PM’s ‘Demographic Mission’ betrays desperation and insecurity

Independence Day addresses to the nation have traditionally been stirring and exuded India’s strength and resolve to meet challenges. On Friday, 15 August 2025 however, prime minister Narendra Modi betrayed a certain degree of nervousness and paranoia.

He spoke of meeting squarely the ‘nuclear threat’ to the nation, the threat of a trade war by reducing imports and becoming ‘self-sufficient’ in a mind-blowing range of products and the threat to India’s vital installations and the need to protect them.

All these threats endangering the nation after serving as the PM for 11 years? But that was not all. He became the first prime minister to hand out fulsome praise to the controversial RSS from the ramparts of the Red Fort on Independence Day. The prime minister seemed to be playing on fears of known and unknown enemies, addressing his own constituency and ending the speculation of laying down office at turning 75 years old next month.

What was worse was when he spoke briefly, but eloquently, on the threat posed by infiltrators. He blamed the infiltrators for every failure of his government and in the process threw his home minister and reportedly a contender to his post, Amit Shah, under the bus. He indirectly accepted the failure of his government to stop the infiltrators and the failure of the MHA and agencies like the IB and the BSF.

Even as scores of the Bengali-speaking Muslim poor in metropolitan towns are facing brutal police crackdown, Modi announced a high-powered “demographic mission” in India to contain what he said was “a well-thought-out conspiracy” to change India’s demography through an influx of “ghushpathiya (undocumented immigrants).” The government would set up a high-powered demographic mission to deal with the challenge of demographic change due to infiltration, he said.

Demographic changes, the PM claimed, was sowing the seeds of a fresh crisis. Infiltrators, he declared, were taking away jobs and livelihood from India’s youth, targeting their sisters and daughters and usurping the land of the innocent tribals.

This was creating social tension and causing threats to national security in the border areas. It was a spectacular vote of no-confidence in the home minister Amit Shah and the security agencies, whose job it is to stop infiltration. In one sweep the prime minister passed on the blame for poor employment opportunities, a failure of his government, to the ghuspaithias.

The dog whistle is not new and the RSS has been harping on the widely discredited theory of ‘demographic change’ for a fairly long time. The last assembly election in Jharkhand was fought over this issue and the BJP lost.

It is clear that the ground is being prepared for similar campaigns in Bihar, Assam and West Bengal, if not Tamil Nadu, where assembly elections are due in the next one year or so.

In fact the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) in Mumbai held a screening of the documentary Demography is Destiny on the eve of the Independence Day. TISS claimed in a statement that the film explores India’s shifting demographic trends through census data, historical records, and regional case studies.

The film dramatically highlights a decline in the majority community’s population from 82 per cent in 1881 to approximately 79 per cent in 2011, with future projections estimating a drop to 67 per cent. The film focused on Kashmir, Assam, Bengal, and Western Uttar Pradesh. Not surprisingly, the film is said to discuss conversions, love jihad and declining fertility rates of Hindu women.

How much of the decline in Hindu population is due to migration to other countries and renunciation of Indian citizenship by better-off Indians and professionals has not presumably been discussed in the film. A decline of Hindu population from 82 per cent in 1881 to 80 per cent in 2011 has apparently provoked the production of the documentary, which projects that the majority population will decline to 67 per cent in the next 130 years.  

This nonsense has been debunked by experts for years. By raising it on the Independence Day from the Red Fort, the prime minister has given it a fresh lease of life and legitimacy. Sunil Ambekar, Akhil Bharat Prachar Pramukh of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), was the chief guest at the screening. TISS had last year promoted before the Maharashtra assembly election a half-baked research warning of a similar threat of demographic change in Mumbai.

If the nation is as insecure as the PM’s address indicates, it is a cause for concern. However, as is usual with him, the address may well be a desperate gambit of a beleaguered leader. With his failures staring at his face, the only ‘stunning’ but tired scheme that he could think of is offering incentives to private sector companies for hiring people and a sum of Rs 15 thousand for youth getting their first job in the private sector. Once again this appears to be a last-minute and poorly designed plan to shore up the address.