India’s anti-virus measures take on sectarian hue
Vegetable vendor Imran Siddiq has been scared to enter the Shastri Nagar colony in east Delhi since he was warned by some residents not to go there.
“They told me very clearly Muslims are not allowed here,” Siddiq told Arab News on Monday. Siddiq’s friend, Mushtaq, shared a similar experience and has stopped going to the residential complex. When he does, he makes sure not to take his ID card along “lest my identity is revealed.”
“On Saturday, when I went to the Shashtri Nagar area, they asked me my name, and I gave a Hindu name just to avoid my Muslim identity,” Mushtaq, who prior to the incident had sold seasonal fruits there for the past 12 years, told Arab News. “They asked me to come with my identity card next time. I will not go in this area again,” he said.
Siddiq and Mushtaq’s stories are not unusual.
Since the rapid increase in the number of people testing positive for coronavirus — with some tracing it to a congregation of an Islamic missionary group, the Tablighi Jamaat (TJ), in the Nizamuddin area of New Delhi — India is seeing a new surge in anti-Muslim sentiment. The government said that 2,300 people had been evacuated from the center where the congregation took place, with 1,800 others placed under quarantine.
According to media reports, however, more than 25,000 people related to the missionary group have been quarantined across India.
The government alleges that the TJ — which is more than a century old and promotes Islamic teachings — hosted the gathering of thousands of people from across India and abroad despite the threat of coronavirus.
In the first week of March, hundreds of people from the missionary group went back to their native states and allegedly infected several people.
More than 1,000 coronavirus cases are said to have a TJ link, while 30 infected persons who died have also been linked to the group, leading to the government terming them a “super spreader.”
“More than a 30 percent surge in coronavirus cases in India took place because of the Tablighi Jamaat,” Lav Agrawal, India’s health secretary, told the media on Sunday.
The TJ group, however, refutes the allegations. “Anybody aware of the activities of the Tablighi would know that it is a missionary organization where activities keep on happening throughout the year without a break. People come and go, and there was nothing new this time,” Shahid Alvi, advocate and the spokesperson of the group, told Arab News.
“Those who came from abroad were given visas by the government. Had New Delhi wanted they could have stopped the people at the airport or tested them properly. Why should we be blamed for the fault of the government?“Alvi said. However, after the raid on the building of the Islamic organization, a Hindu right-wing group along with a section of the pro-government media started using divisive tactics with headlines such as “Save the country from Corona Jihad” and “Who is the villain of Nizamuddin?” A minister from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cabinet, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, referred to a “Talibani crime.”