Fact Check: Man shares search results on religion as Google’s prediction of India’s future
The Google search results were from a news report about a banned Islamic political outfit in India.
By Sunanda Naik Published on 15 Feb 2024 12:57 PM GMT
Hyderabad: A video of a man asking Google ‘When will Bharat become a Muslim Rashtra?’ is being widely shared on social media.
In the viral video, after the man performs a voice search by asking Google on his phone, “भारत मुस्लिम राष्ट्र कब बनेगा? (When will India become a Muslim Rashta?)” and the Google voice assistant answers, भारत में दूसरे क्रमांक की जनसंख्या है. इसके हिसाब से 2047 में ये आकड़ा 100 प्रतिशत हो जाएगा जिसके बाद 2047 में भारत को मुस्लिम राष्ट्र घोषित किया जाएगा, which translates into English as, ‘It has the second largest population in India. According to this, this figure will become 100 per cent in 2047, after which India will be declared a Muslim nation in 2047.’
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Fact Check
NewsMeter found that the Google search results were from a news report about a banned Islamic political outfit in India.
We performed the same Google voice search asking the same question in Hindi: When will Bharat become a Muslim Rashtra? We were directed to a media report by ABP News Hindi – which can also be seen in the video when the person holds the Google results to the camera.
The report was published on February 9, 2023, titled ‘We should make India into an Islamic State by 2047: Maharashtra ATS chargesheet reveals plan by PFI members (translated from Hindi).’
On carefully reading the report we found that the Google result was quoted out of this media report which reports that 'Maharashtra ATS recovered some data from the arrested members of popular front of India which talks about making India an Islamic state by 2047.'
According to the report, the Maharashtra ATS (Anti-terrorism Squad) arrested five persons of the banned Popular Front of India (PFI) outfit in September 2022. According to their chargesheet filed on February 9, 2023, the accused were making a plan to turn India into an Islamic State by 2047. This was revealed in a file titled ‘Draft booklet of a roadmap to make India an Islamic state by 2047’ recovered from an accused, Mazhar Mansoor Khan.
Who did Google quote?
On page 7 of the seized PDF, it was written that India, especially Lakshadweep and eight districts of Jammu Kashmir has 70 per cent of the Muslim population.
Google crawlers picked up the data mentioned in the file, as reported by the news outlet, and quoted the same as, “It has the second largest population in India. According to this, this figure will become 100 per cent in 2047, after which India will be declared a Muslim nation in 2047.”
Similar reports about the incident were also published in The Economic Times and The Hindustan Times on February 9, 2023.
The Ministry of Home Affairs also published a notification addressing the issue.We also found the same video report on the YouTube Channel of CNN News18 titled “PFI Plotted For ‘Rule Of Islam’ In India By 2047 Says Chargesheet By Maharashtra ATS | News18”.
How do Google search results work?
When you search using Google it looks through hundreds of millions of webpages and other content stored in the search index to find helpful information. Most of our search index is built through the work of software known as crawlers.
When crawlers find a web page, our systems render the page's content, just as a browser does. We take note of key signals – from keywords to website freshness – and we keep track of it all in the search index.
Hence, the Google results shown in the viral video are quoted directly from a report and are not a prediction by Google.
