The fact that Islam is growing massively in India and country will have largest Muslim population by 2050 has often raised eye-brows. But Hinduism is also growing in unusual places. The relative growth outside India is tiny in absolute numbers but still significant.

Hinduism is one of the fastest-growing religions in Ireland, predominantly a Christian country.

The country's Hindu population grew 34 percent in five years, according to the Ireland census, conducted in April 2016 by its Central Statistics Office (CSO) and released on April 6 this year. Islam grew by 29% in the same period. In contrast, the overall population growth in Ireland was 3.8 percent. Ireland is a primarily Christian country, with Roman Catholics forming the largest chunk of its 4.76 million population with a strength of 3.73 million.

AT A GLANCE As per the statistics, there were nearly 10,000 Hindus in the Catholic country in 2011, a number which touched 14,000 by April 2016.

Muslim community is almost six time larger than the Hindus in absolute number.

Religion-wise Orthodox reported the highest growth (37.5%) but number of people with no religion jumped to 73.6% between 2011-2016, says their Census report.

As per an estimate, nearly one million Hindus are expected to move to a different region over the next four decades.