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29-03-2025
NEW DELHI/ WASHINGTON: In February, the airwaves in India were inundated with images of undocumented Indians shackled in chains on a military deportation flight from the United States. The shocking images made clear the devastating impact President Donald Trump’s draconian crackdown on “illegal immigration” would have on the lives of thousands of vulnerable Indian citizens who had risked everything to make their way to America.
Opposition lawmakers, including Indian National Congress party leader Rahul Gandhi, wore handcuffs and protested the humiliating treatment of deportees outside the parliament in New Delhi. With all of this happening on the eve of Narendra Modi’s visit to the White House, they demanded that the Indian prime minister take up this matter with the US president but during his US news conference, Modi responded to questions about the deportations by stating that his Bharatiya Janata Party-led (BJP-led) government was “fully prepared to bring back illegal migrants”. He added: “The young, vulnerable and poor people of India are fooled into immigration. These are children of very ordinary families who are lured by big dreams and big promises. Many are brought in without knowing why they are being brought in many brought in through a human-trafficking system.”
This response was unusually meek and agreeable for the leader of a Hindu nationalist regime known for its muscular jingoism. It would seem Modi was simply trying to avoid a Volodymyr Zelenskyy-style bust-up with Trump, especially with negotiations ongoing regarding reciprocal tariffs. While this could be true, it is also important to remember that when it comes to immigration, Modi and Trump are on the same page.
Like his American counterpart, Modi relies on grand visions and claims about the nation. This includes the BJP government’s bombastic declarations about the economic health of India.
At the moment, the Indian economy is facing a troubling slowdown, but there also is a longer term, much more entrenched problem: inequality. In the world’s most populous country, the top 1 percent holds 40.1 percent of the national wealth. By the end of 2024, India had 191 billionaires, putting it in third place in the world after the US and China. Meanwhile, it accounted for 70 percent of the global increase in extreme poverty. India is also the country with the largest population (234 million people) living in extreme poverty.
Undocumented Indian migrants in the US are manifestations of this dark reality. The estimates regarding their exact number vary. The Pew Research Center estimated that there were 700,000 undocumented Indian immigrants in the US at the end of 2022, making Indians the third largest national group of undocumented people after Mexicans and Salvadorians. The Department of Homeland Security estimated there are 220,000 undocumented Indian migrants in the country.
Irrespective of the exact size of the population, this cohort of undocumented people contradicts the rosy image of an economic powerhouse under Hindu nationalist leadership. This is why Modi is so eager to shut down this saga of “illegal immigration” as quickly and calmly as possible. He does not want any skirmish with Trump over the treatment of undocumented migrants to grab headlines and expose the cracks in the aura of a rising India but in a Hindu nationalist India, a Trump-like anti-immigration discourse is also not an oddity. For a few years, the Indian right has been ritually raising the issue of a supposed scourge of undocumented migration, especially from Bangladesh.
In 2016, then-Minister of State of Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju claimed there were about “20 million illegal immigrants from Bangladesh in India”. In 2018, Home Minister Amit Shah said there were more than 40 million undocumented immigrants in the country. In 2023, right-wing politicians have also claimed there are now close to 50 million undocumented migrants in India. (Al Jazeera)
