French positivist thinker Auguste Comte (1798-1857), famed as the Father of Sociology, once said: “Demography is destiny”. What he meant was that a society’s population size, structure and growth determined its political and economic future.But when our Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched his High-Power Demography Mission last week, it was not innocent at all. It was out and out his political strategy to raise the bogey of illegal Bangladeshis living in India – the ghuspaithiya who are out on their mission to destabilise our country.Without going into the central theory of migration, which is that ‘water seeks its own level’ – the best examples of which are the Mexican and other Latin American migrations into the United States, and also that of Indians through the Donkey Trail, which President Donald Trump has raised to a feverish pitch – it may be noted that by putting ghuspaithiya politics on the centre stage, Modi has a much larger agenda than that of Trump.After all, Mexico is also Christian like the United States. As such, religion does not come into play there. But that Bangladesh is a Muslim nation makes all the difference for Modi’s India. Otherwise, a couple of million, or even more, in a 150-crore-strong India should not steal our sleep. One can see that only a few hundred or thousand Bangladeshis are lining up at the India-Bangladesh border points to return home, fearing their potential imprisonment.Modi’s Demography Mission was born on August 15, 2025. While delivering his Independence Day speech that day, he thundered, “Today, I … warn the nation of a grave concern … As part of a deliberate conspiracy, the demography of the country is being altered … These [Bangladeshi] infiltrators are snatching away the livelihoods of our youth … targeting our sisters and daughters. This will not be tolerated… it creates a crisis for national security … We have decided to launch a High-Power Demography Mission [to address the problem] in a … time-bound manner.” (emphasis added).The message was clear, but now that it has been translated into policy, it is evident that it was yet another Hindutva propaganda item. Otherwise, such an ambitious agenda would not have been left to the wisdom of non-demographer bureaucrats alone.The five-member committee that has been tasked with the job is chaired by retired Justice Prakash Prabhakar Navlekar, 83. Its other members are Mrityunjay Kumar Narayan, the Census Commissioner, retired IAS officer Durga Shankar Mishra, retired IPS officer Balaji Srivastava, and Dr Shamika Ravi, member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister. Demography is a developed stream of social sciences which should not be treated as everybody’s cup of tea.The most comical part of the story, however, was what Navlekar, the committee’s chairman, confessed to the press: “I was surprised when they announced my name.” He admitted the subject of demography was alien to him. How can a nation which claims to have become the vishwaguru take such important matters so casually, particularly when they have huge repercussions for India-Bangladesh relations?Also read: ‘Demographic Change’ Committee Minus a Demographer? Why Sole Focus on Illegal Immigration is a ProblemIt is unimaginable that for the sake of electoral gains some Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) politicians can talk such utter nonsense. For example, the West Bengal BJP leader Subhendu Adhikari, while campaigning for his party in December 2025, told reporters covering his march to the Kolkata office of the Bangladesh Deputy High Commissioner that Bangladesh should be “taught a lesson like Israel taught Gaza”.Adhikari supplied a weird figure that 1.5 crore unauthorised Bangladeshis were in West Bengal alone. When even the government of India shies away from giving any accurate figure, Adhikari had the audacity to provide such an outlandish figure. Now that he is the Chief Minister of West Bengal, will he evict and push 1.5 crore Muslims from his state into Bangladesh?File photo of police taking away alleged illegal immigrants detained at different localities of Ahmedabad, Gujarat, April 26, 2025. Photo: PTILet us, as Indians, reconcile ourselves to the fact that most estimates about the number of ghuspaithiyas are at best guesses. Even America, with far better scientific tools, gives only rough estimates about unauthorised settlers there.The India-Bangladesh border is almost 4,100 km long, of which hundreds of kilometres are riverine or swampy. During the rainy seasons, they become impossible to locate. (I personally experienced this during my visits to parts of the Assam-Bangladesh border.)Also read: When Strategy Slips Into Spectacle: Weaponising Nature and the Erosion of Professional Border ManagementAnother problem I sensed was about fencing. Many among us think that it is the last word in solving the problem of illegal immigration. But barbed wires routinely rust and the supporting cement pillars often get washed away during the floods which are common in those regions. Also, it is much easier to locate the borders on maps, but not at all so on the ground as I also noticed on the India-Myanmar border.There is yet another issue. Although the 2027 Census exercise is now in full gear, I seldom come across any demography related debate in the press, TV or social media. There was a time when before any decadal census there used to be lively debates in the media among demographers and anthropologists. Some notable figures were Ashish Bose, Sripati Chandrasekhar, Chidambara Chandrasekaran, P.N. Mari Bhat, K.S. James, Mahendra K. Premi, B.K. Roy Burman, K.S. Singh and others. They used to discuss threadbare the challenges the census should deal with, and those invariably included illegal migrations from Bangladesh. But those debates are now history.Let me conclude this essay by presenting a perspective. A country of India’s size, history and socio-linguistic make-up we will have to live with the problem of unauthorised settlers from poorer neighbours, whether it likes it or not. The same is true for America because of its history, multiethnic societal texture and unprecedented prosperity. However much a Trump or a Modi may push the question of unauthorised settlers in America or India to earn some brownie points at the hustings, as seasoned politicians they know well the limits of their hyperbole.Postscript: In a recent TV discussion on the fertility rate in Kashmir, the participating doctors from Kashmir expressed their concern about the alarmingly low birth rate in the valley, which has a 97% Muslim population. As against the ideal replacement fertility rate of 2.1, Kashmir has recorded an alarmingly low rate of 1.4.I pray it does not send a wrong signal to the BJP: ‘Look, how we have taught the Kashmiri Muslims a lesson by defanging their special status. If we can do this in the valley, why cannot we do the same in the other Muslim-majority areas of India?’Let God save our Bharat.Partha Ghosh retired as professor at JNU.