Roughly 8.6 per cent of India's population is made up of "Scheduled Tribes" (STs), traditional tribal communities. In India those who are not Christians, Muslims, Jews, or Zoroastrians are identified as Hindus. The reason being varied beliefs and practices allowed in Hindusim and according of Hindusim as a geographical identity than merely Religious ones. Though, many of the Scheduled Tribes have modes of worship not typical to mainstream Hindusim but ontologically form part of the cultural practices of the land, as Nature or ancestral worship, with varying degrees of syncretism.[citation needed]
According to the 2011 census of India, about 7.9 million (7,937,734) out of 1.21 billion people did not adhere to any of the subcontinent's main religious communities of Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Sikhism, Buddhism, or Jainism. The census listed atheists, Zoroastrians, Jews, and various specified and unspecified tribal religions separately under the header "Other Religions and Persuasions".[1]
Of these religious census groupings, the most numerous are Sarna (4.9 million respondents), Gondi (1 million), Sari Dharam (506,000), Donyi-Poloism (331,000); Sanamahi (222,000) and Khasi (139,000), with all other religions numbering less than 100,000 respondents, including 18,000 for "tribal religion", 5,600 for "nature religion", and 4,100 "animists".[1] The Scheduled Tribes account 89.39% (7,095,408) of total ORP in India.[2]
- ^ a b "C-01 Appendix: Details of religious community shown under 'Other religions and persuasions' in main table C01 - 2011" (xlsx). Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India. 21 January 2021. Retrieved 19 July 2023.
- ^ "ST-14: Scheduled Tribe population by religious community, 2011". Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India. Archived from the original on 14 November 2019.