Kolkata mayor, Firhad ‘Bobby’ Hakim, addressed a group of Muslim students from the stage on December 13, 2024. As the most prominent political face of the community in the state, he took it upon himself to boost the youngsters’ morale.

“In West Bengal, we are 33 per cent, and across the country, we are only 17 per cent, and we are called a minority community. But in the coming days, with Allah’s blessings, we will no longer remain a minority," he reassured them, shaking his fist.

This year in July, Vellappally Natesan, the general secretary of the Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana (SNDP) Yogam, claimed at a meeting in Kottayam that Kerala will soon become a Muslim-majority state, thanks to the politics of the Left and the Congress.

Demography had also come up on September 17, 2024, when home minister Amit Shah said that extensive illegal influx of the Kuki-Chin-Zo community from Myanmar to Manipur is at the root of the ethnic bloodshed in the state.

Shah doubled down on this while delivering the Narendra Mohan Smriti Lecture at the Sahitya Srishti Samman ceremony.

“Infiltration, demographic change, and democracy…I want to say without hesitation that until every Indian understands these three issues, we cannot ensure our country, our culture, our languages, and our independence. These three topics were interconnected," he said.

Citing national census data from 1951 to 2011, Shah underpinned his claim. He said the share of the Hindu population in India declined from approximately 84 per cent in 1951 to about 79 per cent in 2011, while the share of the Muslim population increased from 9.8 per cent to 14.2 per cent.

He attributed the Muslim decadal growth rate of 24.6 per cent (2011 data) not to fertility, but to the influx of undocumented individuals.

“I am telling you this because it hasn’t happened because of the fertility rate. It has happened because of infiltration," he said.

Every set of demographic data concurs with what India’s home minister is saying. Illegal infiltration has wrecked societies in the Northeast, West Bengal, and deep south, usurped cultures, and threatened India’s glue as a nation. Illegals often prey on the same religious or ethnic community they come from, cornering jobs, land, and state benefits.

Most importantly, it poses a security nightmare and makes the ground ripe for separatism.

In West Bengal, for instance, the fluid borders have resulted in the Hindu population slipping from 78.45 per cent in 1951 to 70.54 per cent in 2011. Muslims went from 19.85 per cent to 27.01 per cent in the same period, and it is once estimated that it is touching 35 per cent now, with Murshidabad, Malda, and Uttar Dinajpur districts having well over 50 per cent Muslim population rate.

In Assam, the Hindu population dipped by 9.3 per cent while the Muslim population surged by 9.5 per cent in the same time. Assam recorded 34.22 per cent Muslims back in 2011.

All this makes the case watertight for the fuller implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and getting a strict National Register of Citizens (NRC) done nationwide.

These two, along with the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, could become the bulwark needed against the demographic war which is being waged against India. This war is funded by Islamist agencies and Deep State actors through a web of NGOs, media platforms and journalists, human rights bodies, and pliant politicians eager to accumulate vote banks at the nation’s cost.

Of the nearly 66 lakh voters deleted from the Bihar poll list, a large section are illegal immigrants who got their papers made by dubious means.

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‘Demography is destiny’ is not a hollow trope. It rings true across every inch of this diverse nation, yet many of us need the home minister to make us hear and heed it.

Abhijit Majumder is the author of the book, ‘India’s New Right’. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.

In the soft, blurry light of a fall day in Kashmir, Saqib Ahmad’s hands are occupied with the earth, but his head is wrestling with an abstract world of promises. Working on his apple orchard on the mild slopes outside Wailoo, in north Kashmir’s Baramulla, he is speaking not as an ideologue but as a practical man measuring time not in agricultural cycles but in terms of governments. He knows that the soil does not lie; it produces what is demanded. As for politics, he has learned it might often be different.

“People voted with hope, but what they got was disappointment," he is steady, but his voice carries a wisdom that years of working may not have given him. “Whether it is jobs for young people or infrastructure improvement, all that has been promised is just talk."

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