PM Modi’s High-Power Demography Mission: Timely Counter To A Worrying Trend
PM Modi’s decision has shaken leaders and political parties, which have thrived and continue to subsist on the infiltration vote bank and narrative
“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. When demographic change occurs, particularly in border areas, it creates a crisis for national security. It threatens the unity, integrity, and progress of the country. It sows the seeds of social tension. No country can hand itself over to infiltrators. No nation in the world does so—how then can we allow Bharat to do so? …Therefore, today from the ramparts of the Red Fort, I announce that we have decided to launch a High-Power Demography Mission. Through this mission, the severe crisis now looming over Bharat will be addressed in a deliberate and time-bound manner. We are moving forward in this direction.”
With these words, for the first time, a Prime Minister of India red-flagged, in the Independence Address, the national threat of infiltration. And highlighted a concerted and sustained attempt being made to alter the demography of India and to pose a stiff challenge to our national security. In the last more than a decade, PM Modi has made it his approach to discuss national challenges and then to suggest a way forward in addressing them by eliciting support from and participation of the people. His call to resist demographic challenge and its concomitant threat to national security collectively is part of that approach. It calls for a consolidation of people’s will to take on societal and national challenges.
Prime Minister Modi’s decision to launch a High-Power Demography Mission and to get it going will be among the most crucial initiatives for the next decade. No other leader has spoken openly about the demographic threat and the threat of infiltration and taken the people into confidence in the manner PM Modi has. Especially for those who live along the border areas in Assam and West Bengal, the challenge of demography and of infiltration poses a daily struggle.
PM Modi’s decision has shaken leaders and political parties, which have thrived and continue to subsist on the infiltration vote bank and narrative. The Congress’s support for infiltration and demographic change in Assam is legendary, and so is the Left Front’s abetment of infiltration and demographic change in West Bengal. The current Trinamool Congress dispensation in West Bengal is desperate to defend its infiltration vote bank. Mamata Banerjee is on record sympathising with the Rohingyas in 2017 and indicating that West Bengal was open for their settlement.
Ironically, while the Congress leadership in Assam encouraged infiltration, chose not to speak about it, kept silent when tribal land was being grabbed in Assam, its own report, authored by another section, highlighted the dangers of infiltration and demographic change as early as 1992.
The Report of the General Secretaries (1st March 1989 to 2 July 1992) presented to the 7th general conference of the North Eastern Congress (I) Co-Ordination Committee (NECCI) in Guwahati, on July 3, 1992, spoke of the dangers of infiltration and demographic invasion. In those days, the NECCI used to be a politically consequential and influential body. A few extracts from its forgotten report may be useful.
The report said that “if Bangladeshis are infiltrating into Calcutta, Bombay, Delhi. Ahmedabad etc. should we think that there is no infiltration into Tripura which has a 867 km border without any natural barriers and into Assam which has about 300 km border with Bangladesh?” It pointedly referred to a “group of intellectuals in Dacca” who are “seeking to legitimise the migration of Muslims into the adjoining areas of North East region by invoking the theory of lebensraum or living space…People are sought to be inspired by the hope that one day the North Eastern region will be added to Bangladesh giving it a natural boundary in place of the present one which throttles Bangladesh.”
The report called upon the minorities living in the region to take a “wise and farsighted stand” and not to oppose discussion and talk on the threat of infiltration. “To turn a blind eye or to oppose any such talk, using a forum in the name of a particular community…will be the height of folly.” The report spoke of infiltration from Bangladesh from the majority Muslim community and argued that in “absolute terms, the number of Muslims crossing into India is likely to be much larger than that of non-Muslims.” It spoke of “an ideological support” being “given to the phenomenon by the Islamic Fundamentalists creating the vision of a larger Islamic country comprising Bangladesh and the entire North East where its economic problems will be solved and security ensured.”
The Congress report insisted that there was a “direct correlation between the rise of fundamentalism and increase in influx”. It castigated its own central government for “suffering from a half-hearted approach or no approach to this challenging problem.” Among the signatories were two general secretaries of the northeast Congress, RC Chiten Jamir, a former deputy chief minister of Nagaland, and Prof BB Dutta, a leading Bengali Congress leader and educator from Meghalaya, who went on to become a member of the Rajya Sabha. Dutta would later quit the Congress on the issue of Sonia Gandhi’s foreign origin.
Surveying the present crop of Congress leaders, it is unthinkable that such a report could have been churned out of the Congress’s stable nearly 35 years ago. At least there were some leaders in the Congress of the past who thought in terms of safeguarding India’s national security. The present crop seems to have clearly surrendered to forces determined to create a national security crisis for India. They speak the language of a cartel which wants to sow, across large swathes of India, the seeds of a new crisis. It is convenient for the present Congress leaders to forget this aspect of their past. Its memory must surely irritate them.
The High-Power Demography Mission announced by PM Modi is thus a most timely and effective counter to this worrying trend and to stop the advance of these elements and their destructive agenda.
