SULTAN M HALI
W HILE the world is totally dedicated to com bating the epidemic COVID-19, India, ruled by its extremist Hindutva ideology, is scapegoating Muslims and blaming them for spreading the deadly virus. Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), an active arm of the Sangh Parivar, has called for a complete ban on Tablighi Jamaat and its Nizamuddin Markaz besides freezing its bank accounts and closure of all its offices for spike in COVID-19 cases across India. The majority of pro-government Indian news channels are linking the Coronavirus outbreak to Muslim missionary group the Tablighi Jamaat and its gathering held in New Delhi, stoking anti-Muslim sentiments. Coronavirus cases are not specific to any community. However, extremist government of BJP in India is especially targeting Muslims to fulfil their evil designs. While extremist Hindu groups are trying to allay the epidemic with cow urine or collectively banging pots and pans, perhaps predictably, as criticism of aspects of the lockdown has grown, so has Islamophobia. Across cable television and India’s ubiquitous WhatsApp groups, the country’s 200 million Muslims have become a convenient victim for the spread of the virus. As the centerpiece of this campaign, government and media figures have implied sinister intent behind a peaceful religious gathering that was held in the nation’s capital, New Delhi. Between March 8 and March 10, two weeks before the lockdown was announced, members of the Muslim missionary organization Tablighi Jamaat gathered from across India and Southeast Asia in the Nizamuddin neighbourhood of Delhi for a long-scheduled event. Many of the missionaries then left from Delhi to visit villages and towns around India to preach Islam, some of them carrying the coronavirus with them. Now the Indian government is engaged in a large-scale effort to locate and test anyone who may have recently visited the society’s global headquarters. Officials say that more than 1,400 coronavirus patients are linked to Tablighi Jamaat across 17 states. Some prominent outlets have claimed a majority of new cases in India are linked to the event, but those numbers are almost certainly distorted in the absence of widespread testing. Angry messages have exploded across Twitter via hashtags like #CoronaJihad, #Biojihad, and #TablighiJamatVirus claiming Muslims intentionally spread the virus. These same conspiracy theories have been disseminated through the country’s ruling party officials, national television channels, and journalists ominously querying whether “Indian agencies should seriously probe if #CoronaJihad is a ground reality.” Meanwhile, a swerve of fake videos are being shared purporting to show Muslims conspiring to spread the Coronavirus, including one allegedly capturing Muslim men intentionally sneezing on others to infect them. In fact, the video was filmed months ago and had no connection to the Coronavirus whatsoever. Tablighi Jamaat is a non-political organization that has existed for nearly 100 years and currently operates in 150 countries. It aims to promote religious reform and instill purist Islamic values in other Muslims. It furthers this goal through preaching missions, in which members of Tablighi Jamaat connect with other Muslims in their own communities. For many of the organization’s members, it has been a challenging time. Authorities have filed police reports against several people from the organization for violating lockdown rules and not maintaining social distancing. The government has also blacklisted 960 foreign nationals who came to India for the event. However, Tablighi Jamaat officials point out that as late as March 13, days after their event in New Delhi, the central government said the Coronavirus was not a national emergency. In the immediate aftermath of the lockdown, the group asked for police support for the 2,000 people stranded at their premises, and the request went ignored until new incidents of the coronavirus began popping up in other states with links to Tablighi Jamaat. It’s clear that Tablighi Jamaat was hardly alone in failing to immediately halt large gatherings: Multiple largescale religious, political, and personal events were taking place in Delhi and all across the country until the lockdown came into effect on the night of March 24. Some Hindu temples in the State of Gujarat saw upward of 10,000 visitors between March 18 and March 19. In the second week of March, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party celebrated an electoral victory in the State of Madhya Pradesh with a massive rally in the streets. And in Punjab, 40,000 people were quarantined after the death of a man who attended a Sikh religious festival. These events have not attracted a fraction of the vitriol now faced by members of Tablighi Jamaat. Since the election of Modi and the BJP in 2014, Hindu-Muslim tension has steadily escalated. Most recently, the country has been embroiled in protests due to the passage of the anti-Muslim Citizenship Amendment Act, which codified a religious requirement for new citizens for the first time in the nation’s history. Tension reached a breaking point in February, when more than 50 people were killed during antiMuslim riots in New Delhi. The Coronavirus outbreak shifted national attention toward containing the spread of the virus, but after the government faced criticism in late March for the unintended consequences of the sudden lockdown—including the thousands of migrant labourers abandoned far from their homes without food or shelter—government leaders began publicizing the events at Tablighi Jamaat. More than a week after the onslaught of negative attention directed toward Tablighi Jamaat, however, the central government now says that it is concerned about “polarization along religious lines.” But ironically it was the government’s own Minister for Minority Affairs who recently described the group’s actions as a “Talibani offence.” —The writer is retired PAF Group Captain and a TV talk show host.
