When Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced on August 15, 2025, from the ramparts of the Red Fort that his government would conduct a demographic survey across the country, many wondered what the PM exactly meant by it. What Modi had stated was that the country’s demography was being altered as part of a ‘conspiracy’ and ‘well-planned plot’. Modi called it a grave crisis and said that the survey would address and ‘solve’ this issue.
After a year, his intentions behind the announcement became clear when a High Level Committee on Demographic Change (HLCDC) formed in May this year circulated a 35-point questionnaire to all district collectors/magistrates across the country. The questionnaire sought district-wise and religion-wise data on demographic changes over the past 15 years, covering Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Parsis. Modi, as Chief Minister, had announced a similar survey in Gujarat, but it did not take off.
The Committee, constituted under the chairmanship of Justice (retd.) Prakash Prabhakar Navlekar, comprises the Census Commissioner Mritunjay Kumar Narayan (IAS officer) along with Durga Shankar Mishra (Retd. IAS), Balaji Srivastava (retired IPS) and Dr. Shamika Ravi, an economist and member of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, as members.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in her interim budget speech on February 1, 2024, had announced a similar proposal to constitute a high-powered committee to examine challenges arising from fast population growth and demographic changes. However, her proposal did not materialise. But the Committee came into existence when Modi announced it in his Independence Day speech on August 15, 2025.
When the Ministry of Home Affairs announced the establishment of the HLCDC on May 26, 2026, the Government of India’s information department issued a statement outlining the objectives of the proposed demographic survey. It described demographic change as a serious concern, stating:
“Demographic change is a serious problem linked not only to our sovereignty but also to national security, law and order, major changes in the social structure, and the protection of tribal societies.”
The press note further stated that the HLCDC would undertake a comprehensive assessment of demographic changes across India attributed to ‘illegal immigration’ and other ‘abnormal reasons’.
It also said that the committee will analyse the ‘patterns of abnormal population changes at the level of religious and social communities’ and will present a ‘well-planned and time-bound solution to address the issue’.
The language used by senior government officials reflects a sense of apprehension and suspicion regarding demographic changes, particularly those involving Muslim and Christian minorities. However, the present committee is not tasked with assessing the socio-economic status of any community like the 2006 Sachar Committee that had studied the socio-economic conditions of Muslims.
As the government has not openly stated its intentions, the hidden or underlying meaning of phrases like ‘abnormal changes’ suggests that the shift in the population of Muslims and Christians is a cause of concern for the country, as it, according to the government, poses a threat to ‘national sovereignty and security’, and this needs to be addressed in a planned manner.
The Committee’s terms of reference also require it to recommend an appropriate institutional mechanism for ‘population stabilisation’. The committee has been given one year to submit its report, though the Ministry can extend its tenure by up to six months.
According to reports appearing in the media, the committee has so far visited the Jammu region of Jammu and Kashmir. However, the Committee failed to get a response to its questionnaire from the government of the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir.
Demographic Surveys in Germany, China, Myanmar and Israel Targeted Minorities
When viewed in the light of historical developments in Germany, China, Israel, and Myanmar, these developments raise concerns that Muslims and Christians may be the primary targets of the survey.
Adolf Hitler, the leader of Germany’s Nazi Party (National Socialist German Workers’ Party) and dictator from 1933 to 1945, presided over a regime that exploited population records and administrative data to identify, register, and persecute Jews. The censuses conducted in 1933 and 1939, together with other official records, helped the Nazi authorities identify Jewish populations. These records included information about ancestry, the religious affiliations of grandparents, birth registrations, synagogue records, and municipal registration files. Such information was used to determine who was classified as Jewish under the Nuremberg Laws and to facilitate their systematic exclusion, dispossession, deportation, and eventual mass murder.
Nuremberg Laws institutionalised racial discrimination against Jews and laid the legal foundation for their systematic exclusion from the German society. These laws stripped Jews of full German citizenship and denied them the political rights enjoyed by citizens of ‘German or related blood’. It also prohibited marriages and sexual relations between Jews and people classified as Germans of ‘German or related blood’. These laws, based on racial ideology, intensified the exclusion and persecution of Jews and paved the way for the Holocaust.
The Nuremberg Laws allowed Hitler to use legal and administrative mechanisms to declare certain populations as ‘threats to the nation, restrict their rights, and institutionalise discrimination under the guise of protecting national identity and security’.
So, the German history teaches us that when demographic change is portrayed as a threat to national identity, it can lead to discrimination, exclusion, and persecution of certain communities.
Before Hitler also, demographic data was used to identify and target Jews. During the World War-I, in 1916, the Prussian War Ministry conducted a census of Jewish servicemen in the German Army amid allegations that Jewish soldiers were shirking their military duties. The Jewish soldiers were subsequently punished.
In recent decades, China has collected biometric data and profiled Uyghur Muslims in its Xinjiang province (East Turkistan). Reports by Human Rights Watch and the United Nations have linked these practices to the mass detention and systematic repression of Uyghur Muslims.
United Nations and Human rights groups like Fortify Rights have reported that in neighbouring Myanmar (Burma), demographic surveys were used to strip Rohingya Muslims of their citizenship rights and legally isolate them in camps and restricted zones. The result has been that Rohingya Muslims in large numbers have been forced to leave Myanmar.
Israel also collects and publishes demographic data on its Muslim population, including population size, age, fertility and geographical distribution. Based on these data, Israel targets Muslims in Israel proper and Occupied Palestine, that is, West Bank and Gaza. In West Bank, Jews brought from all over the world are being settled by displacing Palestinian natives.
Human rights groups, academic institutions and international monitors believe that demographic surveys in India might also be used to target Muslims and Christians on the pattern of that done in Germany, China, Myanmar and Israel.
HLCDC Seeks Religion-Wise Data
The questions circulated by HLCDC have sought religion-wise break-up of birth registrations, school enrolment, ration cards, vehicle registration, property transactions and voter registrations. The committee has also asked to identify unusual increases in Aadhaar enrolments, voter IDs and ration cards and furnish information about forged identity documents.
How difficult is it to generate the data sought by the Committee?Several district collectors in Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh, seeking anonymity, when questioned, said that the administration does not prepare religion-wise data that has been sought by the HLCDC. A district collector in Uttar Pradesh told this scribe, “We cannot provide much of the requested information because the government data simply do not maintain it in religion-wise form. The information is being sought from all state government departments, not just one. Collecting it is a massive task that will take considerable time. Moreover, the district administration does not have enough trained staff to compile the data.”
What exactly has the committee sought?The questionnaire seeks information under five broad heads: demographic trends, migration, administrative challenges, institutional mechanisms, and studies and measures adopted by States and Union Territories.For example, States have been asked to provide details of districts showing ‘unusual school enrolment trends inconsistent with historical birth rates’, along with possible reasons.
The committee has sought religion- and district-wise voter-registration data for the past 15 years concerning individuals ‘without prior-generation birth certificates or familial legacy records’, including any trends or geographical concentrations noticed by authorities.
States have similarly been asked to identify unusual increases in Aadhaar enrolments, ration cards and voter IDs, as well as cases involving forged identity documents.
Another set of questions examines changes in religious composition, particularly in cities, industrial centres, border districts, tribal regions and areas governed by the Fifth and Sixth Schedules of the Constitution.
The committee has also sought State government studies, intelligence assessments, commission reports and White Papers examining such changes.
What information has been sought on religious institutions and tribal areas?The questionnaire asks for district-wise data on religious structures, including temples, mosques and churches, established during the previous 15 years. It also asks whether GIS mapping or other technology has been used to identify such structures.
States have been asked to provide information on changes in the religious composition of Scheduled Tribe populations and furnish studies, intelligence assessments or commission reports concerning religious conversion among tribal communities. The committee wants district-wise trends, possible reasons and details of action taken by authorities.
The information sought is quite significant because Christian population has significantly increased in several tribal districts of Gujarat. Vyara assembly constituency in Tapi district of South Gujarat is represented for the last four terms by Punabhai Gamit, a protestant Christian. According to information, tribals in this district converted to Christianity in the last 30 years only.
Likewise, the Christian population in Meghalaya that was only 25% in the 1951 Census, increased to 75% in the 2011 Census. Similarly, the Christian population in Nagaland rose from 46% in 1951 to 88% in the Census 2021. The Christian population in Manipur rose sharply from 11.84% in the 1951 Census to 41.29% in the 2011 Census, shifting from a small minority to near parity with the Hindu population.
The Committee has also sought information concerning tribal land transfers, illegal transfers and encroachments in tribal and Scheduled Areas.The education-related questions include details of government, private and religious educational institutions in tribal-dominated districts, as well as any GIS mapping of religious educational institutions, including madrasas.
How does illegal immigration figure in the exercise?Illegal immigration is another major component of the committee’s terms of reference and questionnaire. States have been asked for information on operational detention centres and the identification, detention, deportation or repatriation of undocumented migrants.
The committee has also sought information about cases in which undocumented migrants were allegedly found using forged documents, as well as cases linking them to organised crime, human trafficking or narcotics offences.It wants States to describe the intelligence, technical and community-level mechanisms used to identify undocumented migrants.
The questionnaire goes a step further by asking States what policy directives, executive orders or amendments to land and municipal laws they have introduced during the past 15 years to curb unauthorised migration and settlement.It has also sought suggestions on whether fresh legislation is required to strengthen surveillance and take action to ‘reverse abnormal religious demographic change’.
The Committee Also Wants Data from the Election Commission
The committee has also approached the Election Commission for information concerning people excluded from electoral rolls on citizenship grounds.On May 27, the Supreme Court, while upholding the special intensive revision (SIR) exercise in Bihar, held that the EC could verify citizenship to the limited extent necessary to determine whether a person should be included in or excluded from the electoral roll.
The court directed the EC to refer to the Centre, for adjudication by a competent authority under the Citizenship Act, 1955, the names of electors who had figured in Bihar’s 2003 electoral roll but were removed during the SIR on the ground that they were not citizens.
The Committee is reported to have met EC officials in this connection. But it is not known if the EC provided data on people excluded during the SIR exercise on suspicion of being foreign nationals staying illegally in India.
Is India experiencing rapid population growth?At the national level, recent fertility and birth-rate indicators point in the opposite direction.The Sample Registration System (SRS) report for 2024 puts India’s birth rate at 18.3 births per 1,000 population, down from 21 in 2014.The National Family Health Survey-5, published in 2022, placed India’s Total Fertility Rate (TFR), or the average number of children born to a woman over her reproductive years, at 2.0, below the replacement level of 2.1.
The committee’s inquiry, therefore, is not limited to overall population growth. Its questionnaire concentrates heavily on changes in the geographical and religious composition of populations, migration and what it describes as abnormal demographic changes.
Have security agencies raised similar concerns earlier?Police and intelligence agencies have previously flagged demographic changes in border areas.At the annual Directors General and Inspectors General of Police conference in 2021, officers from Uttar Pradesh and Assam submitted papers examining population changes in districts bordering Nepal and Bangladesh. However, they did not give the reasons for such changes in the border region of the two states.
A subsequent compilation by the Intelligence Bureau said studies presented at the conference had used Census figures, National Family Health Survey data, electoral rolls and local surveys to examine changes in border States, districts, subdivisions and villages.The papers argued that demographic changes in the border belt posed a national security challenge and proposed strengthening intelligence networks and policing in such areas.
The Assam Police paper estimated population growth between 2011 and 2021 within 10 km of the Bangladesh border at 31.45%, compared with projected national and State growth of 12.5% and 13.54%, respectively. The Uttar Pradesh paper said that among 1,047 villages in seven districts bordering Nepal, 303 had a Muslim population of between 30% and 50%, while 116 had a Muslim population exceeding 50%.
The proposals arising from the papers included more police stations in border areas, strengthening intelligence networks, village-level defence committees and greater involvement of border residents in border management.
What has been the BJP’s stand in the past on religion-specific data?The collection of religion-specific administrative data has a political history.In 2006, when it was the principal Opposition party, the BJP opposed recommendations of the Sachar Committee, which had been appointed by the UPA government in 2005 to examine the social, economic and educational condition of Muslims. The BJP questioned the constitutional basis of religion-specific measures and argued that religion-based reservation would be socially divisive.
[The writer is Chief Editor of India Tomorrow news portal. Email: itnchiefeditor@gmail.com]