Sikh Population In India

According to census of India held in 2011, the sikh population in India is 2.08 crore or 20.8 million. The total population of India is 121 crore and hence the percentage of sikhs in India is 1.72% of the total population of the country. Sikhism is the fourth largest religion in India after Hinduism, Islam and Christianity. Despite being a small fraction of the total population of the country, their contribution at the national level in all fields is much higher than their proportion in the population, be it Indian Army, Sports, Politics, Economics or any other field. The religion wise population of India is given below:

Religion Wise Population of INDIA

Religion	Population (In Crores)	Percentage
Total	121	100.00%
Hindu	96.63	79.80%
Muslim	17.22	14.23%
Christian	2.78	2.30%
Sikh	2.08	1.72%
Buddhist	0.84	0.70%
Jain	0.45	0.37%
Others	0.79	0.66%

Most of the sikhs live in Punjab, a small state in the north region which is the homeland of sikhs. The population of Sikhs in the state of Punjab is 1.6 Crore, which means that 76.82% of the total sikhs of India live in Punjab. This is the only state in the country having majority of population belonging to Sikh community, where sikhs constitute 57.69% of the total population of the state.

Literacy Rate of Sikhs in India

The literacy rate of sikhs in India is 75.4%, which is slightly higher than the national average of 73.0%. The male and female literacy rate amongst sikhs is 80.0% and 70.3% respectively. The male literacy rate is little less than the all India figure of 80.9%. The female literacy rate of sikhs is higher by 6 percentage points than the all India figure. A graph showing the comparison of literacy rate of sikhs in India and that in the overall population of India is presented here.

State Wise Population of Sikhs

There are 5 states/UTs where sikh population is above 5 lakh and 10 such states where sikh population is above 1 lakh. A graph of the state wise sikh population in India is given below. The graph shows the states where sikh population is above 5 lakh, the rest of the states are combined together as 'OTHERS' category.

The population of sikhs in all states and union territories (U.T.) of India is given in the below table. In the following table, there are four columns:

• Name of the State or U.T.
• Total population of the State
• Number of sikhs in that state
• Percentage of sikhs to the total population of that state.

Growth in Sikh Population

The decadal change or growth rate of sikh population during 2001 to 2011 was 8.4%. This is much lower as compared to growth rate of other communities or the overall average of India. During the same period, the population of India increased by 17.7 percent. The growth rate of Hindu and Muslim population during the same decade was 16.8% and 24.6% respectively. The decadal change of sikh population in India between 1991 and 2001 was almost 17%, which means that during the last decade (2001-2011) the growth rate of sikhs has decreased by almost 9%. This decrease in growth rate of sikhs and the much lower growth as compared to Hindus/Muslims has caused concerns in the sikh circles. The low growth rate of sikhs is attributed to the economic prosperity of Sikhs and migration to the developed countries like Canda, USA, Australia etc. Here it is important to note that some news articles wrongly mentioned that population of sikhs has declined by almost 10%. It was the growth rate that declined from 17% to 8.4%, not the total population of Sikh community.