Recent events in Bihar, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra suggest this is becoming a complicated election issue that requires both political responsibility and judicial wisdom.
Published Aug 11, 2025 | 9:00 AM ⚊ Updated Aug 11, 2025 | 9:53 AM
Crowd gathered at a beach in Mumbai. (iStock)
Synopsis: The Constitution guarantees the right to free movement and residence throughout the territory of India to its citizens under Article 19. Whether it is India or the world at large, we are going through what one might call a nativist revival. If nativism grows at the cost of progressive migration and economic growth, we are headed for disturbing times.
Where do you draw the line in a globalised world and a vibrant India where people move from one place to another, sometimes between cities, sometimes between regions, and increasingly between countries to find new opportunities, identities, and cultural affiliations?
The pain of defining one’s home is the stuff of literature, while the glory of seeking fortunes in places away from home is an economic reality. We are living in times where the two intersect with bittersweet consequences.
Amitav Ghosh’s novel, The Shadow Lines, explores the outcomes of national geographical boundaries on personal relationships and identities, with the Partition of India in 1947 as a focal point. West Bengal became a province in India after a line divided it from its East during the British Raj, and after a few decades as East Pakistan, it became Bangladesh.
The ghost of those shadow lines is not leaving us, as random Bengalis in Delhi, Noida, Gurugram and Maharashtra are being suspected of or sometimes baselessly presumed to be illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.
Recent events in Bihar, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra suggest this is becoming a complicated election issue that requires both political responsibility and judicial wisdom.
Whether it is India or the world at large, we are going through what one might call a nativist revival, and it is a tricky one in a world where the past 50 years have seen various kinds of migration that have helped economic growth while also reducing tensions between cultures and countries. Old tensions are back now in a new context.
Migrants are a big topic in India, Europe and the US. Recent years have seen descendants of Indian-origin migrants become government heads in the UK, Ireland, and Portugal, but the rise of anti-immigrant sentiments in Europe and the emergence of narrow-minded Trumpism in US President Donald Trump’s MAGA (Make America Great Again) campaign have raised the spectre of white nationalism bordering on racism.
However, then, nativism and ethnic or religious bigotry need not be just a Western phenomenon. We have begun to see peculiar patterns in Indian politics that raise serious concerns over the constitutional promise of a free society in India.
The Constitution guarantees the right to free movement and residence throughout the territory of India to its citizens under Article 19. This means citizens can move freely and live in any part of the country, though the Constitution subjects this to “reasonable restrictions” in the public interest, such as tribal rights, as it does for many things.
However, it should be clear to anyone that the political interest of a few parties cannot be equated with the public interest. The worrying trend now is that mob behaviour, police action, and political protests are challenging the right of Indian citizens to move and live anywhere within its territory – and also practise any profession, occupation, trade or business, which is also guaranteed under Article 19.
We recently saw attacks on non-Marathi speakers like Gujarati traders in Mumbai’s suburban areas by Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) while campaigning for the use of the Marathi language, which has become a rallying point of MNS and Shiv Sena’s Uddhav Thackeray (UBT) group to counter the BJP-led state government in partnership with Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena.
Here, we see nativism acquire a linguistic colour helped by political rivalry — but there is also social and cultural legitimacy when groups strive to protect their linguistic identity, though protests should not get violent or target migrants.
Overbearing politics by national parties only give rise to nativist sentiments that we have witnessed in Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra of late, and earlier in Andhra Pradesh when the late NT Rama Rao rose to power as the founder of the TDP on the platform of “Telugu Pride” after a confrontation with the Congress.
Federalism and linguistic identity are legitimate parts of national politics, but not when the poor are targeted and migrants are subject to discrimination or attacks. When red lines are crossed, we also see counter-nativist trends.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has sprung to the support of Bengali migrant workers in Maharashtra after it was reported that they were detained on suspicion that they were Bangladeshis. In Delhi, a police officer faced social media flak after he wrote an official letter to the local representative of the West Bengal government for help in the “Bangladeshi” language, which happens to be, well, Bengali.
The script and the language are the same in Kolkata or Dhaka, and uninformed law enforcers in the national capital have become a new problem in fanning regional tensions. Poor Bengalis in Noida and Gurugram have been leading uneasy lives, and there is also the ugly spectre of “self-deportation” as they head back to their parent states to escape discrimination and bullying in the north.
A bizarre turn happens when toiling migrants get caught in political crossfires, as we are witnessing with Biharis and Bengalis.
While the Election Commission of India (ECI) is facing flak for a controversial revision of Bihar voter rolls in which 65 lakh voters are finding their names deleted, migrant workers from Bihar are finding themselves at the hub of a nativist protest in Tamil Nadu.
The ECI has vehemently rejected allegations by Chennai’s ruling DMK and its allies that it has added approximately 6.5 lakh migrant workers from Bihar to Tamil Nadu’s electoral rolls.
We need to ask: So what if Biharis vote in Tamil Nadu, the way Chennai citizens who speak Telugu and Marwari do, if they meet the rules of long-term residency?
Tamil Nadu has people whose origins can be traced back to Maharashtra – such as superstar Rajnikanth – not to speak of others whose origins lie in Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Rajasthan. Movie star-turned-chief minister MG Ramachandran was a native Malayalam speaker.
Regional parties like the Dalit-centric Viduthalai Chirutthaigal Katchi (VCK) and the Tamil nationalist Naam Tamilar Katchi (NTK) are at the forefront of opposing voting rights for northern migrants.
This flies in the face of the Constitution. It is ironic when parties like the VCK, which idolise BR Ambedkar as a Dalit rights champion and the chief architect of the Constitution of India, join nativist Tamil protests while sidestepping key elements in the Constitution that Dr. Ambedkar steered.
If nativism grows at the cost of progressive migration and economic growth, we are headed for disturbing times. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP may be well-advised not to overplay its Hindu nationalist card because local politicians tend to flag nativist sentiments to retain their base. That is not exactly what the doctor ordered for Modi’s plan to make India a developed “Viksit Bharat’ by 2047.
(Edited by Muhammed Fazil.)
