New Delhi: The government plans to create a high-powered mission to address the challenge of the “well-planned conspiracy” to change the country’s demography, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Friday in his Independence Day address to the nation.
“I want to warn the nation of a concern and challenge today. Under a well-hatched conspiracy, the demography of the country is being changed. The seeds of a new problem are being sown,” Modi said. “These infiltrators are snatching away the rozi-roti of the youth of this country, and targeting the sisters and daughters of my country. This will not be tolerated.”
“These infiltrators mislead the tribals and take away their lands. This country will not tolerate this,” he added. The change in the demography in the country and border areas threatens national security, unity, integrity and progress of the country, and sows the seeds of social tensions, he said. “No country can give away their country to ghuspaithiye (infiltrators)…no country of the world can. Then how can India?”
Therefore, the government plans to create a high-powered mission to tackle the crisis within a stipulated period, he said.
The announcement comes at a time when there is political uproar over the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in Bihar by the Election Commission of India (ECI), which the Opposition has maintained disenfranchises lakhs of people from marginalised backgrounds and communities.
Earlier this week, defending the ECI over allegations of largescale disenfranchisement in Bihar, BJP MP Anurag Thakur said that Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, was spreading falsehoods to protect “ghuspaithiye voters” and undermine the SIR process.
“Rahul Gandhi wants to save his ghuspaithiye voters. They spread rumours and protect ghuspaithiye. SIR is to protect voting rights of actual voters of India,” Thakur said at a press conference.
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‘Ghuspaithiya’ politics
While this is the first time that Modi has spoken in detail about a nationwide “demographic threat”, “ghuspaithiya” politics has been a recurring theme for the Bharatiya Janata Party over the last few years.
During the Jharkhand elections last year, it was the BJP’s central theme. “Appeasement politics has reached its pinnacle in Jharkhand where the JMM-led coalition is busy supporting Bangladeshi infiltrators. If this continues, the state’s tribal population will shrink,” Modi had said at a rally. “This is a threat to tribal society and the country. This coalition has become a ‘Gushpaithiya Bandhan‘ and a ‘Mafia ka Ghulam’.”
In the Lok Sabha elections last year, Modi had said that the Congress, which believes that Muslims have the first right on the country’s assets, will give away non-Muslims’ wealth and property to “infiltrators” if they come to power. “Should your hard-earned money go to the infiltrators? Do you approve of this?” he had said at a rally in Rajasthan.
In 2018, then BJP president Amit Shah had first used the term “ghuspaithiye”, referring to “Bangladeshi migrants” as “termites”. “BJP sarkaar ek-ek ghuspaithiye ko chun-chun kar matdata suchi se hatane ka kaam karegi (BJP government will remove every infiltrator from the voters’ list),” he had said, referring to the draft National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam at the time.
In 2019, addressing an election rally in Haryana as home minister, Shah said, “For 70 years, illegal migrants have infiltrated this country and weakened our security. BJP ki sarkaar ka, Modi ji ka sankalp hai ke ghuspaithiyon ko NRC bana kar hum desh ke bahar nikalenge (The BJP and Modi ji vow that through the NRC all illegal migrants will be thrown out of the country)”.
In the last few months, the government has intensified its attempts to weed out “Bangladeshi migrants” across the country, with a number of people even being deported to Bangladesh on this pretext.
RSS push
Over the years, demography and population control has been a key issue flagged by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
Just last year, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat said that India needs a “well-thought out population policy”, without referring to any religious community. He has also stressed the need for having three children, but without referring to Hindus alone.
In 2022 during his annual Dussehra address, Bhagwat had spoken of “religion-based imbalance” and “forced conversions”, and cautioned against countries, including India, breaking up because of such imbalances.
“Population imbalance leads to changes in geographical boundaries… Population control & religion-based population balance is an important subject that can no longer be ignored,” he had said. “So, a holistic population policy should be brought & should be equally applicable to all.”
Earlier in 2013, now RSS general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale had said that “bigger Hindu families” would prevent minorities “from gaining the upper hand” in population in certain parts of the country.
The Vishwa Hindu Parishad has been more direct. In 2015, VHP leader Champat Rai had said that family planning “was no more a personal matter for Hindus”, and that “if they continued to remain content with one child, Muslims would take over the country”.
(Edited by Mannat Chugh)
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Respect.
Takes a brave man to call a spade a spade.
Would’ve been even better if he had named the ideologies and their state sponsors that lie behind these conspiracies to change the demography, target our land, its culture, and our women.