The Election Commission of India, acting as a puppet of the Modi government, is carrying out the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls on the pretext that millions of illegal Muslim migrants are entering India from neighbouring countries. However, what study has the Government of India or the Election Commission relied upon to conclude that illegal migration, is causing such widespread disruption in the country?
Neither the government nor the Commission has answered this question.
Without conducting any proper study on illegal migration, how and why are they undertaking a potentially harmful exercise such as the SIR? Even the Supreme Court, while examining the constitutional validity of the SIR, unfortunately did not ask this fundamental question.
Thus, three-fourths of the SIR process was ‘completed’ without any respect for due process or empirical foundation whatsoever. After as many as 75 million Indians had already been pushed out of the electoral rolls, the Modi government, on May 26—just a day before the Supreme Court was due to deliver its verdict in the SIR matter —constituted a “High-Level Committee on Demographic Change” under the chairmanship of retired Justice Prakash Prabhakar Naik.
A close look at the committee’s composition, its members, and its terms of reference makes it abundantly clear that this is, yet another, carefully plotted political-bureaucratic plot designed to perpetuate the harassment of Indian Muslims. First, as Justice Prakash himself has reportedly admitted, he possesses no expertise whatsoever in this subject. He was also not informed in advance about the assignment.
Second, the other members of the committee include a retired bureaucrat, Durga Shankar Mishra; a retired police officer, Balaji Srivastava; and Shamika Ravi, an economic adviser to the Prime Minister. This is the same scholar who recently dismissed concerns about the rupee falling to 100 against the dollar by saying that it is “just a number.” Shamika also has the unique distinction of being the daughter of none less than former Tamil Nadu governor, R.N.Ravi, notorious for his attacks on federalism in that state. So critical has Ravi been to the services of the New Delhi regime that, in March 2026, he was transferred as the governor of West Bengal where he oversaw not just the notorious SIR but also the recently concluded ‘elections’ to the State Assembly!
Most strikingly, in a committee specifically constituted to study demographic change, there is not a single expert on the subject, demography. Every member appears to have been selected for political allegiance and loyalty rather than for any recognised expertise in population studies.
The terms of reference assigned to the committee raise even more serious concerns. Notably, the committee has not even been asked to investigate whether there is, in fact, any large-scale and systematic illegal migration into India from neighbouring countries.
Terms of Reference Designed to Officialise Propaganda
Instead of first establishing whether such large-scale, organised, and malicious illegal migration is actually taking place, the committee has already proceeded on the assumption that it is. The questions it has been asked to study include:
i) To comprehensively deliberate upon the challenges arising from demographic changes, including illegal immigration.
ii) To study the possible causes of such demographic changes, such as cross-border activities (including illegal immigration), economic opportunities, and other socio-environmental factors.
iii) To identify the underlying factors behind these changes, which include illegal immigration, abnormal settlement patterns, and orchestrated migration
iv) To analyse structural population changes at the level of religious or social communities, particularly where they deviate from broader trends.
v) To recommend a streamlined and permanent operational mechanism for the legal, fair, and time-bound identification, detention, and deportation of illegal immigrants already residing in the country.
vi) To recommend an appropriate institutional mechanism to strengthen border management, population stabilization, and identification systems for the continuous monitoring of such trends.
The committee has been instructed to study these issues and submit its report and recommendations within one year.
Thus, it is clear that the Modi government’s agenda effectively treats as established facts several partisan and communal claims that the RSS and the BJP have long propagated regarding demographic change in India. These include:
- That the Muslim population in India is growing disproportionately, not only because Muslims allegedly do not practise population control, but also because of illegal migration from Bangladesh and other neighbouring countries.
- That this demographic growth is part of a deliberate project to reduce the proportion of Hindus and eventually transform India into a Muslim-majority nation.
- That this constitutes an international conspiracy in which Indian Muslims are complicit, making the entire Muslim community suspect. The only way to defeat this conspiracy, according to this narrative, is to transform India into a Hindu Rashtra.
A careful reading of the committee’s terms of reference makes it clear that it has been constituted primarily to validate these long-standing falsehoods and lend official legitimacy to a campaign of communal polarisation.
This propaganda has already succeeded in fostering a deeply anti-Muslim and fascistic social mind-set across large sections of the country. That is why, even when large numbers of Hindus lacking proper documentation are themselves being excluded through exercises such as the SIR, a narrative is being constructed that Modi is protecting Hindus from Muslims. As a result, poor Hindus are being persuaded to support policies that ultimately harm their own interests.
Economic Refugees or Illegal Conspirators?
Viewed in perspective, although both the Congress and the BJP have governed this country over the past seventy-seven years, it is unlikely that illegal migration into India has ever occurred on the scale of millions. At most, it may have involved thousands or perhaps lakhs of people entering the country in search of livelihoods.
Moreover, since around 2005, Bangladesh has recorded rapid economic progress, particularly in sectors such as ready-made garment exports. In fact, its per capita income has, at times, marginally surpassed that of India. As a result, illegal migration from Bangladesh into India has declined significantly.
This is precisely why neither the Election Commission nor the Modi government is willing to answer a simple question: in the states where the SIR exercise has already been completed, including Bihar and West Bengal, how many illegal migrants were actually identified through the process? Was it hundreds, thousands, or lakhs? No answer has been forthcoming. The Supreme Court, too, has not pressed the Commission on this question.
Meanwhile, reports over the past two weeks indicate that the BJP governments in West Bengal and Gujarat have identified around three to four thousand impoverished Bangladeshi nationals who were either overstaying their visas or residing in India without proper documentation. This is not fundamentally different from the thousands of Indians who attempt to enter the United States illegally every year in search of economic opportunities and are subsequently detained.
When Indian Hindus migrate illegally to the United States in significant numbers, they are not doing so as part of a demographic invasion aimed at altering America’s racial composition or taking over the country. By the same logic, the few thousand undocumented workers who may have migrated from Bangladesh to India are economic refugees in search of survival, not conspirators engaged in a grand political project.
Yet the purpose of the “Committee on Demographic Change” appears to be precisely to brand Muslims as perpetual illegals, keep them under a constant cloud of suspicion, and reduce them to a condition of permanent insecurity and uncertainty.
In reality, neither illegal migration by foreign Muslims nor the growth of India’s Muslim population poses the demographic challenge facing the country.
India’s population challenge lies elsewhere entirely. By deploying fascistic political strategies and manufactured fears, the Modi government is obscuring the real issues confronting the nation.
The Myth of Muslim Population Growth
If the BJP were to think about the interests of the country, even once, rather than viewing every issue through the prism of partisan advantage, a few realities would become immediately apparent:
- India is not facing a population explosion.
- Population growth is not the primary cause of poverty in India. On the contrary, India’s large youth population presents a historic opportunity for rapid economic growth.
- The rate of growth of the Muslim population has been declining sharply over the past two decades, and in fact has been falling faster than the growth rate of the Hindu population.
These facts are clearly borne out by the third, fourth, and fifth rounds of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS), conducted under the aegis of the Government of India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, as well as by the population census reports of 1991, 2001, and 2011.
India’s Population Growth Rate Is Declining
One of the biggest myths surrounding India’s demographic situation is that because India has one of the largest populations in the world, its population growth rate is spiralling out of control and therefore requires urgent and stringent intervention.
The reality is precisely the opposite. India’s population growth rate is steadily and healthily declining, not increasing.
The most widely used measure for assessing population growth is the Total Fertility Rate (TFR). TFR refers to the average number of children a woman is expected to give birth to during her reproductive years, generally between the ages of 15 and 49.
At the time of Independence, India’s TFR stood at approximately 5.9. In other words, an average Indian woman gave birth to nearly six children during her lifetime. Had that trend continued unchecked, India’s population today could have reached 2.5 to 3 billion people.
However, from the very beginning, India placed considerable emphasis on family welfare programmes, awareness campaigns, access to contraception, and reproductive health services. Wherever awareness increased, healthcare became accessible, and women gained greater educational and economic empowerment, fertility rates began to decline rapidly.
According to the 2015–16 National Family Health Survey, India’s average TFR had fallen to 2.3. Compared to 1951, this represents a decline of well over fifty per cent in the rate of population growth.
Women’s Empowerment, Not Coercive Laws, Drives Fertility Decline
Apart from the excesses associated with forced sterilisation during the Emergency, India’s family planning programme has largely relied on persuasion, access to healthcare services, and women’s empowerment rather than coercive legal measures.
This is not unique to India. Across the world, every successful population stabilisation programme has followed the same path. At the International Conference on Population and Development held in Cairo in 1994, India reaffirmed its commitment to this rights-based approach.
The variation in fertility rates across Indian states further reinforces this conclusion.
According to the 2015–16 NFHS, while India’s average TFR stood at 2.3, relatively developed states such as Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Maharashtra, and Gujarat recorded fertility rates of only 1.7 to 1.8—well below the national average.
In stark contrast, Bihar recorded a TFR of 3.4 and Uttar Pradesh 2.7, both substantially above the national average. The difference is not difficult to understand. States with lower fertility rates generally exhibit higher levels of female literacy, educational attainment, women’s participation in public life, and overall socio-economic development.
Indeed, the fertility rate among Hindus in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar is higher than the fertility rate among Muslims in many southern states. In other words, Muslim women in the southern states are, on average, having fewer children than Hindu women in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.
That is precisely why the phrase “Development is the Best Contraceptive” has become a widely accepted principle across the world. Development reduces fertility rates far more effectively than punitive laws ever can.
Equally important is the finding of the 2020–21 National Family Health Survey that 54 per cent of Indian women have only two children, while 76 per cent of women married during the past decade have expressed no desire to have a second child.
The implication is clear. When women are empowered to make decisions about their own bodies and reproductive lives, and when families become more democratic and egalitarian, population growth declines naturally without the need for coercion or state-imposed restrictions.
Muslim Population Growth Is Declining Faster Than Hindu Population Growth
Another important fact revealed by the National Family Health Surveys is that, over the past three decades, the fertility rate among Muslims has been declining faster than that among Hindus.
According to the third round of the NFHS conducted in 2005–06, the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) among Hindus stood at 2.59, while the corresponding figure for Muslims was 3.4.
A decade later, according to the fourth round of the NFHS, the Hindu TFR had fallen from 2.59 to 2.13—a decline of 0.46 points.
During the same period, the Muslim TFR fell from 3.4 to 2.61—a decline of 0.79 points.
In other words, although the Muslim fertility rate remains higher than the Hindu fertility rate, it has been declining much more rapidly over the past decade. Consequently, the rate of Muslim population growth has also been falling significantly faster than the corresponding rate among Hindus.
In 2005, the gap between Muslim and Hindu fertility rates stood at 0.81. By 2015, that gap had narrowed to just 0.4. If this trend continues, the difference between Hindu and Muslim fertility rates is likely to become negligible within the next decade.
Equally significant is the fact that fertility rates among Muslims have been falling most rapidly in states with substantial Muslim populations, including Kerala, Assam, West Bengal, and Jammu & Kashmir.
The government’s own demographic data therefore establishes three important conclusions:
- India’s population growth rate is declining in a healthy and sustainable manner.
- The rate of Muslim population growth is declining far more rapidly than is commonly portrayed in public discourse.
- Wherever socio-economic development has advanced, fertility rates have declined across all communities, irrespective of whether they are Hindu or Muslim.
The logical conclusion is straightforward. If the government is genuinely concerned about population stabilisation, its focus should be on education, employment, healthcare, family welfare programmes, access to reproductive health services, and above all, women’s empowerment.
The Real Challenge Is Not Population Growth—It Is Population Decline
In fact, both the NFHS findings and demographic research from around the world point to a very different concern. The challenge confronting many societies today is not unchecked population growth, but declining population growth.
According to a study published in The Lancet, one of the world’s most respected scientific journals, India’s population, currently around 1.4 billion, may continue to grow and reach approximately 1.6 billion by 2048. However, because fertility rates are steadily declining, India’s population is projected to begin shrinking after that point.
By the end of the century, India’s population is expected to decline substantially.
Even more significant than the overall decline in numbers is the changing age structure of the population. The proportion of elderly citizens is expected to rise sharply, while the share of the working-age population will steadily decrease.
This will have profound economic consequences. A smaller workforce will be required to support a much larger elderly population. Governments will face growing pressure to provide pensions, healthcare, and social security, while economies may increasingly depend on migration and labour inflows from younger populations elsewhere.
These are the demographic challenges that demand serious attention.
The issue before India is not an imaginary population explosion. The real question is how to create productive employment opportunities for the country’s vast youth population and harness this demographic advantage while it still exists.
At the same time, policymakers must begin preparing for the economic, political, and social consequences of an ageing society that will emerge over the coming decades.
Instead of confronting these real challenges, communal fearmongering and demographic myths are being used to divert public attention from the issues that genuinely matter.
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