India, Nov. 11 -- For more than 100 years, the ratio of Hindu population in the Indian subcontinent has been declining. The dip, from 75.1 per cent in 1881 to 72.9 per cent in 1901, in British India created a paranoid reaction that Muslims would outnumber Hindus. This myth has been repeated after every census ever since. The share of Hindus in free India continued to drop, from 84.1 per cent in 1951 to 79.80 per cent in 2011, and the paranoia is now being used by Islamophobes to rile up Hindus for political reasons.

Of India's 1.3 billion people, Muslims constitute only 15 per cent. Because of the staggering gap in these numbers, it is absurd to think that Indian Muslims would ever exceed Hindus. It is, however, true that India's 200 mil...