Recently, a post is doing rounds on social media platforms claiming that 'Muslims are not a minority in India as they constitute 30 percent of the overall population in India.'

A screenshot of a tweet saying 'Muslims are 30% Indian majority They are NOT minority in India Pass this message' was shared on a Facebook page named 'The Innocent Politician' with a caption suggesting 'Muslims are the second majority in India. If they become the majority, the Hindus won't exist. India will become like Pakistan and Bangladesh. Constitution will be replaced by Shariya. India will become an Islamic state.'

This post has been reshared over 190 times.

We found the same post on Twitter whose screenshot was shared on Facebook. 

This tweet has also been retweet over 280 times. 

When we checked on Twitter, we found many users making this claim. 

The truth behind the claim

In our investigation, we found this claim to be false. 

According to Census 2011, the percentage of Muslims in India was 14.2 percent.

We did not find any research data or news report that says the percentage of Muslims in India is 30 percent.

We found a report published on US-based Pew Research Center titled 'By 2050, India to have the world’s largest populations of Hindus and Muslims.' According to this report, the percentage of Muslims in India is expected to be around 18.4 percent. Clearly, even 30 years later, the Muslim population in India is not expected to come close to 30 percent. The same report predicts that the Hindu population in India would be around 76.7 percent by 2050.

According to a report by "LiveMint", the annual growth rate of the Muslim and Hindu population in India is 2.2 percent and 1.55 percent respectively. 

Therefore, the claim that Muslims form 30% of the overall Indian population is false

With the help of a reverse image search, we found the image used in the tweet carried by various news websites including "HuffPost", "Business Insider" and "New York Post".

The image shows proceedings of a religious event called 'Ijtema' held in Tongi, Bangladesh. This is the second-largest Muslim gathering in the world after Haj. In "HuffPost", the picture caption says, "People at Prayer Ijtema is the second largest Muslim gatherings in the world after Hazz. The gatherings is so huge that people did not get a place at the field to pray Jumma prayer and sited themselves at road." The image is credited to Junaid Ahmed, National Geographic Your Shot.