Catholic World News News Feature

India's Christian population creeps up-- especially among women September 06, 2004

New census data in India show a slight increase in the proportion of Christians in that country-- and a much more marked increase in the number of Christian women.

India's 24 million Christians now account for 2.34 percent of the country's population-- up from 2.32 percent at the last previous census in 1991. The rate of population growth among the country's Christians also rose slightly, from 21.5 percent to 22.6 percent.

The most striking finding among the new statistics, however, is the proportion of women among the Christian population. There are 1,000 women to every 1,000 Christian men in India. For the country as a whole, there are only 933 women per 1,000 men-- a statistic that bears testimony to the prevalence of sex-selection abortion, a practice which remains widespread despite government efforts to combat it. In introducing the new statistics, India's census commissioner, Jayant Kumar Banthia, remarked that Christians have a "healthy" ratio of women to men. Among the country's Hindu majority, the ancient cultural preference for male babies has combined with heavy population-control pressure to convince many parents that they should abort female babies.