On Sunday, the Indian government linked more than a thousand cases to the Tablighi Jamaat, a Muslim missionary group that held its annual meeting in a community center in Nizamuddin from March 8-10, days before India declared a health emergency and called for a national lockdown. While most people, including Muslims, agree that holding the annual meeting was irresponsible and endangered many lives, the event has faced a disproportional amount of criticism while generating a cascade of vitriol.
Never mind that various religious groups held temple gatherings across India during the same period of time, putting many lives at risk. In the northern state of Madhya Pradesh, more than 25,000 people have been placed in quarantine after a man who traveled from Dubai performed Hindu rituals with 1,200 people on March 20.
According to Time magazine, tweets with the hashtag #CoronaJihad appeared nearly 300,000 times and were potentially seen by 165 million people. Other hashtags included #BioJihad.
Then the hate found official support when Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, the union minority affairs minister in Modi’s cabinet, called the gathering by the Tablighi Jamaat a “Talibani crime.”
In my own building, a neighbor wrote on the community WhatsApp group that Muslims objecting to Modi’s call to bang and applaud from balconies to mark the end of the day-long curfew must know that the Hindu majority had been tolerating the prayer call from the mosques for a lot longer.
India’s leading news channel, India Today, published a graphic that showed a skull cap and a face mask with a bold red virus over it, claiming Muslims contributed to a majority of coronavirus cases in India. Madhu Trehan, a leading editor in India who headed a prominent website called Newslaundry, also falsely said the Muslim congregation was responsible for 60 percent of cases in the country and mocked Muslims, saying “you can have your virgins.”
The hate peddled on our news channels and our social media has real consequences. A newborn child delivered in an ambulance reportedly died after a hospital refused to admit the family for being Muslim. The husband, Irfan Khan, told a newspaper, “My pregnant wife had to deliver a child. She was referred from Sikri to the Janana Hospital in the district headquarter but the doctors here mentioned that we should go to Jaipur because we are Muslim.”
On April 3, a Muslim man committed suicide after members of his village socially boycotted him for allegedly being in touch with members of the Muslim congregation in Delhi who had tested positive.
I fear for all my fellow citizens, but I know many don’t feel the same way about me and my community.
But now almost two weeks into a lockdown that threatens the life of every Indian, irrespective of faith, class, gender, I am being forced to write on prejudice and majoritarianism yet again, a subject I have raised consistently in this column.
It is unfortunate that during this global crisis, when we should be putting all hate aside, my country and its leaders force me to focus on prejudice yet again, revealing an acute and disturbing crisis of morality.( The Washington Post )
