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2020 (Pew Research global data)General source · 2 sourcesWell documented

Hinduism Becomes a Global Religion of 1.2 Billion People

The largest gathering on earth still happens on the banks of the Ganges, and thirteen million Hindus now live outside the country of their birth

On the timeline · around 2020 (Pew Research global data) · Modern and Global HinduismModern and Global HinduismHinduism Becomes a Global Religion of 1.2 Billion People194019501960197019801990200020102020

Quick facts

Global Hindu population, 2020
1.2 billion (14.9% of world population)
Hindus outside India
13.5 million migrants worldwide (2020), up from 9.1 million in 1990
Kumbh Mela UNESCO inscription
2017, Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity
Kumbh Mela sites
Allahabad, Haridwar, Ujjain, Nashik

What happened

By 2020, Pew Research Center counted 1.2 billion Hindus worldwide, a rise of 126 million since 2010, holding steady at 14.9 percent of the global population and making Hinduism the world's third-largest religion by adherents. Ninety-four percent of the world's Hindus still live in India, but the Hindu diaspora has grown from 9.1 million migrants living outside their country of birth in 1990 to 13.5 million in 2020, an increase of 48 percent, concentrated in the Asia-Pacific region, the Middle East and North Africa, and North America. In India itself, ancient devotional practice continues at a scale without parallel anywhere: the Kumbh Mela, described by UNESCO, which inscribed it on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2017, as the largest peaceful congregation of pilgrims on earth, draws tens of millions of Hindus to bathe in the Ganges and other sacred rivers at Allahabad, Haridwar, Ujjain, and Nashik on a rotating cycle, in the belief that the ritual bath frees the bather from the cycle of birth and death.

Why it matters

A religion with no single founder and no central governing authority has become the third-largest in the world and, through migration, a genuinely global one, while its oldest form of mass devotional practice, ritual bathing at the Kumbh Mela, continues to draw more people at once than any other recurring human gathering, showing a three-thousand-year-old tradition operating at a scale its Vedic originators could never have imagined.

How we know

Global Hindu population figures come from Pew Research Center's demographic surveys and national census data aggregated across countries; the Kumbh Mela's scale and cultural significance are documented through UNESCO's own inscription file and decision record for its 2017 listing.

Sources

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Part of a timelineHistory of Hinduism26 events · Hymns memorized for three thousand years without writing them down, a philosophy that a self and the universe are the same thing, and a religion with no founder that became the world's third largestView all →