K B Jandial
World’s largest healthcare emergency of our time, Pandemic Coronavirus has united India as never before to fight it out with single minded determination with hope and confidence. The unity of people at grass root level is much stronger and widespread than at political level where parties outwardly rallying behind PM Modi but don’t miss any opportunity to target him on one pretext or the other. All CMs including volatile Mamata and Kejriwal and the political parties have, by and large, have kept politics aside in an unprecedented manner. They are supporting Modi’s strategy of extended national lockdown, quarantine and social distancing, that has given a feeling that nation is united in its fight against COVID-19 with expectations that India would turn around the situation. But shall we remain united in times ahead? Going by our political history, it is difficult to predict but one thing is certain that the Govt is fully geared up for any exponential rise of COVID cases that made the PM to change the popular adage, jaan hai to jahaan hai, to Jaan bhe, Jahaan bhe.
Straight Talk
Since it is a new virus it is called Novel Coronavirus that emanated from China’s port city, Wuhan and exponentially spread across the globe except Antarctica, taking toll of more than one lakh with positive cases spiraling towards 19 lakh mark. While it is difficult to keep pace with the mounting numbers but luckily, it has been reasonably contained in India with loss of about 350 lives and over 10000 positive cases out of huge population of 130 crore.
At a time when the Centre and State Govts and all institutions are engaged in containing COVID, Tablighi Jamaat, an Islamic evangelical movement, has turned out to be a big spoiler. It was set up in 1926 by Maulana Muhammad Ilyas Kandhlawi, a leading Deoband scholar and convert of a Hindu Rajput family, at Mewat, a region between Haryana & Rajasthan. Now headed by his great grandson Maulana Saad Kandhlawi, Tablighi Jamaat is under scanner after their thoughtless defiance of norms of social distancing and suspension of all gatherings including religious congregations. Instead Tablighis went ahead with their scheduled mid-March ijtima at its global headquarters at Nizamuddin locality of South Delhi.
More serious was the ‘fatwa’ of its Chief against leaving the mosque in fear of COVID, saying “Do not leave mosques even if your trusted doctors ask you to. There was no better place to die than in a mosque”. And his followers followed the diktat and stayed put in the mosque till NSA Ajit Doval persuaded them to be evacuated on the intervening night of 28-29 March, 2020. But the nation’s fight against COID-19 was already derailed.
Those Tablighis who had left the mosque earlier carried the Coronavirus across the country and many of them even preferred to hide themselves till they were tracked down by the police and administration in over 17 States of the country including J&K. In Kashmir, the administration has quarantined already tracked down 863 Tablighis and looking for other 72 Tablighis who are hiding and possibly infecting their families and other contact keeping the chain of transmission intact. The administration of different States has tracked down at least 30,000 Tablighis and their contacts while other 600 are still missing. Obviously, these Tablighis are a single largest group for spiking the number of positive cases at least by 30 % and more than doubling the rate of positive cases daily. In some States it is much higher. India took 70 days to reach first 5,000 positive cases; the next 5,000 came in just a week.
Tablighis’ religious obscurantism, fanaticism, delusions of divine protection and open disdain for medical science has endangered public health in many countries where they continued to hold ijtima after ijtima. They transmitted COVID from Southeast Asia to West Africa. The February 27th-March 1st ijtima at Sri Petaling Mosque in Kuala Lumpur helped in spreading COVID to Brunei, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Nearly two-thirds of coronavirus cases in Malaysia last month were linked to that ijtima. In Pakistan too, the Govt had asked them to stay away but it could not enforce it with 2.50 lakh Tablighis assembled in Raiwind, Lahore for 5-day annual ijtima in predominantly Barelvi nation. There too, Tablighis are accused of spreading Coronavirus.
There are scores of terrorist incidents in many countries where the accused had Tablighi connections but there is no firm evidence of Tablighi Jamaat’s linkage as an organisation with terror activities.
It is in this scary background people across the country are genuinely concerned over these insensitive Tablighis for spreading the virus pan-India who are also called as “super spreaders”. One may or may not agree with it but the fact remains that Tablighi Jamaat’s ijtima should not have been held at Nizamuddin when such ijtma was cancelled in Mumbai after the Police withdrew its permission. Role of Delhi police and Delhi Govt cannot be overlooked in Nizamuddin crisis.
Was Nizamuddin ijtima deliberate act or just ignorance about COVID? While the CBI will unravel it at appropriate time it gave a serious setback to Modi Govt’s efforts to contain this virus which has yet no drug or vaccine to cure it. What a shame to an organisation which was set up to work for religious “reforms” and spreading “Islamic faith in its original form”, is found to be indulging in willful defiance of the good counsel of the administration, Health experts and PM and CMs and ultimately pushed their own followers and their families to possible death.
National outrage is natural reaction to their act of criminal negligence but should it to be taken as targeting Muslims as a whole? The counter point to this outrage is small gatherings of other faiths and reference is made to UP CM’s visit to Ram Janambhoomi at Ayodhya on 26th March with posse of people and pilgrims visiting Venkateswara Temple in Tirupati up to 17th March. Their actions too are irresponsible that too risked the people which luckily didn’t lead to any positive cases. Criticism and counter criticism on the basis of religion are not fair as it is not against the faith but the organizers of the events.
It is not that Muslims are not part of nation’s fight against Covid-19 as lakhs of mosques along with other holy places of worship like famous shrines, temples, churches and Gurdwaras are shut down across the country without any fuss. The fight against COVID is also a test of India’s secularism and non-sectarian nationalism as every Indian, irrespective of religion, sect or caste has to follow prescribed protocol and support lockdown, social ( personal) distancing and self-quarantine. The faith, sect or caste has nothing to do with spread of COVID but criticism of Tablighis’ criminal negligence and defiance to social distancing, by no stretch of imagination can be taken as targeting Muslims. Yes, sporadic incidents of attacks on mosques and Muslims too have taken place in some areas that needed to be strongly condemned in the same way as is being done on Tablighis. Such things won’t help the nation to win this war.
Muslim scholars and even cleric did not subscribe to Tablighi Jamaat Chief’ Maulana Saad Kandhlawi’s action including advice in his audio tape of March 18, 2020, “Do not leave mosques even if trusted doctors ask you to. There was no better place to die than in a mosque”. The controversial Ameer forgot that prayers even in Mecca and Medina have been suspended in view of pandemic COVID. Kerala Governor, Arif Mohd Khan quoted verses from the Quran to tell that Allah asked the believers not to go to the mosque and offer prayers from home, when the circumstances are not conducive. In any case, bringing religion in to the nation’s fight against COVID is an affront to national effort to save the people from the virus.
Regrettably, Omar Abdullah and some other leaders have unnecessarily taken the criticism of Tablighis’ irresponsible and criminal acts as attack on Muslims in India and sharply reacted through tweeter. Who is vilifying Muslims? Is it a just a political statement? Didn’t Tablighis compromise the safety of their own families and others? Any condemnable action of an individual or group cannot be linked to the entire community or religion. If it is done then the objective would be to create disharmony. Foreign media using such hasty irrational reactions too launched a vilification campaign against India treating it as Islamophobic rhetoric which actually doesn’t exist.
Maulana Mahmood Madani, Secretary General of Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind who helped Doval to resolve the Tablighi crisis, has moved the Apex Court to stop media to demonise Muslims due to Tablighis acts. Unwarranted criticism of any particular community or faith even on social media or defiance to prescribed protocol on the basis of religious obscurantism and fanaticism would weaken nation’s war against COVID. Let’s no one, individually or a group, plays the role of spoiler in this fight and instead strengthen the hands of administration and COVID warriors. India has to win this war.
(feedback:kbjandial@gmail.com)
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