Opinion Repeated invocation of ‘ghuspaithiya’ is nothing but dog-whistling

At first glance, the word ghuspaithiya appears to be a reference to illegal immigration, a legitimate concern for any nation. But careful scrutiny of the timing and space where the PM or his loyalists invoke this term reveals something more insidious. In the recent past, it was used just before the Maharashtra elections, then Delhi and now Bihar, especially in political rallies and public addresses. In Bihar, this has been taken to another level by raising a question over the Bihari people’s citizenship through the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR).

If indeed there was large-scale infiltration, what have the border security forces, intelligence agencies, state governments, and central governments been doing about it? Why has the central government recently extended the date, making non-Muslim immigrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan who have entered India illegally till December 2024 eligible to apply for Indian citizenship? There can only be one conclusion: This cynical and deliberate dog-whistling strategy is designed to stigmatise certain communities, inflame public fears, and bifurcate Indian citizenship into a binary of insiders versus outsiders. The PM’s choice of the word ghuspaithiya is not accidental. It is not a technical term, nor a neutral descriptor, but carries the imagery of invasion, theft, and illegitimacy. By deploying it repeatedly, he seems to tap into visceral anxieties about borders, identity, and national security, while simultaneously directing those anxieties toward identifiable groups.

This is the essence of dog-whistling: Language that allows plausible deniability while sending a clear, exclusionary signal to a targeted audience. To the general public, ghuspaithiya may sound like a warning about illegal entrants. But to core political constituencies, it resonates as a charge against minorities, particularly Muslims, especially in states like Assam, West Bengal and Bihar, where such issues have long been weaponised, without much evidence. By constantly invoking the spectre of intruders, the government and the party manufacture a fear that the nation is under siege — not from external military threats, but from faceless, nameless “outsiders” who allegedly sap resources, alter demographics, and undermine security. The danger of such rhetoric is not only that it exaggerates or distorts the scale of the problem but that it places entire communities under suspicion.

The line between an actual undocumented migrant and a citizen with a similar name, language, or faith begins to blur. Families who have lived on Indian soil for generations suddenly find themselves forced to prove their legitimacy through endless bureaucratic hurdles. The state, in effect, begins to treat its own people as guilty until proven innocent. This dynamic was starkly visible during the debates around the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam. The discourse around ghuspaithiya fed a climate of paranoia, leaving millions scrambling for documents, terrified of statelessness. The rhetoric of intrusion was not a policy debate; it was a political weapon aimed at consolidating votes through fear.

India’s Constitution envisions a republic built on equality, fraternity, and secularism. Citizenship is not tethered to religion; belonging is not contingent on identity markers of language or faith. By repeatedly invoking ghuspaithiya, the PM undermines this constitutional ethos. The word plants the suspicion that some Indians are less Indian than others. It suggests that citizenship is conditional, always under question, always revocable. This is not only unjust but corrosive to democracy itself. A republic where vast swathes of people are forced to prove they are not intruders is a republic that has abandoned its moral and constitutional compass. Dog-whistling through terms like ghuspaithiya also serves an authoritarian purpose. By conjuring the image of external threats, governments can deflect attention from pressing internal failures, be it economic distress, unemployment, or the erosion of democratic institutions. The politics of intrusion thrives on distraction. Instead of debating policy or governance, the national conversation is hijacked by an endless hunt for outsiders.

Border management, whether on the western frontier with Pakistan, the eastern stretches adjoining Bangladesh and Myanmar, or the Himalayan boundary with China, is constitutionally and practically the exclusive responsibility of the Union government. The Border Security Force, the Army, the intelligence agencies — all of them fall under central command. If infiltration has truly become a serious threat, then it is less an indictment of the communities being targeted in speeches and more a clear admission that the BJP, after more than a decade at the helm, has failed to deliver on the national security it so loudly claims to champion. So, when the word “ghuspaithiya” is hurled as a political weapon in domestic rallies, it is also a tacit confession that border policy, surveillance, fencing, and diplomatic engagement with neighbours have fallen short under this government.

National security and border management are indeed serious issues, but they cannot be addressed through inflammatory language that collapses the distinction between real policy concerns and targeted bigotry. If India is to preserve its constitutional promise, it must reject the politics of stigmatisation and reaffirm the idea that no citizen should ever have to prove, again and again, that they are not an intruder in their own land.

The writer is a Rajya Sabha MP, Rashtriya Janata Dal. His recent book is In Praise of Coalition Politics and Other Essays on Indian Democracy