Amit Shah has been running around Bihar claiming that Rahul Gandhi’s Voter Adhikar Yatra is aimed at protecting “ghuspaithiye” — “infiltrators”. The hollowness of this claim was exposed at a BJP workers’ meeting last month, when the Union Home Minister asked the audience what the topic of Gandhi’s yatra was. Much to Shah’s dismay, some party workers yelled: Vote Chori!
Its vacuousness was further underscored by Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar’s refusal to say how many foreigners had been identified under the Bihar Special Intensive Revision (SIR). He deflected a direct question with the claim that the data was available with officials at the state level.
Of course, the Narendra Modi government’s “ghuspaithiya” narrative is really a dog-whistle against Indian Muslims while projecting itself as being against “illegal immigrants”. After all, who can support illegal immigrants, or illegal anything? Like most BJP-RSS ideas, it’s just an unimaginative Right-wing trope.
But what most people don’t realise, drowning as we are in Right-wing propaganda, is how abysmal the Modi government’s record in dealing with illegal immigration actually is.
Consider the facts: the UPA government deported 88,792 illegal immigrants to Bangladesh between 2005 and 2013, compared with 2,566 deportations between 2014 and 2019; there is no data after 2019. Those who yell loudly about the dangers of “ghuspaithiye” have done absolutely nothing other than dramebazi, while those accused of coddling illegal immigrants actually did their job without whipping up communal passions.
The following table makes the facts clear.
Communal fantasy
The Modi government’s communal fantasising was cruelly exposed by Assam’s 2019 National Register of Citizens (NRC). Embarrassingly for the BJP, only 7 lakh out of the 19 lakh individuals who failed to prove their citizenship turned out to be Muslim. Assam’s courts and tribunals have declared about 30,000 people as foreigners over the years, of whom just a few hundred have actually been deported to Bangladesh. The dilemma for the BJP is that the biggest influx of Bangladeshis into India came during the 1971 war with Pakistan. Many were Hindu, and a large number of them stayed back.
The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) is aimed at legalising many of those Hindus, but the number of people actually granted citizenship is tiny, with serious opposition continuing in Assam. This suggests – surprise! – that the CAA was all about polarisation and not really about helping communities like the Matuas (a Scheduled Caste group) in West Bengal.
Another reason that fewer illegal immigrants are being deported is that the flow of economic refugees from Bangladesh has likely diminished in recent years. After lagging behind India for many years — particularly during the UPA boom — the per capita income of Bangladesh caught up with and exceeded India’s in 2018, before falling back in 2023 (see chart below).
This meant that the economic pressure to migrate decreased and, presumably, the flow of migrants into India declined over time. It also suggests that the BJP’s “ghuspaithiya” narrative is being whipped up precisely when illegal immigration has actually diminished. Moreover, given that 7 per cent of Bihar’s population has left the state in search of jobs, it’s unclear why large numbers of Bangladeshis would dream of pursuing careers there.
Profiting from polarisation
The Modi government has tried to cover up this reality by trumpeting “push-backs” of alleged Bangladeshis across the border. But it has no answer to why the UPA managed to legally deport nearly 90,000 Bangladeshis, while the Modi government has resorted to push-backs of barely 2,500 people — some even transported in Air Force planes, à la Donald Trump. While such spectacles may excite their supporters, rushed push-backs are also likely to deport Indians wrongly identified as Bangladeshis. But that concerns justice and accuracy, which are alien ideas to this form of politics.
The BJP has no interest in actually reducing illegal immigration. In fact, it profits from the polarisation that ensues. Like all Right-wing populists worldwide, it is banking on this familiar strategy to counter the soaring sentiment of anti-incumbency and protect its Assam and Bihar governments, lashed by corruption allegations. But as the general election signalled, this strategy is running out of juice.
Amitabh Dubey is a Congress member. He tweets @dubeyamitabh. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prashant)
Over the years, how many have the Congress allowed in Bharat – millions