Narendra Modi was trying to please the RSS by asking ‘Bangladeshi immigrants’ to be ready to leave India after May 16, at a rally in West Bengal’s Serampore on Sunday.
By doing so he not only polarising voters on religious lines but at the same time pleasing the RSS.
Modi, who has been shifting his tone and tenor to suit the political landscape, donned his Hindutva poster-boy avatar in West Bengal. He tore into Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee, indicting her of vote bank politics and “rolling out the red carpet for the Bangladeshis.”
Even if he abstained from specifying whether the threat was only for Bangladeshi Muslims, Modi had made the distinction at an earlier rally in Assam. In Silchar while addressing a rally in February, he had announced that Hindu migrants from Bangladesh must be accommodated in the country and promised to do away with their detention camps.
This was in keeping with RSS outlook which has always made the differentiation between Bangladeshi refugees (Hindus) and Bangladeshi infiltrators (Muslims).
According to a senior RSS functionary that Muslim immigrants have over 30 countries in the world where they can go but the Hindus can only come to India. He further said that unabated illegal immigration from Bangladesh had changed the demographic and political profile of neighbouring Indian states of Assam,West Bengal and Tripura. Assam has 34% Muslim population as per the 2011 census, up from 23% in 1971.