Who's a worthy Indian? : The legal price of xenophobic politics

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/evictions-expulsions-muslims-bangladesh-precede-indian-state-polls-2025-07-28/

Sri City: In May 2025, the American Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, would be questioned in a Senate hearing about the term, Habeas Corpus (the right to a due process and prevention of unlawful detention), amidst a human outcry over inhumane to often unlawful deportations of migrants and American citizens. In a recent viral video, Noem would fail to define the legal principle correctly which presented a void of intelligence amongst not just homeland security within the United States in democratic rights and legal precedents, but amongst the Trump administration at large. Across the Atlantic, along with sharp critique towards the American government for inhumane treatment of migrants, similar questions have arisen especially with a rise of xenophobia, or hatred of foreigners and immigrants, and it’s manifestation into minority hatred and communalism internationally. One of the countries currently undergoing a series of reflections and questions, is India. 

Over the past 2 years, Indian society along with being horrified by images of Indian nationals being inhumanely deported from the United States, were increasingly forced to confront the brutality towards Bengali muslim and Bihari migrant workers nationwide who’ve consistently been accused of being foreign residents. In early 2025, Khairul Islam, a former school teacher, was allegedly deported to Bangladesh accused of being a foreigner despite being an Indian citizen. Although reunited with his family later, his story would be shared by many individuals, if not entire communities, who have been victimised by  the products of xenophobic politics from Maharashtra to Assam. In effect, through the resulting bureaucracy, many individuals including Indian nationals have found themselves effectively becoming illegal human beings through the denial of their right to statehood and nationality. The environment of accusations and deportations have been made possible not only due to present Islamaphobic narratives towards Bengali muslims, but also due an erosion of legal empathy, and contradictory standards for refugees within the country. 

In a supreme court hearing in December 2025 on due process and prevention of deportation for the Rohingya community reported by the legal portal LiveLaw, the chief justice of India Surya Kant commented “should intruders be given a red carpet welcome?”. Despite documented evidences and testimonies of persecution and genocide of Rohingya’s in Myanmar against the community by human rights groups, the community within mainstream discourse has often been depicted as illegal immigrants rather than refugees of a genocide who sought to alter demographics and claim land in the name of religious warfare. Ironically, earlier in May 2025, according to the Deccan Herald, the supreme court would suspend the eviction of 800 Pakistani Hindus from Delhi on the grounds of protection from persecution. This seemingly discriminatory standard despite both communities victimised from violence, has created a hierarchy on supposedly whose the most desirable, and has consequentially fed into prejudiced narratives in state and national politics electorally. Although many civil society figures, especially retired judges would criticise the chief justice’s comments on the Rohingya community, what the supreme court’s comparative judgement revealed was a contradiction not just in who is worthy of being protected, but manifests into who is worthy of being a citizen. It would be through arbitrary and often hypocritical standards of whose a citizen, where even Indian nationals themselves have been found their own lived experiences and proof of nationality questioned. Legal ignorance in the process has generated a fixed label for citizenship and thus twists the law into being obscurantist. This has meant that  ideals like Habeas Corpus are ignored, and the law becomes offensively prejudiced, and emboldening violence. Violence in particular, increasingly has been reported through attacks not just on Bengali Muslim migrant workers, but through reinforced prejudice and stereotypes on other migrant and minority communities as invasive. 

The climax of xenophobic politics would be witnessed in Maharashtra especially during the Mumbai BMC (Bombay Municipal Corporation) elections of 2025 to 2026, where the fear of demographic change and conspiracies like ‘population jihad’ and ‘hawker jihad’ from Rohingyas and Bangladeshis became a noticeable campaign amongst Hindu nationalists both amongst candidates and even civil society like influencers presenting the extensive reach of xenophobic politics. The resulting consequences of such campaigning has been credited to have influenced policy involving technology. In January 2026, Firstpost and NDTV reported how chief minister Fadnavis would be collaborating with IIT Bombay to develop an AI recognition system based on accents and language to supposedly work with the promise of removing illegal immigrants from Mumbai. The human outcry that would result from this presented not just the fact that technology was being co-opted in xenophobia, but even how Indianness and citizenship are being defined rigidly in prejudiced eyes. The language an individual may speak, the accent of the language, to increasingly even arbitrary to subjective observations like demeanor may in the future through precedent define worthiness of nationality and in the process, create a technological justification to withhold constitutional liberties that risks violating the rights and protections of the supposed worthy Indian also. 

Although civil society has been presently vocal against xenophobic politics and the misuse of technology, Indian society at large should also heed to how xenophobic politics brutalises national identity. Increasingly, a country’s refugee policies tends to be a litmus test and a forecast on not just openness and social inclusion, but even on whether future opinions and policy trends like acceptance of mass surveillance, and constitutional rights being dismissed find fertile ground.