Waquar Hasan | Clarion India
NEW DLEHI – India has been, of late, witnessing a sharp rise in COVID-19 cases. Around thousand people were tested positive with the COVID-19 before Tablighi Jamaat preachers infected with the dreaded virus. But these cases did not become talk of the town nor did they trigger a nationwide outrage.
There was no talk of the community the affected person belonged to. Neither was any community blamed for the mistakes committed by any individual or group. The priority was to treat patients and contain the outbreak.
However, ever since some Tablighi preachers contracted coronations all hell broke loose on TV channels with news anchors and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) supporters unleashing invective against the community. Not to lag behind, the social media is rife with offensive sectarian comments against Muslims. The entire community is being blamed for the Tablighi Jamaat episode overlooking the lapses on the part of government.
What was all the more outrageous was that even teachers of Delhi University were found posting virulent messages against Muslim community on Facebook. The matter was so unprecedented that Delhi Minority Commission had to issue a notice to the university’s vice-chancellor to rein in the guilty faculty staff.
The Commission, in its notice, drew the attention of the vice-chancellor towards some teachers who were “spewing venom against the Muslim community saying that they should be put in gas chambers and that doctors should nottreat them, etc.”
The Commission further said, “We find this very… very disturbing that such elements should be ‘teaching’ in a prestigious university like yours.”
The Commission, which has quasi-judicial powers and functions as a civil court, asked the V-C to constitute an inquiry committee to probe these posts and take appropriate action against the teachers. It gave a month’s time to the V-C to file his reply and action taken report (ATR).
On Twitter, the Muslim community came in for the most virulent attack and was labeled as ‘enemy against humanity’. Some even called for the economic boycott of Muslims. There were common as well as well-known people who indulged in naked anti-Muslim tirade.
BJP’s IT Cell chief and spokesperson Amit Malviya attributed the COVID-19 infection to the Tablighi preachers to Islam and demanded to fix them.
Malviya tweeted: “Delhi’s dark underbelly is exploding! Last 3 months have seen an Islamic insurrection of sorts, first in the name of anti-CAA protests from ShaheenBagh to Jamia, Jaffrabad to Seelampur. And now the illegal gathering of the radical TablighiJamaat at the markaz. It needs afix!”
News anchor Deepak Chaurasia referred to Muslims as “enemy of humanity” without naming the community. “First, it was Shaheen Bagh which had to be cleared forcibly.Now, it’s Nizamuddin. They are spreading coronavirus knowingly. They are not only enemy of the country, but also enemy of humanity. They are working against not just mainstream of this country but also against the humanity,” tweeted Chaurasia in Hindi.
Well-known wrestler Babita Phogat called Muslims “ignorant pig” in a cryptic tweet without taking the names of Muslim. “Coronavirus would have spread through bats in your country (China) but in my Hindustan, it has spread through ignorant pig. #NizamuddinIdiots,” this is how Phogat reacted to the case of COVID-19 at Nizamuddin Markaz.
She even justified the derogatory comment saying she will continue writing such thing in future after she faced backlash over it.
These were the comments made by the well-known people onTwitter. Yesterday, the ‘Muslim means terrorist’ and ‘Corona Jihad’ were trending on Twitter. There were common people too who made hate-filled comments against Muslims on social media.
Well-known page ‘Humans of Hindutva’ on Facebook shared screenshot of Facebook post which asks the people to write on the door ‘beaware of Muslims’ rather than ‘be aware dogs’. “An appeal to every Indian, plz remove the board saying Beaware of dogs, it’s should be, Be aware of Muslims,” reads a derogatory comment made by Amar Shekhar.