Hyderabad: India has just announced a 14-day 'graded' extension to the COVID-19 related national lockdown that will now extend till mid May and a macro review will be undertaken to assess the degree to which the insidious virus has been quarantined and contained. Experts are hoping that with effective citizen compliance, the appropriate degree of herd immunity would have developed progressively for the lockdown restrictions to be further relaxed and some degree of normalcy restored across the country.
Concurrently, another malignant virus has been spreading through the body politic of India and that is communal discord with a specific anti-Muslim focus. If the spread of this societal virus is not objectively recognized and quarantined effectively – there is a high probability that in the long term, this virus will be the more debilitating for India's comprehensive security and the well-being of its 1.3 billion citizens.
The catalyst for this latent anti-Muslim sentiment was the manner in which the mid-April Tablighi congregation in Nizamuddin, New Delhi had ignored the COVID protocols and a surge in COVID contamination was evidenced. This was avoidable and legal action is being pursued. However this matter was whipped up in the popular consciousness in a very insidious manner by certain sections of the media and the corrosive reduction was that a 'corona jihad' was being waged against India. A number of incidents of persecution and intimidation of Muslim citizens – particularly street vendors and vegetable hawkers came to the fore. In some cases elected representatives (MLAs) were also involved in abetting this anti-Muslim sentiment.
The communal bias in the country was growing and this is what prompted both PM Narendra Modi and RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat to apply the required corrective. On Sunday (April 26), Bhagwat in a televised address cautioned that demonizing one community for the transgressions of a few was not desirable at a time when the larger national challenge is the containment of the COVID virus from spreading. Bhagwat noted: "If anyone out of anger or fear does something wrong, we cannot blame the whole community and distance from them."
Read: Tablighi Jamaat: Irresponsible, but target of selective media bias
A week earlier (April 19) PM Modi had also stepped in and sought to advise aggrieved citizens that unity and brotherhood were the need of the hour to deal with the corona challenge. He noted in a tweet : "COVID-19 does not see race, religion, colour, caste, creed, language or borders before striking. Our response and conduct thereafter should attach primacy to unity and brotherhood. We are in this together: PM @narendramodi." And in an important emphasis, Modi added that for India, "The future will be about togetherness and resilience."
However, this advice by both Modi and Bhagwat does not seem to have had any significant impact on BJP cadres and in late April two UP MLAs were seen asking local people not to buy vegetables from Muslim vendors and preventing entry into residential areas. The allegation made was that these vendors were more prone to the COVID infection and would thereby facilitate the spread of the virus.
To its credit, the BJP has issued a show-cause notice to the two UP MLAs and the party President JP Nadda is understood to have 'pulled up' the local leadership for not preventing such divisive communal articulation.
The collateral damage to India's image due to these unsavoury developments has also been noted in the external domain. Any issue related to religion invokes an inherent bias in how perceptions are shaped and the commentary and reportage abroad about anti-Muslim COVID related events in India are illustrative.
Read: COVID-19 challenge and Tablighi Jamaat: Need for objective focus
Following a stream of virulent allegations on social media, Princess Hend Al-Qassimi of the UAE made an unprecedented public statement. She spoke out against anti-Muslim social media posts by an Indian expat working in the Emirates and expressed her disappointment with what was being encouraged in the land of Mahatma Gandhi. In an anguished statement she queried: "What happened to India?" and added : "Hinduism is one of the most peaceful religions. Perhaps more than Islam, Christianity and Judaism."
In an unrelated development, the annual report of a US panel, the USCIRF (United States Commission on International Religious Freedom) identified India as a "country of particular concern" for the treatment of its minorities since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was re-elected in 2019. The USCIRF is an independent, bipartisan U.S. federal government commission but experts aver that its findings are not devoid of a certain political orientation. Hence in a predictable move, India has rejected these findings and described them as "biased" and a "new level of misrepresentation."
The image of India to its external interlocutors cannot be totally separated from the reality within the country. And as both Modi and Bhagwat have cautioned – in the present period, when the country is dealing with a very complex pandemic that has infected over three million globally and almost 240,000 people have died – India needs to nurture true unity and fraternity to manage this challenge.
The cadres of the BJP and the RSS must be directed firmly to comply with what their leaders are saying in public - about both the COVID virus and the societal variant.
(The author, C Uday Bhaskar is the director of Society for Policy Studies)
