Attacks and discrimination against the Muslim community have escalated amid false claims that a Muslim group is to blame for the spread of Coronavirus across India.
This is coming Just weeks after Hindu mobs attacked Muslims in communal riots in Delhi
Businesses belonging to Muslims across India have suffered serious boycot. Muslim volunteers distributing rations are tagged “coronavirus terrorists”. Others are being accused of spitting in food and infecting water supplies with the virus.
Posters have appeared barring Muslims from entering certain neighbourhoods in Delhi, Karnataka, Telangana and Madhya Pradesh.
The rapid spread of this false narrative has resulted in increasing attacks and stigma against the Muslims.
Mehboob Ali, a 22-year-old resident of Harewali village near Delhi was beaten up, dragged and hit with sticks and shoes until he bled from his nose and ears by a group of attackers.
Ali had recently returned home from a religious gathering, and the Hindu mob was certain that he was part of a so-called Islamic conspiracy to spread coronavirus to Hindus nationwide. His attackers believed the devout 22-year-old must be punished before he carried out “corona jihad”.
The allegations were entirely false, but according to video footage and his family, the men who beat Ali on 5 April were in little doubt of his guilt, demanding, “Tell us who else is behind this conspiracy.”
Ali was then taken to a nearby Hindu temple and told to renounce Islam and convert to Hinduism before they would allow him to go to hospital.
Police confirmed that due to his attendance at a Muslim convention in Bhopal a few weeks back, Ali was being held in the isolation ward of Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan hospital in Delhi as a “corona suspect”, though he had no symptoms.
The attack on Ali is symptomatic of the growing demonization of India’s Muslim community, who are being accused, without any basis, of conducting a campaign to spread Covid-19 to the Hindu majority.
The commotion began when the gathering of an Islamic organization, the Tablighi Jamaat, held in mid-March in Nizamuddin city, was singled out by police and government authorities as being responsible for the spread of coronavirus across India.
The convention, which had been given the go-ahead by the Delhi authorities, was attended by about 8,000 people, including hundreds of foreigners. It soon became apparent that many at the convention had unknowingly picked up Covid-19 and brought it back to towns and villages across India.
Across the country, police were ordered to round up anyone associated with the organization. So far, more than 27,000 Tablighi Jamaat members and their contacts have been quarantined in about 15 states. Furthermore, in Uttar Pradesh, the police offered up to 10,000 Indian rupees for information on anyone who had attended the gathering.
In a statement this week, the Indian Scientists’ Response to Covid-19 group said “the available data does not support the speculation” that the blame for the coronavirus epidemic in India lies mainly with Tablighi Jamaat. The scientists emphasised that while testing for coronavirus is extremely low across India, a disproportionate number have been members of Tablighi Jamaat, as per a government order, therefore heavily skewing the figures.
Yet the test results were swiftly seized upon by members of the ruling Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), who claimed Tablighi Jamaat members had intended to infect millions as part of an Islamic conspiracy and were carrying out “corona terrorism”.
Senior BJP leaders accused Tablighi Jamaat of carrying out a “Talibani crime”, described their members as “human bombs, but in the guise of coronavirus patients”, and called for Tablighi Jamaat leaders to be both hanged and shot.
Kapil Mishra, a local BJP leader, tweeted: “Tablighi Jamaat people have begun spitting on the doctors and other health workers. It’s clear, their aim is to infect as many people as possible with coronavirus and kill them.”
Though quickly proved to be false, the rumours of Tablighi Jamaat members refusing to go into quarantine, assaulting hospital staff and throwing bottles of urine at Hindus quickly spread.
Hashtags such as “coronaJihad”, “CoronaTerrorism” and “CoronaBombsTablighi” began to trend on Twitter in India. Mainstream Indian media repeatedly asserted that Tablighi Jamaat members were coronavirus “superspreaders”.
