Amid the ongoing Lok Sabha Election 2024, no party is leaving a stone unturned to impress the voters, and one of the recent rallies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has initiated a war of words between NDA and opposition parties. On Sunday, April 21, PM Modi asserted that the Congress had stated in its election program that it would inventory the gold belonging to mothers and sisters and then give it to Muslims, sparing not even mangalsutras.The Prime Ministers statements were labeled as hate speech and lies by the Congress.There are no current, precise, or comprehensive statistics on the wealth and possessions including gold that the nations major religious groups own. A Study Report on Inter Group Inequality in Wealth Ownership in India, released in 2020 by the Indian Institute of Dalit Studies, a research institute recognized by the ICSSR, contains some pertinent statistics.The report is shared by The Indian Express, which has used data from the All India Debt and Investment Survey (AIDIA) carried out by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), and the Economic Census, found that the ownership of the wealth was lowest among Scheduled Castes, Schedules Tribes and Muslims. In India, which groups possess the greatest wealthThe reports statistics indicate that 31% of the nations wealth was owned by Hindu OBCs, and 41% by Hindu high castes. About 8%, 7.3%, and 3.7% of the wealth were owned by Muslims, SCs, and STs, respectively.The Hindu upper castes possessed a disproportionately large percentage of wealth about their share of Indian families overall (22.2%). For OBC Hindus, this was 35.8% for Muslims, it was 12.1% for SCs, it was 17.9% and for STs, it was 9.1%.According to the research, the combined wealth of the Hindu upper castes was projected to be around Rs 1,46,394 billion, about 11 times the wealth of the Scheduled Tribes (Rs 13,268 billion). The estimated wealth of Muslims was Rs 28,707 billion.Which social group has the maximum goldAs per the report, Hindu OBCs have the largest share of gold (39.1%), followed by Hindu high castes (31.3%). Muslims have a 9.2% share, which is more than only STs (3.4%).
