Caught Unawares By Pandemic, An Unprepared Govt Laid Blame At Tablighis’ Door: Report

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Mahesh Trivedi | India Tomorrow

AHMEDABAD—From 30 January, 2020 when India confirmed its first coronavirus patient in Kerala to 24 March, 2020 when the nationwide lockdown was imposed, the government’s response to the fast-spreading virus was lacklustre and the health machinery was unprepared to meet the rush of cases but the Tablighi Jamaat was just a convenient scapegoat to draw the attention of the people away from the failures and shortcomings of the government.

This was stated in a 96-page just-released report prepared by Mumbai’s Centre for Study of Society and Secularism (CSSS).

Titled “The Covid Pandemic: A Report on the Scapegoating of Minorities in India”, the report documents how the process of strengthening communal polarisation was undertaken amid the pandemic in six states–Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Delhi, Gujarat, Orissa and Tamil Nadu.

According to the report, given the fact that there already existed strong biases against Muslims, the incident involving Tablighi Jamaat, a sect within Muslims, offered a convenient diversion and soon the blame was shifted to the entire Muslim community and it became easy to mobilise other members of the majority community in joining in the scapegoating of Muslims.

Ahmedabad-based social worker Hozefa Ujjaini, part of the CSSS team which scanned the media and compiled the data, told indiatomorrow.net that the Tablighi Jamaat was one of the grassroots Islamic reform movements started by Maulana Mohammad Ilyas in 1927 in Delhi, adding that the movement was popular in villages and among the peasants, and focussed on religion rather than political aspects of Islam.

The report claims that politicians and groups belonging to the majority community in tandem with the media exploited the fears of the people to scapegoat Muslims. This became evident with the increase in instances of verbal, physical and virtual violence against Muslims. They were accused of deliberately spreading the disease, were denied access to healthcare, access to information about the pandemic, access to relief measures, and access to livelihood opportunities.

The report cited countless incidents to show how the media spewed communal venom by spreading fake news and disinformation. It says that when the Tablighi Jamaat incident happened, a major section of Indian media–print, electronic and social–threw ethics and responsibility to the winds and chose to follow the narrative set by the government.

On 30 March 2020 when the government named Tablighi Jamaat as violating the epidemics rule and being a source of spread of coronavirus, the media jumped right in building on the narrative set by the government machinery.

The report said that civil society organisations had been sidelined, even crushed in the country–cutting off their sources of funds, embroiling them in bureaucratic muddle by making them renew their FCRA, open new FCRA accounts with one bank (the State Bank of India), putting restrictions on receiving and using foreign funds, and keeping them out of all government development projects.

“The Eleventh Five Year Plan had brought in a government- civil society partnership model, which essentially made civil society organisations implementers of all government development projects. This is completely stopped now. The spirit of partnership is now replaced with suspicion and animosity,” read the report.  

While praising civil society initiatives and peoples’ initiatives during the pandemic, the report felt that civil society organisations could have played an even greater role, especially to supplement the health department.

“With their reach in the communities, at the grassroots level, civil society organisations could have aided in awareness building, in contact tracing, in providing care to the ill. They could have been instrumental in generating alternative livelihood options for daily wage earners during lockdown” says the report.

According to Irfan Engineer, who heads CSSS, facts presented in the report would not only help deal with the pandemic-like disasters more effectively, but it would also ensure that religions play a positive role in motivating people to help each other in such situations.

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