Modi's party chief vows to throw illegal immigrants in India into Bay of Bengal

Published April 12, 2019
Amit Shah, president of India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) addresses party workers in Ahmedabad, India, February 12. — Reuters
Amit Shah, president of India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) addresses party workers in Ahmedabad, India, February 12. — Reuters

The head of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ruling Hindu nationalist party took his invective against illegal Muslim immigrants to a new level this week as the general election kicked off, promising to throw them into the Bay of Bengal.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President Amit Shah referred to such illegal immigrants as “termites”, a description he also used last September, when he drew condemnation from rights groups. The US State Department also noted the remark in its annual human rights report.

“Infiltrators are like termites in the soil of Bengal,” Shah said on Thursday at a rally in the eastern state of West Bengal, as voting in India's 39-day general election started.

“A Bharatiya Janata Party government will pick up infiltrators one by one and throw them into the Bay of Bengal,” he said, referring to illegal immigrants from neighbouring Muslim-majority Bangladesh.

Shah nevertheless reiterated the BJP's stance on giving citizenship to Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs from Bangladesh and Pakistan.

India is already working on deporting an estimated 40,000 Rohingya Muslims living in the country after fleeing Buddhist-majority Myanmar. New Delhi considers them a security threat.

The comments from Shah, the right-hand man of Modi, drew criticism from the main opposition Congress party as well as minority groups. On Twitter, some users likened his speech to a suggestion of ethnic cleansing.

“The statement is a direct attack on the identity and integrity of the nation as a secular state,” the Kerala Christian Forum, a group from the southern state, said in a statement. It demanded an apology from Shah.

A BJP spokesman declined to comment on the speech.

Congress spokesman Sanjay Jha said Shah's remarks were a deliberate attempt to polarise voters along sectarian lines.

“The political business model of the BJP is to raise the communal temperature, keep it at a boil, and to keep India in a permanent religious divide,” Jha said.

Opinion

Editorial

‘Hybrid’ talk
22 Jun, 2025

‘Hybrid’ talk

IN the past, while most elected governments would at least publicly bristle at the mention of being partners in ...
Farcical nomination
Updated 22 Jun, 2025

Farcical nomination

Many citizens have expressed dismay and embarrassment over this symbolic capitulation to the US presidency.
Sunken dreams
22 Jun, 2025

Sunken dreams

THE heartrending fate of people escaping conflict, deprivation and instability across the globe is among the...
Tax tussles
Updated 21 Jun, 2025

Tax tussles

Lawmakers should try and fix the broken tax system rather than advocating for new amnesties.
Seniority crisis
21 Jun, 2025

Seniority crisis

THE Constitutional Bench of the Supreme Court has determined that there is nothing wrong with Pakistan’s president...
Monsoon readiness
21 Jun, 2025

Monsoon readiness

OUR cities are once again staring down the very real prospect of waterlogged streets and stalled life with PMD’s...