By the time truth is able to tie its shoelaces, untruths have run marathons—such is rural Uttar Pradesh’s situation in preparation for the deadly COVID-19. When he delivered an address to the nation on 19 March, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had called for a “Janata Curfew,” or a people’s curfew, three days later. He urged India’s citizens to gather in their balconies and to beat pots and pans or sound a conch shell, to thank healthcare workers that are at the frontlines of the fight against COVID-19. As soon as the prime minister’s address ended, rumours began to spread in rural Uttar Pradesh. People understood the clapping and thumping to be religious practices, while others ascribed differing purposes to the curfew Modi had imposed. “There is no awareness campaign of the UP government in this,” Bual Yadav, who lives in Johinarendra village of Kushinagar district, said. “People are still negligent. Very few people are washing their hands with soap regularly or wearing masks.”
Priyanka Rajbhar is a research student at the Banaras Hindu University in Varanasi, Modi’s Lok Sabha constituency. She married last year, and is currently staying with her in-laws, in Ramgarhwa village. “My mother-in-law said that the whole village is lighting diyas outside their homes, as many diyas as there are men in the house.” Her mother-in-law told her that these diyas have to be placed at the threshold of their homes in the evening, after taking a bath, and that the family members have to make imprints of their feet with turmeric at the entrance. “All the older women beat thalis every evening to ward off coronavirus,” Rajbhar said.
Ankita Singh, a resident of Guretha village in Azamgarh district, said that confusion and rumours were spreading even before Modi announced the janata curfew, and were strengthened by it. The villagers had heard that “Modi ji would sprinkle medicines from airplanes, and therefore, no one should leave the house,” she said. People told each other to “do regular pooja at home every day, to light a lamp near the neem tree and give it two jugs of water.” In addition, Singh said, people were to put frankincense and camphor lamps at the entrance of their homes, and to write “Om Namah Shivaay”—a mantra that invokes the deity Shiv—with cow dung outside the house. “And every evening, the eldest woman of the house will thump a plate,” she added. In Jalaun district’s Itahiya village, too, it is being believed that Modi used the curfew to spray a medicinal cure for COVID-19, Atul Dixit, who resides there, said.
Sandeep Prajapati, a resident of Jallabad village in Shamli district, said that at 3 am on the morning of 22 March, he received a call from his sister. “Wake everyone up, the village has sunken in, and anyone who is sleeping will turn to stone,” she told him. The whole village was awakened in the resulting chaos. Prajapati said that every evening, the villagers light a lamp at their threshold of their homes. A similar rumour spread in Adalpura village, in Mirzapur district, Chandan Sahni, a priest in the village, said.
Sherkhan, a resident of Dhanaura Silvernagar village in Baghpat district told us that his fellow village residents were keenly discussing different drinks that could treat the coronavirus. “People are saying, ‘Drink tea with jaggery in it and put two pairs of cloves in it,’” he said. He too said that relatives had called him in the middle of the night on 22 March, with the same fear that Prajapati described. His relatives also told him, “Go to the mosque, have the hafizi ki namaaz”—a prayer for protection—“read into a talisman and put it in front of your houses.”
Abhishek Yadav, a lawyer in the Supreme Court and a resident of Pratapgarh district, Uttar Pradesh, told me that he had received a call from his maternal uncle from the village that the cause of the coronavirus pandemic is the solar eclipse. “He said that ‘all the Nakshatras’”—the phases of the moon—“‘have deteriorated due to the solar eclipse and all this is the wrath of Saturn.’”
Anuj Kumar, of Simrai village in the Lakhimpur Kheri district, said his village is not far from the Nepal border and was already under lockdown before Modi announced the 21-day nationwide curfew. Kumar said that a rumour has spread in his village that the women have to pour one bucket of water into the well for every man in their family. Further, he said, “She has to wear as many bangles in her right hand as the number of sons she has, and that she has to take the money to buy these bangles from a neighbour.” After pouring the water and donning the bangles, she has to fill mustard oil in a diya made from wheat, set it outside the home, and light it. Bual said residents of his village were practicing similar rites.
Villagers are lighting lamps in Chandauli village in a district of the same name, in Kuttupur and Kunai villages in Ballia district, residents said. Deepak Kharwar, who resides in Kunai, said, “At 5 pm every evening, everyone beats thalis and plates.”
In Kanpur Dehat district’s Tikua village, too, lamps were being lit for the men, Pankaj Yadav, a resident, said. “The villagers believe blowing a conch will ward off the coronavirus, and are doing so,” he said.
Fraud in the name of coronavirus has also begun. Amit Kumar said that in his native village in Mawana tehsil, people are raising money to buy “prasad” to ward off the virus. “We have to pay five rupees in the name of each of our children,” he said, and that the offerings from this money will be donated to the Shiv temple. It was being believed that “whoever does not participate will be killed by corona,” he said. Kumar further said that he received a call from his grandfather, who resides in Jajwa village in Saharanpur district. “He said a girl with three mouths was born somewhere, due to which all this is happening.” His grandfather told him that at 8 pm every night, the villagers go to the fields to light diyas.
Yudesh Bemisal, a singer working in Sonbhadra district, said that people commonly believed that “Modi ji has brought these diseases to kill the poor.” He said that people are drinking a lot of milk and eating garlic. “They water the peepul tree day and night. They say that all the gods dwell in it and will cure them all.”
According to Anupama Singh of Azamgarh district, the fear of the virus has resulted in doctors refusing to see patients in her village, further fanning the rumours. Vikas Maurya, of Chitrakoot district, echoed the same concern. “Patients of other diseases are not being treated well,” he said.
I spoke to Ramagya Shashidhar, a professor of the Hindi Department at BHU to understand the reasons behind the spread of such superstitions and rumours in Uttar Pradesh. He said that many factors work together to result in such a situation. “Even such a long time after Independence, in our society, rational, intellectual consciousness has not been developed. This is because superstition exists in religion itself, and secondly, society has not been educated the way it should have been.”
“In the last six years, our government, the media and even our scientists have openly found solutions to all the problems in cow, cow dung and cow urine,” Shasidhar added. “Not only that, our politicians have located all modern knowledge and science in the Vedas and Puranas.”