Modi government’s targeting of minorities for COVID repeats old mistakes of HIV pandemic

02 May 2020
The Modi administration has repeatedly focused on the Tablighi Jamaat conference as one of the main reasons for the spread of the pandemic in India—a false narrative that the mainstream media was only eager to emphasise in its coverage.
Manish Swarup / AP Photo
The Modi administration has repeatedly focused on the Tablighi Jamaat conference as one of the main reasons for the spread of the pandemic in India—a false narrative that the mainstream media was only eager to emphasise in its coverage.
Manish Swarup / AP Photo

Nations, like humans, reveal themselves during a crisis. Over the last two months, India has revealed itself in all its ugliness, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has revealed himself to be unequal to this moment of monumental crisis. As a journalist covering  the pandemic, I have had a ringside view of  the government’s response becoming intricately woven with the persecution of Indian Muslims. The centre’s COVID-19 response has only proven what Indian minorities knew all along, that this government has no qualms sacrificing the lives and livelihoods of its poorest, sickest and most vulnerable citizens.

Since 30 January, when India reported its first case of COVID-19, the Modi administration’s handling of  the pandemic has been marked by ineptitude, unpreparedness and a chase to rectify predictable consequences of its ill-thought-out actions. With a nationwide lockdown that was announced with four-hours’ notice, Modi launched a migrant crisis unparalleled since Partition. The sudden lockdown led to individuals starving to death, after they were left without work, money or any way to travel to their native homes, and abandoned by the government that put them in this position.

Among the many transgressions of the Indian government, the scapegoating of Muslim minorities will be the lasting memory. It drove patients into hiding, sick but frightened of admitting to symptoms, fearful that they will face the stigma created by the government’s response. Such a response was not unprecedented—previous pandemics have consistently shown administrations responding to unexpected public-health crises by blaming its minorities. As Muslims are blamed in India today, during the initial years of the HIV epidemic, homosexuals were wrongly blamed worldwide for spreading the virus. HIV then swept the world and decimated populations precisely because of the crucial time wasted in blaming minorities. With a similar response focused on the Muslim minority, the Modi administration has allowed the COVID-19 pandemic to spread in India.

Vidya Krishnan is a global health reporter who works and lives in India. Her first book, Phantom Plague: How Tuberculosis Shaped History, was published in February 2022 by PublicAffairs.

Keywords: COVID-19 HIV/AIDS Narendra Modi Tablighi Jamaat Islamophobia
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