Announces establishment of a “high powered National Demographic Mission” to safeguard India’s demographic profile.
By P.K.Balachandran
Colombo, August 16 – Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has raised the issue of “illegal immigration” from Bangladesh to the national level and said it will be tackled through a “high-powered National Demographic Mission”.
In his Independence Day oration from the ramparts of the Red Fort in New Delhi on August 15, Modi warned Indians about a “deliberate conspiracy” to alter the demographic profile of India.
“Today, I wish to warn the nation of a grave concern and challenge. As part of a deliberate conspiracy, the demography of the country is being altered. Seeds of a new crisis are being sown. These infiltrators are snatching away the livelihoods of our youth. These infiltrators are targeting our sisters and daughters. This will not be tolerated. These infiltrators are misleading innocent tribals and seizing their lands. The nation will not endure this,” Modi warned.
He refrained from saying where the infiltrators were coming from, but it is common knowledge that BJP governments in various parts of India have been highlighting alleged illegal immigration from Bangladesh. They have been organizing drives to identify and detain them in camps for eventual deportation.
National security could be adversely affected by demographic changes “particularly in border areas”, Modi said.
“Such a situation threatened the unity, integrity and progress of the country’ and sowed the seeds of social tension. These Ghusbaithiyas(infiltrators) were snatching the bread and butter of the youth, and befooling tribals to capture forest land,” he charged.
“No country can hand itself over to infiltrators. No nation in the world does so—how then can we allow India to do so?” he asked and announced that his government has decided to launch a high-powered demography mission.
“Through this mission, the severe crisis now looming over India will be addressed in a deliberate and time-bound manner. We are moving forward in this direction,” Modi said.
The move was welcomed by the West Bengal BJP President, Suvendu Adhikari, who has been vocal about alleged encroachments by Rohingyas and Bangladeshi Muslims into West Bengal with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee turning a blind eye.
Bengali Speakers Targeted
In the guise of identifying and arresting Bangladeshi infiltrators, police in Delhi, Gujarat, Odisha and other BJP-ruled States are harassing Bengali speakers, whether Muslim or Hindu.
Poor migrant workers are asked to show documents proving their Indian citizenship while rejecting commonly-held documents like the Aadhaar ID card or the Ration Card. Birth certificates are demanded when registration of births is still rare in India.
Addressing a massive public really in Kolkata, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said, “anyone who speaks Bengali is being arrested and put behind bars. Why? Is West Bengal not a part of India? I am ashamed and disheartened of the BJP’s attitude towards Bengalis.”
Amid reports of harassment and unlawful detention of Bengali-speaking migrant workers in Odisha, West Bengal Chief Secretary Manoj Pant wrote to his Odisha counterpart, Manoj Ahuja, urging a humanitarian approach.
Pant pointed out that many from West Bengal—daily wage earners, rickshaw pullers, domestic workers, and long-settled families—have migrated to various parts of Odisha for livelihood.
“It is deeply distressing to learn that many of them are being targeted solely because they speak Bengali, their mother tongue, and are being unjustly labelled as Bangladeshi infiltrators. This sweeping generalisation is not only unfair and discriminatory, but also deeply hurtful to citizens,” he wrote.
Pant added that Bengal has received “disturbing reports of such individuals being detained without due legal process in regions around Paradip and across coastal districts such as Jagatsinghpur, Kendrapara, Bhadrak, Malkangiri, Balasore and Cuttack. Even when they have provided valid identity documents like Aadhaar cards, ration cards, voter IDs, electricity bills and PDS documents, their claims have often been dismissed.
In several cases, they were asked to produce ancestral land records dating back generations — a demand described in the letter as “unreasonable and unjustifiable” for migrant workers.
He further noted that even after the West Bengal authorities verified and confirmed the identity and citizenship of many of the detained individuals, no significant action or relief was provided.
Writing in Indian Express Diptiman Tiwary said that Modi’s Demographic Mission is per the ideology of the BJP and the Rashtriya Swyamsewak Sangh (RSS).
“For years, the BJP and RSS have linked demographic changes to infiltration, religious conversion, and differential fertility rates among communities — framing it as a challenge to national security, political, and socio-cultural dimensions.”
For the BJP, illegal immigration from Bangladesh and Myanmar is tied to concerns over voter rolls. But for the RSS, conversions and infiltration threaten to alter the balance between Hindus and Muslims, Tiwary said.
On August 18, 2022, Indian Home Minister Amit Shah, while speaking at the concluding session of the National Security Strategies Conference, told Directors General of Police of border states to keep a “watchful eye on the demographic changes taking place in border areas.”
Shah added that the issue had been formally deliberated at the conference under the topic – “Demographic changes and growing radicalisation in border areas, alongside counter-terrorism, Maoist overground networks, cyber surveillance, and drug trafficking.”
At that time, the Border Security Force (BSF) had raised the issue with the Border Guard Bangladesh, only for the latter to deny that its citizens needed to cross over, citing economic progress in Bangladesh.
In September 2018, as national BJP president, Shah described illegal Bangladeshi migrants as “termites” who would be removed from electoral rolls.
“They are eating the grain that should go to the poor, taking our jobs… They will be struck off the voter list,” he said at a rally in West Bengal.
The BJP has repeatedly demanded the extension of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) exercise beyond Assam to other states, including Jharkhand, always raising the issue in the context of State elections.
The issue has been framed by the BJP/RSS as a “civilisational challenge” that could alter India’s socio-political fabric, Tiwary noted.
In his 2022 Vijayadashmi speech, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat said “population imbalance” had led to the creation of new countries such as East Timor, South Sudan, and Kosovo, and warned that “when there is population imbalance, new countries are created”.
The birth rate was only “one part of this imbalance”, Bhagwat said and added that conversion by “force and allurement” was the “biggest factor”, alongside cross-border infiltration.
The RSS has called upon Hindus to have more children to counter a “rising Muslim population”. Former RSS chief K S Sudarshan said in 2005 that families should have “not less than three children”. Current general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale argued in 2013 for larger Hindu families to prevent minorities from gaining demographic advantage in certain areas.
The Vishva Hindu Parishad’s (VHP) Champat Rai said in 2015 that family planning should not be a purely personal matter for Hindus.
With PM Modi now proposing a formal demographic mission, the government appears to be moving towards institutionalising the process of detection and elimination.
NRC’s Failure Ignored
When the National Register of Citizens (NRC) was drawn up in Assam in 2019-2020, it was found that 1.9 million people had no proof of their citizenship as per the stringent demands of the surveyors. Interestingly, among the 1.9 million who could not prove their citizenship, 1.1 million were Hindus and only 0.6 million were Muslims! The rest were tribals.
Thus, the whole idea of the exercise (getting rid of the Muslims), failed as the axe fell on Hindus mostly. Embarrassed, the government out the exercise in cold storage.
In December 2021, The Hindureported that the Modi government was not in a rush to take any decision on a follow up action. A senior government official said there were several options available, but sending a large number of people to detention centres was “not practical”.
Despite the NRC’s failure in Assam, the Modi government is persisting with the exercise to control demographics at the all-India level. Clearly the idea is to divide and capture, no matter how that affects the life of the voiceless poor, toiling, Indians, both Muslims and Hindus.
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