The Identity Project

A study of pockets in Bihar where the demographic balance between communities appeared to have changed noticeably revealed an unexpected trend that took officials by surprise. Illegal immigrant families were actively seeking institutional deliveries, and this was not just a concern rooted in a desire for safe births. An institutional delivery, preferably in a government hospital, is entered in official records, and an Aadhaar number—a blue-coloured version for under-five-year-olds—can be generated as well. This ‘documentation’ can become the basis of claiming welfare benefits and even citizenship, felt the families interviewed as part of a survey of population hotspots. In West Bengal, a similar exercise saw illegal immigrants being booked for a minor offence to become part of an official record that notes residence and the names of parents. In almost all such instances there is a network of local agents, politicians and village officials working to provide papers, employment and registrations for Aadhaar and even voter identities.

In the past few months, Union Home Minister Amit Shah has toured states with international borders and held meetings with state ministers and officials to drive an insistent message: border security cannot be treated in segments and silos and needs an integrated approach that knits Central forces like the Border Security Force (BSF), Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), Assam Rifles, local police and administration, banks, village tehsildars, Central agencies like the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) and financial watchdogs into a grid that constantly maps and exchanges information. Shah has spoken of a “smart border” project that draws heavily on technology but importantly enough relies on local citizens as eyes and ears. During a border review in Rajasthan’s Bikaner district, Shah asked BSF and local authorities to demolish illegal construction within 15km of the international border. The mushrooming of mosques and madrasas was not linked to any local demand for religious education but indicated a funding pipeline intended to encourage radicalism.

During a review meeting in Tripura—a state where a pre-election influx of thousands of voters was a set pattern till 2018 when BSF mounted a strict vigil—Shah said the Ministry of Home Affairs’(MHA) “CCTV” model will be first implemented in the northeastern state. Cameras used by BSF will be upgraded and connected with the district administration, and the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) will conduct a survey of the prevalence of fake currency. He indicated the frequency of operations against drug and arms trafficking will be stepped up, considering that the routes and human mules involved overlap with illegal immigration. As he did during other meetings, Shah said banks and district administration need to keep a watch on financial transactions, large construction and unusual sale and purchase of properties.

On May 26, the government announced the setting up of a High-Level Committee on Demographic Change as part of the “demography mission” announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his Red Fort address on August 15, 2025. The committee, headed by retired Justice Prakash Navlekar, would look into the “serious problem” of demographic change linked to sovereignty, national security, law and order, and likely changes in social structure that have a bearing on tribal societies as well. The committee, expected to submit its report in a year, has an active brief to suggest measures to deal with demographic changes that are unnatural and caused by illegal immigration or any other reason. The terms of reference are sweeping and comprehensive, and include a study of factors like cross-border activities and economic opportunities, and examine abnormal settlement patterns with the objective of analysing population changes at the level of “religious or social communities”. The committee is to recommend operational mechanisms for the “legal, fair and timebound” identification, detention and deportation of illegals, and to further suggest means to strengthen border management and population stabilisation.

The question of illegal immigrants is closely linked to Muslims from Bangladesh and, in recent years, Rohingya displaced from Myanmar, and feeds into the political debate over whether the proposed actions are tinged with a communal agenda. Actions by the Himanta Biswa Sarma government to vacate encroached forest areas occupied by Bangladeshi immigrants, which the Assam government holds to be illegally settled, have provided a sharper edge to the discussion.

After the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won the West Bengal election in May, the new state government and the MHA moved swiftly on border management, with land handed over to BSF to undertake border fencing that had been thwarted by the previous Trinamool Congress (TMC) regime, which saw benefits in bringing immigrants onto voting lists. West Bengal remains a high priority for the Centre, and Shah is expected to visit the state more than once in the coming months, when border management initiatives will be taken up for speedy implementation. But change is under way, with sources saying local police and administration have understood the urgency of the mission, and many people living at ground zero of illegal immigration, across communities, are suffering the consequences of a demographic invasion.

Speaking at an event organised by a media house on October 10, 2025, Shah spoke at length on why the “religious question” was inextricably linked with demographic change and citizenship, and needs to be addressed while defining what separates a refugee from an illegal immigrant. “According to official records, Hindus made up 84% and Muslims constituted 9.8%. By 1971, the Hindu share had fallen to 82% and the Muslim share had risen to 11%. In 1991, Hindus accounted for 81%, Muslims 12.12%, and by 2011 Hindus had declined to 79% while Muslims had increased to 14.2%. Now you may wonder why I am referring only to these two religious groups. It is because I am speaking in the context of infiltration... Had India not been partitioned on religious lines, perhaps there would never have been a need to record religion in the Census at all. But since Partition was based on religion, perhaps the then Congress leadership thought it necessary to include that issue. Between 1951 and 2011, the Hindu population declined by about 4.5% while the Muslim population grew at a rate of nearly 24.6%. This change cannot be explained merely by fertility rates: it is largely a consequence of cross-border infiltration,” he said.

The Census 2001 figures, which revealed that Assam’s Muslim population had grown from 24.7 per cent to 30.9 per cent, were disconcerting and threatened to devalue the efforts of left-leaning academics, activists and commentators to dismiss illegal immigration as a Hindutva project. Since the growth could not be denied, this section of the commentariat began arguing that the growth in Muslim population between the 1991 and 2001 Censuses was very modest, choosing to ignore the demographic changes in districts like Dhubri, Barpeta, Hailakandi, Karimganj, Goalpara, and Nagaon. While a slight deceleration in decadal growth rate from 32.9 per cent in 1981-91 to 29.3 per cent in 1991-2001 was highlighted, the continued fall in the Hindu growth rate from 22 per cent to 20 per cent escaped comment as the population imbalance became more pronounced, particularly in some districts. Census 2011 showed a decadal Muslim growth rate of 29.6 per cent, which cannot be explained by fertility and points to illegal immigration alone. The Census, conducted when the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) was in office, showed the growth rate to be 40 per cent in some districts. The current exercise, kicked off by the demographic committee, seeks to reverse the pattern of illegal immigration by first detecting and then reversing fraudulently acquired citizenship benefits. The “detain” part of the programme is better understood as “delist”, wherein acquisition of an Aadhaar number, enrolment in welfare schemes and voter lists is scrutinised. West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari’s announcement that those excluded from the voter list during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) vetting will not receive welfare assistance is a step in this direction.

Shah pointed out in his 2025 address that the population of Hindus had declined to just 1.7 per cent in Pakistan and was 7.9 per cent in Bangladesh. “I mention these figures not to make a Hindu-Muslim comparison but to explain the crucial difference between infiltrators and refugees. The Hindus who decreased in number were not converted; many fled and sought refuge in India. Conversely, the rise in the Muslim population here is not solely a result of natural growth; a large section entered India illegally over time,” he said. The refugees who fled in the face of religious persecution and arrived in India over time—in 1965, 1971, 1981, 1991, 2001, and later—were victims of a Partition they never desired. The commitment to provide them a path to citizenship under the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) was a “moral and historical” correction and in keeping with BJP’s ideology. Setting out the Modi government’s thinking, Shah said, “The question arises: Who are the infiltrators? Those are individuals who have not faced religious persecution but enter our country illegally for economic and other motives. If we were to allow everyone who wishes to come here to enter at will, our nation would, in effect, become a dharamshala for all comers; the country cannot function like this. Not everyone has an unfettered right to enter.”

The possibility of illegal immigrants dependent on local mafias being drawn into crime is high, and their involvement has surfaced in drug cartels, arms smuggling and fake currency rackets. A key consideration is the distortion of the political process, as the principle of one person-one vote is violated by illegal immigrants or non-citizens being on the voter list. The illegal vote decreases the value of the genuine one, and often aligns with interests that go against the local population. Under the Left Front, and even more when TMC was in office, the West Bengal government did not just look the other way—it made illegal immigration part of the vote calculus. This meant illegal voters would support parties that promoted and protected them, and this was clearly in conflict with the better interests of genuine citizens. When vote-bank politics reached a tipping point, voters who had supported TMC in the past changed sides. In his public statements, Shah has emphasised the role of SIR in purifying voter lists and excluding infiltrators from becoming part of the political decision-making process.

Assam is the exemplar of the havoc wrought by demographic changes over the course of time. The solutions advocated by activists of left-liberal persuasion show why the problem has proved almost impossible to sort out. The only way out for administrators was to enumerate—individual by individual—and sort out indigenous people from illegal immigrants. Along with most states in the Northeast, Assam is literally a museum of anthropology. Even by a cursory count, the number of indigenous communities is more than three dozen. In most cases, ethnic boundaries are coeval with geographic markers. This makes any illegal incursion a combustible affair. The Nellie violence in 1979 was not a Hindu-Muslim conflict but one between illegal immigrants from Bangladesh/East Pakistan and the Tiwa people, who reside in that part of the present-day Morigaon district, carved out of the old Nagaon district.

That conflict, wrongly projected as an ethnic or “communal” conflict, was and remains a conflict over land. Under British rule, migration was encouraged from the densely populated areas of East Bengal into Assam. This was part and parcel of the extractive nature of colonialism, and the process accelerated during the tenure of Sir Muhammad Saadulla, who was the Muslim premier of Assam from 1936 to 1946. The influx of land-hungry peasants from Mymensingh and other districts of what later became East Pakistan permanently changed the demographic landscape of Assam. After Independence, the nature and reasons for illegal immigration changed once again. To begin with, no effort was made to control immigration from East Pakistan. Laws like The Immigrants (Expulsion from Assam) Act, 1950, enacted under pressure from local authorities in Assam, remained a dead letter. This law, passed in March 1950, was forgotten for 75 years until the Himanta government ordered its use in 2025. By 1950, it was clear that illegal immigrants from East Pakistan were becoming a formidable voting bloc in Assam. Far from expelling these illegals, continued migration was quietly welcomed by Congress governments in the state. The new bloc of voters was much more reliable compared with the more demanding indigenous voters. The Assam Accord was a political nail against the 1950 Act. Instead of executive authorities exercising powers under Section 2(a) of the Act, which enables them to order the expulsion of illegals, the task was handed over to a judicial tribunal under the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals) Act, 1983. The conviction rate under that Act was so low that the Supreme Court noted in a 2005 judgment, “It is far more easier to secure conviction of a person in a criminal trial where he may be awarded capital punishment or imprisonment for life than to establish that a person is an illegal migrant…”

In the first quarter of the 21st century, the demographic situation has changed vastly in Assam’s districts that border Bangladesh. Even interior districts such as Nagaon are now unrecognisable. The char lands, or riverine islands on the Brahmaputra, are mostly populated by illegal immigrants, and not just in lower Assam but almost all the way to the upper reaches of the river.

The situation is not very different in the eastern districts of West Bengal that abut Bangladesh. One can draw a straight line from South 24 Parganas all the way to Uttar Dinajpur where demographic changes have altered these districts dramatically. In a way, West Bengal is Assam changed at warp speed. The extent of the problem can be gauged from the SIR removing 9.1 million fraudulent voters of a total of 76.6 million in October 2025. The total population of the state by Census 2011 was 91.27 million. A more realistic estimate for 2025 pegs this at anywhere from 99 to 105 million. Of the 9.1 million, some six million eliminated voters have decided to appeal. They were removed from the rolls after all efforts to ‘save’ them failed. The Supreme Court stood by the Election Commission’s (EC). In fact, the court ordered the inclusion of Aadhaar numbers as an admissible document despite irregularities in its issuance. These numbers show the extent of illegal flows of people across the international border. Illegal immigrants served as a phalanx of voters who cost little to the party in power, but India has had to pay dearly.

Demands for the purification of electoral rolls and verification of citizenship have proliferated. Recently, the Census exercise had to be postponed in Manipur as residents demanded citizenship

verification through a National Register of Citizens (NRC). The NRC process was also demanded in Assam and was finally carried out after the Supreme Court ordered it. In Manipur, the precarious internal security situation and the civil war in neighbouring Myanmar created conditions for the mass immigration of individuals ethnically related to the Kuki-Zo population of the state. A case is made out as to what difference these people make even if they enter and live illegally, so long as they do so peacefully. This is often part of the left-liberal case for the unfettered flow of people into India.

Not respecting international borders makes little sense when the state defines itself as a social, geographical and political entity in keeping with the integrity of its borders. That, after all, is the rationale behind the nation-state. Even if one lets such people in, their political loyalty to India cannot be taken for granted, and experience shows they have no interest in integration. In India’s case, there is the immediate vicinity of new nation-states created in 1947 on the basis of religion. Recent events highlight the risks of a large population of aliens. The controversial statements by Muhammad Yunus, head of Bangladesh’s erstwhile interim administration, saw him repeatedly assert that the future of the Seven Sisters, or India’s northeastern states, lay with Bangladesh. Yunus’ confidence stemmed in no small measure from a large population of Bangladeshi origin within India’s borders. In a situation where a large fraction of the population owes extraterritorial fealty, a strategic risk arises for India.

Not long after the SIR gathered pace in Assam, a silent migration took place. Thousands who found themselves at risk of being excluded from the draft SIR slipped out of the state. Not long after, Central agencies reported a rise in the Bengali-speaking population in cities as far away as Kerala. The Assam voter list, meanwhile, was finalised, and only 500 appeals were filed, according to Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. The ‘missing’ persons had relocated. As the demographic committee began its site visits with a tour of Jammu, it might be on a journey of discovery. Rather than Muslim-majority Kashmir, it is Jammu that is the preferred destination for the Rohingya, and the reasons, according to sources, are as much political as anything else. Demographic change in Hindu-majority Jammu was more suited to the plans of their sponsors. As with the case of Kerala, such movements point to a well-organised support system and a network with funds and organisation.

The committee will certainly address these aspects, as well as the need to review the process of documentation in India. When Aadhaar was rolled out, a call was taken not to link it to citizenship. This helped gather the biometrics of people who were, according to the Aadhaar Act, “normally resident in India”. This may now need to change, with reports that the number of Aadhaar numbers exceeds the population of certain areas. The actions of the committee, the MHA’s plans on border security, and the completion of SIR in all states are part of a larger design, one that sees national identity and security as inseparable.