India, the world’s second-most populous country in 2020, is the leading source of Hindu migrants, with 7.6 million Hindus born in India now living elsewhere, according to an analysis of the religious composition of migrants across the globe by the Pew Research Centre. 

However, Hindus, including the foreign-born, are underrepresented in the global share of migrants, standing at just about 5 percent as compared to their total population share of 15 percent, according to the report.

India is among countries where emigrants disproportionately come from a religious minority, the report said. “Christians, for example, make up 2 percent of India’s population but an estimated 16 percent of those who were born in India and now reside elsewhere.”  

The report also said that India is the second-most common country of origin among Muslim migrants, with 6 million living in the country. “They are much more likely than people in the country’s Hindu majority to emigrate. Although India’s population is only 15 percent Muslim, an estimated 33 percent of all India-born migrants are Muslim,” the report said. Most Muslim migrants from India live in Muslim-majority countries with job opportunities, including the UAE (1.8 million), Saudi Arabia (1.3 million) and Oman (7,20,000), according to the report.  

Methodology

The Pew report said it is based on data from the United Nations international migrant stock, and 270 censuses and surveys – such as the World Values Survey, European Social Survey and Pew Research Center surveys. It said it counted all adults and  children who now live outside their countries of birth, “no matter when they left”. “While the religious makeup of migration flows can change drastically from year to year – due to  wars, economic crises and natural disasters – the total stock of migrants changes more slowly,  reflecting patterns that have accumulated over time.”

In cases where countries had insufficient survey or census data on the religion of migrants, the researchers turned to information about migrants living in similar geographic and religious contexts. “For example, in surveys of Belgium, there are too few migrants from Syria to estimate their religious composition. So we drew on surveys of Syrians living in other European countries where Christians are the largest religious group. Using these methods, we estimated the religious composition of 98 percent of the world’s international  migrants. For the remaining 2 percent of migrants, we assumed that their composition matched the  religious composition of their origin country.” 

The report looked at the religious composition of international migrants – how many are  Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish and Muslim – and how many have no religion, including  atheists and agnostics. “We did not analyse patterns for other religious groups, such as Baha’is and Sikhs, because censuses in many countries do not provide data about them.”

The report said that neighbouring Bangladesh and Pakistan continue to be the most common sources of foreign-born residents of India. “About 2.6 million people in India were born in Bangladesh, and an additional 8,70,000 came from Pakistan. (These two countries were a single country after Partition and split up in 1971)...between 1990 and 2020, the number of Bangladesh- and Pakistan-born migrants to India has declined, as some who moved during the Partition have died.”  

Other top origins of migrants to India include Nepal (7,70,000), Sri Lanka (1,90,000) and China  (1,10,000).  

Hindu migrants, including the foreign-born

Hindus are less likely to leave India than they are to leave many places where they are a religious minority. Even though India is home to 94 percent of the world’s Hindus, it is the source of only 57 percent of the  world’s Hindu migrants and home to 22 percent of Hindu migrants. 

Bangladesh – a majority Muslim country – is the second-most common origin of Hindu migrants. About 1.6 million Hindus born in Bangladesh now live elsewhere, accounting for 12 percent of all Hindu migrants.

Hindus, on average, travel longer distances from origin to destination countries than any of the  other groups in this analysis, including Buddhists – who also mostly originate from Asia. Hindu  migrants move an average of 3,100 miles from their country of origin, compared with an average  of 2,200 miles among migrants overall.

Outside India, the United States has the most foreign-born Hindus at 2.6 million, accounting for 19 percent of them, according to the report. 

However, if the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE – were considered a single destination, a move from India to the GCC would be by far the most common one for Hindus. Roughly 3 million Hindus from India live in GCC countries, where foreign workers comprise half or more of the area’s workforce.

Hindus are far more likely to have left Bangladesh and Pakistan than they are to have left India or Nepal. Hindus form a small minority of the overall population in Bangladesh (8 percent) and Pakistan (2 percent), but they make up 21 percent and 8 percent of international migrants from those countries, respectively. 

On the other hand, Hindus form large majorities in India (79 percent) and Nepal (81 percent), but they make up only 41 percent and 56 percent, respectively, of migrants leaving those places, it said.  

Christians form the largest share

Christians made up an estimated 47 percent of all people living outside their country of birth as of 2020, the latest year for which global figures  are available, according to the analysis.

Muslims accounted for 29 percent of all living  migrants, followed by Hindus (5 percent), Buddhists  (4 percent) and Jews (1 percent).  

The religiously unaffiliated represented 13 percent of all the people who have left their country of birth and are now living elsewhere.

China – which in 2020 had more inhabitants than India and also had the world’s largest  population of religiously  unaffiliated people – is the most common country of origin for unaffiliated migrants. Nearly 20 percent of the world’s stock of unaffiliated migrants were  born in China (7.1 million).