Modi’s ethnic daydreams in action by Avani Devi

When Donald Trump fantasized about mass deportations as the cure-all for American woes, the idea was (rightfully) met with resistance, protest, and ridicule. Yet across the globe, India’s Narendra Modi seems to be turning Trump’s 2025 dream into a terrifying blueprint for real-world execution. In a move that mocks the very foundations of the Indian Constitution, Modi’s administration appears to be methodically pushing Indian Muslims, yes, citizens, towards deportation, with Bangladesh as the convenient dumping ground.

This isn’t immigration policy. This is engineered displacement. Ethnic cleansing dressed up as bureaucratic nationalism. A crackdown not on crime, but on identity. And make no mistake, this is not just an “internal matter of India,” as apologists love to claim while wringing their hands and pretending not to see the elephant in the room. The elephant is wearing a saffron sash and humming Vande Mataram.

Let’s get one thing clear from the start: Bangladesh is not India’s storage closet for unwanted Muslims.

This policy is as illegal as it is immoral. Under Indian law, under international law, and under the court of basic human decency, what’s unfolding in Assam and beyond is a breach of everything India once claimed to stand for. The world’s largest democracy now seems to be running a subcontinental version of Trump’s “big beautiful wall,” but instead of building barriers, it’s erecting spreadsheets of exclusion.

The National Register of Citizens (NRC), brought to national attention in Assam, is the bureaucratic sword being swung with surgical cruelty. In theory, it’s meant to weed out undocumented migrants. In practice, it’s a selective weapon of disenfranchisement. Millions, largely from Muslim communities, found their names missing from the list. Despite having lived, worked, and paid taxes in India for decades, some born long after Partition, these individuals are now branded “foreigners.”

And where do you send millions of “foreigners” who aren’t actually foreign? Enter Bangladesh, the neighbor with no say in this Kafkaesque drama. Dhaka has repeatedly, and correctly, stated that these people are not Bangladeshi citizens. But facts are as useful to Modi’s vision as umbrellas in a hurricane: entirely decorative.

What’s more ironic is that Modi, the self-declared custodian of Indian heritage, is stomping over the very tenets of Indian civilization, pluralism, tolerance, and rule of law. The Indian Constitution doesn’t allow discrimination based on religion. The Supreme Court hasn’t greenlit any mass deportation. Even the foundational philosophy of Hindutva, if you strip away the aggressive nationalism, claims inclusivity as a value. But perhaps the only thing Modi’s regime is inclusive of is hypocrisy.

And for those who are cheering from the sidelines, treating this as a justified house-cleaning, one word of caution: policies born in fear eventually come home to everyone. First, they came for the Muslims. Then?

What we’re seeing is not the work of a mature democracy addressing complex demographic issues. It’s the dangerous romanticism of a government playing god with borders, citizenship, and lives. Deportation is not a correction of history; it’s a mutation of it. Especially when it’s backed by a hunger for legacy more than legitimacy.

India deserves better. Muslims in India are Indian. They don’t need to prove loyalty through arbitrary documents any more than Hindus do. They don’t need to be threatened with deportation to a country they’ve never been to, just because they’re convenient scapegoats for Modi’s nation-building narrative.

And Trump, watching from afar, might nod with approval. But the rest of us should be alarmed, not just because of the cruelty involved, but because we’ve seen this movie before. It doesn’t end well.

Not for the Muslims. Not for India. And not for anyone who believes borders are made of lines, not