Clarion India
NEW DELHI – Calling the Tablighi Jamaat congregation in New Delhi last month a “spiritual event, Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy on Saturday said that what happened at Nizamuddin Markaz is unfortunate but the targeting a community is unacceptable.
He appealed to people not to give it a religious colour and also not see it as a crime. In a recorded video message, the chief minister remarked that such things could have happened even in other religious events.
“It is unfortunate that the disease has spread from the congregation in which several spiritual delegates from some foreign countries too participated. Some of those foreigners had coronavirus and it got transmitted to our people. But we should not attribute it (the disease spread) to any religion or caste and treat those people as deliberate wrongdoers. Nobody should see them as if they committed a crime,” Jagan was quoted by the PTI as saying.
The infection of COVID-19 to the preachers of the Tablighi Jamaat triggered a vitriolic smear campaign against Muslims on the news channels and social media.
“We have spiritual leaders like Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (Art of Living), Jaggi Vasudev (Isha Foundation), Mata Amritanandamayi, Paul Dinakaran or John Wesley. They have thousands and lakhs of followers in India and abroad and they could participate in their events. Such things could have happened in such gatherings as well,” he asserted.
Jagan said such incidents should only be seen as “unfortunate” and not “deliberate” and attribute it to a religion. Efforts to project them in such light were unfortunate and would do no good to convey a message that “we are all one.” The Chief Minister said coronavirus victims should be shown compassion and not distanced.
“Coronavirus has no religion, nor a medicine. It has no rich-poor discrimination. It also has no differentiation between countries. In this battle, our enemy is the invisible virus called corona,” he noted.
Referring to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call to all Indians to light lamps for nine minutes at 9 pm on April 5, the chief minister said the lights should convey the message “we are one” without any borders of caste, religion or region.
