In February, the airwaves in India had been inundated with pictures of undocumented Indians shackled in chains on a army deportation flight from the US. The stunning pictures made clear the devastating influence President Donald Trump’s draconian crackdown on “unlawful immigration” would have on the lives of hundreds of susceptible Indian residents who had risked every part to make their approach to America.
Opposition lawmakers, together with Indian Nationwide Congress get together chief Rahul Gandhi, wore handcuffs and protested the humiliating therapy of deportees exterior the parliament in New Delhi. With all of this taking place on the eve of Narendra Modi’s go to to the White Home, they demanded that the Indian prime minister take up this matter with the US president.
However throughout his US information convention, Modi responded to questions in regards to the deportations by stating that his Bharatiya Janata Occasion-led (BJP-led) authorities was “totally ready to carry again unlawful migrants”. He added: “The younger, susceptible and poor individuals of India are fooled into immigration. These are kids of very atypical households who’re lured by huge goals and large guarantees. Many are introduced in with out understanding why they’re being introduced in – many introduced in by a human-trafficking system.”
This response was unusually meek and agreeable for the chief of a Hindu nationalist regime identified for its muscular jingoism. It will appear Modi was merely attempting to keep away from a Volodymyr Zelenskyy-style bust-up with Trump, particularly with negotiations ongoing relating to reciprocal tariffs. Whereas this may very well be true, it’s also vital to keep in mind that with regards to immigration, Modi and Trump are on the identical web page.
Like his American counterpart, Modi depends on grand visions and claims in regards to the nation. This consists of the BJP authorities’s bombastic declarations in regards to the financial well being of India.
In the meanwhile, the Indian financial system is dealing with a troubling slowdown, however there is also a long term, rather more entrenched downside: inequality. On the planet’s most populous nation, the highest 1 % holds 40.1 % of the nationwide wealth. By the tip of 2024, India had 191 billionaires, placing it in third place on this planet after the US and China. In the meantime, it accounted for 70 % of the worldwide enhance in excessive poverty. India can be the nation with the largest inhabitants (234 million individuals) dwelling in excessive poverty.
Undocumented Indian migrants within the US are manifestations of this darkish actuality. The estimates relating to their actual quantity fluctuate. The Pew Analysis Heart estimated that there have been 700,000 undocumented Indian immigrants within the US on the finish of 2022, making Indians the third largest nationwide group of undocumented individuals after Mexicans and Salvadorians. The Division of Homeland Safety estimated there are 220,000 undocumented Indian migrants within the nation.
Regardless of the precise dimension of the inhabitants, this cohort of undocumented individuals contradicts the rosy picture of an financial powerhouse beneath Hindu nationalist management. That is why Modi is so desirous to shut down this saga of “unlawful immigration” as rapidly and calmly as attainable. He doesn’t need any skirmish with Trump over the therapy of undocumented migrants to seize headlines and expose the cracks within the aura of a rising India.
However in a Hindu nationalist India, a Trump-like anti-immigration discourse can be not an oddity. For a couple of years, the Indian proper has been ritually elevating the problem of a supposed scourge of undocumented migration, particularly from Bangladesh.
In 2016, then-Minister of State of House Affairs Kiren Rijiju claimed there have been about “20 million unlawful immigrants from Bangladesh in India”. In 2018, House Minister Amit Shah mentioned there have been greater than 40 million undocumented immigrants within the nation. In 2023, right-wing politicians have additionally claimed there are actually near 50 million undocumented migrants in India.
There isn’t a actual proof to again up these numbers.
But for the Hindu nationalists in India, these claims in regards to the presence of an insidious, Muslim undocumented inhabitants evoke a strong picture and match nicely into an Islamophobic discourse of a Hindu nation dealing with an existential risk from its neighbours.
Unsubstantiated claims about the specter of “unlawful immigration” from Bangladesh enable right-wing politicians in India accountable the undocumented “outsider” for the plight of the nation’s economically deprived. As Shah as soon as mentioned: “They [Bangladeshi immigrants] are consuming the grain that ought to go to the poor.” Elsewhere, Shah has known as undocumented migrants “termites” and “infiltrators” who wanted to be uprooted. Whereas on the marketing campaign path in 2019, Shah additionally promised that the BJP authorities would “choose up infiltrators one after the other and throw them into the Bay of Bengal”.
These unsubstantiated claims additionally enable Hindu nationalists to stoke fears a couple of demographic problem to a Hindu nation. As an illustration, throughout a TV interview, the chief of the Delhi unit of the BJP, Ashwini Upadhyay, insinuated that almost all standing of the Hindu inhabitants was beneath risk.
He mentioned that India was established as a “Hindu nation” and this id was being diluted by “illegals”, “[Muslim] Rohingyas” and “[Muslim] coverts”.
Equally, Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar claimed that “unlawful migration” was inflicting a “demographic upheaval”. He famous that this cohort was placing undue stress on the nation’s well being and schooling sectors, depriving residents of employment alternatives, and was undermining democracy by gaining “electoral relevance”. He additionally warned that if left unchecked, the Hindu ethnic id could be undermined by such “demographic invasions”.
Lastly, it’s equally commonplace to listen to from the best in India that “unlawful migration” is synonymous with criminality. In an announcement to the decrease home of the Indian parliament, Minister of Exterior Affairs S Jaishankar mentioned: “Unlawful mobility and migration has many different related actions, additionally of an unlawful nature.” Whereas Jaishankar right here was referring to undocumented Indian migrants within the US, in India, authorities have equally claimed that there’s a “well-oiled” legal community that helps undocumented migrants achieve residency, employment, pretend beginning certificates and finally voting rights. This has led to Trump-like police raids and deportation drives focusing on Bangladeshis and Rohingya.
Usually caught up in these raids are Bengali-speaking Muslim residents of India. Just a few years in the past, a examine revealed there have been extra Bangladeshi migrants leaving than coming into the nation. However within the period of the rise of the best, none of this issues. Be it in Trump’s US or Modi’s India, it’s all the time the insidious outsider blamed for troubles throughout the nation.
It’s this mentality that drives the anti-immigration waves in each India and the US. In India, it supplied the rationale for authorized manoeuvres just like the Citizenship Modification Act of 2019, which excluded Muslims from neighbouring nations from gaining Indian citizenship.
Modi stands out as the prime minister of a Hindu nationalist authorities, however he gained’t danger damaging his relationship with Trump within the identify of defending undocumented Indians within the US. On immigration, his views are similar to Trump’s, and he feels nothing however contempt for undocumented individuals, even after they occur to be Indian residents.
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially mirror Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
