are less by 3.17 lakhs. Christianity is the only religion which have more women than men.

Huge Hindu gender gap

The gap between men and women in all major religions, except Hinduism, is very close. Though the number of men is on the higher side, the gap is not that large.

However, the gender gap among Hindus is wider. While the men number 49.83 crores, the count of women is 46.79 crores (a gap of 3.04 crore).

Jains, who are mainly businessmen, prefer to live in urban areas, the census figures showed. Only 20.32 per cent of Jains (9.04 lakhs out of a total of 44.51 lakhs) live in rural areas.

This is not the case with other religions where a whopping majority reside in rural areas. While 29.2 per cent of Hindus live in the urban areas, 39.9 per cent of Muslims reside in towns and cities.

Sikhs have only 28 per cent of them living in urban areas while the figure in case of the Christians is 40.12 per cent.

Christians lead Muslims

Though Christians are much lesser in number compared to Muslims, they lead the latter in 10 states, including seven North-eastern states, Karnataka, Odisha and Tamil Nadu.

The only North-eastern state where the Muslims outnumber the Christians is Assam. The Hindus form the majority in Manipur and Assam in the North-East.

The census report also showed that 28.67 lakh people, including 14.03 lakh women, did not mention their religion during the exercise.

In Uttar Pradesh, 5.82 lakh people did not mention their religion while in Andhra Pradesh, the figure was 4.04 lakh. Maharashtra (2.86 lakhs), Bihar (2.52 lakhs), West Bengal (2.28 lakhs), Tamil Nadu (1.88 lakhs) and Karnataka (1.66 lakhs) are other states where many chose not to reveal their religion.