Pakistan on Tuesday strongly rejected the ‘officially inspired’ reports in Indian media seeking to link Pakistan with the terrorist attack on a Gurdawara in Kabul on March 25. Spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs termed the reports a ‘highly mischievous and condemnable’ attempt by New Delhi, adding that the motivated reports have been patently designed to malign Pakistan. “India’s overall smear campaign
against Pakistan is well-known. Seeking to implicate Pakistan in this terrorist attack is part of the desperate attempts India is making to divert attention from its own unacceptable actions and state terrorism in Indian-held Kashmir,” it said. Apart from compliant media in India, social media has been awash with misinformation and hate on the unfolding drama around the COVID-19 cases that have been traced back to the Muslim gathering in New Delhi. Hashtags like #CoronaJihad, and #BanJahilJamat (“ban the vile gathering”) dominated Twitter’s trending topics section in India.
Leaders of ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have used terms like “Islamic insurrection” and “corona terrorism” to describe the gathering in Nizamuddin markez. It is alleged that out of 4,400 COVID-19 positive cases in India, nearly a third are related to the religious gathering at the Markaz, as the Jamaat headquarters is known. The government claimed more than 8,000 people, including foreigners, visited the headquarters in early March. While accusing the Jamaat leadership of carelessness during a global pandemic, experts and civil society members also blamed the central government for its delayed response and allowing foreigners from Malaysia and Indonesia into India. Rebelo, from the fact-checking website Boom, said she wasn’t surprised at the backlash linking Muslims to the pandemic. She noticed a steady rise in WhatsApp forwards calling for boycott of the businesses owned by Muslims on the basis of fake videos purporting to show Muslims selling contaminated food.
Anyhow, the Tablighi Jamaat gathering gave fresh impetus to members of the Indian far-right to unleash anti-Muslim propaganda. Nazia Erum, author of Mothering A Muslim said: “The whole world is under a mental siege because of the coronavirus. When you add Islamophobia to the mix, everything becomes even scarier.” Discrimination against India’s 200 million Muslims has been on the rise ever since Narendra Modi was elected as the country’s prime minister in 2014, and reelected in 2019. During Modi’s administrations, violence against Muslims has gone up, and a muscular far right has flourished. A video, shared by an editor of a prominent news wire agency, claimed that a mosque in the city of Patna was sheltering 30 people from Italy and Iran, among the countries that have been worst hit by the coronavirus.
In India, news channels have focused on the link between the religious gathering in Delhi and the spread of the virus, which in turn has led to increase in anti-Muslim sentiment. They have been fanning the flames of communal hatred, declaring that the virus is being spread by “corona-jihadis” in an act of terrorism. And anti-Muslim narratives are being turbo-charged by constant disinformation spread online and via WhatsApp. An audio clip went viral, shared on WhatsApp and broadcast on some news channels, in which the voice of a man called on Muslims to reject social distancing and continue to gather at mosques. Such propaganda has stirred anti-Muslim sentiment in India, and BJP continues with anti-Muslim agenda with impunity with a view to appeasing far-right Hindutva elements. Anyhow, Modi has changed the perception of secular India, and made it a Hindu state, which has been criticized and condemned in India and beyond.