Pattern Of Hindu Migration From India During 1990-2020

Hindus make up two thirds of Indian migrants in the U.S. and a third in the Middle East

Between 1990 and 2020, the total number of migrants, born in a foreign country, increased from 153 million to 281 million, nearly double the growth in the global population.  In 2020, such migrants were estimated to be 3.5% of the 7.9 billion global population.

Christians accounted for nearly half of the migrants, followed by Muslims, 29%. While Hindus make up 14% of the global population they account for 5% of the migrants. These are among the findings of a recent report on the religion of migrants by the Pew Research Center.

India, which in 2023 overtook China to become the world’s most populous nation, was the top country of origin for migrants. In 2020, an estimated 19 million India-born people were living in other countries, almost three times as many as in 1990.

The religious mix of migrants from India is very different from the religious composition of the country. While Hindus are four fifths of the population in India, they make up only 41% of migrants leaving the country. Hindus were far less likely to migrate to a foreign country compared to Muslims and especially Christians.  

Hindus though account for a growing number of Indians living abroad, rising to 14 million in 2020, from 9 million in 1990. Nearly half of Hindu migrants live in the Asia-Pacific region, followed by a quarter each in the Middle East and North America.  

Pew’s research describes the religious composition of international migrants. Its report is based on data of all adults and children who now live outside their birth country, no matter when they left. The data, from 1990-2020, come from estimates published by the United Nations Population Division in 2020. The report does not estimate how many people move across borders in any single year.

In the Middle East, the number of foreign-born Hindus rose nearly five-fold to 3.3 million in 2020, due to their working in Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. The UAE saw the steepest increase with the number of Hindu migrants rising from 140,000 in 1990 to 1.1 million in 2020. Qatar saw a rise from 1,000 in 1990 to 290,000 in 2020.

Overall, Indian migrants, Hindus, Muslims and Christians, accounted for a third of the 31 million migrant labor in the Middle East.  Foreign workers comprise more than half of both the area’s workforce as well 58 million population. 

From 1990 to 2020, the United States and Canada (North America) saw a three-fold rise in Hindu migrants, reaching three million in 2020. This was driven primarily by a rise in the number of India-born Hindus living in the United States, from 300,000 in 1990 to 1.8 million in 2020.

Hindus make up about two-thirds of all Indian immigrants to the United States. Like other Indian immigrants, many Hindus migrate to the US for employment and family reunification. They often have higher levels of education and higher family incomes than the Hindus who remain in India.

In 2020, fifty-nine million people, born in a foreign country, were immigrants in the U.S. and Canada. They made up 16% of the population in these two countries, the highest percentage of any major region.  

Nearly twelve million migrants in the U.S. and Canada were born in Mexico, by far the largest source of migrants. Migrants from India in these two countries were 3.7 million while that of China and the Philippines were around 3 million each. Roughly seven of ten foreign migrants in the United States are Christians.

The Pew Report also analyzed data on foreigners living in India. In 1990, there were about eight million foreign migrants in India. They included about four million Hindus who had moved to India, during the partition of British India in 1947 into India and Pakistan. By 2020, their number fell to under five million, less than one half percent of the country’s 1.4 billion population. This drop was partly due to the death of many of the post-partition Hindu refugees.   

Neighboring 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 870,000 came from Pakistan; also 770,000 are from Nepal.

Based in Washington DC, Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan, nonadvocacy group which informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It is a subsidiary of, and is funded by, The Pew Charitable Trusts.