Daily Times

India and UAE share the values of non-discrimination on any grounds, the Indian ambassador to the country tweeted on Monday growing resentment in the Arab world over reports of Muslims being targeted in India over the coronavirus pandemic.

Several Twitter users in Arab nations, including a member of UAE’s royal family have expressed their dismay at the vilification of Muslims in India since a congregation hosted last month by Islamic missionary group Tablighi Jamaat emerged as the biggest cluster of coronavirus cases in the country.

The spread of the virus has not only created a health emergency in the country but also brought India on the verge of a new kind of polarisation, thanks to the attempts of Hindutva politicians and activists to link the spread of the disease with Muslims. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while addressing parliamentarians via video conferencing on April 9, 2020, compared the situation in the country to a ‘social emergency’ but did not mention how Muslims were being targeted as a result of rumour mongering and fake news spread by news channels and leaders from his own political party.

Amit Malviya, who heads BJP’s IT cell, is one of those posting provocative statements on Twitter. On April 1, 2020 he tweeted saying, ‘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 Shaheen Bagh to Jamia, Jaffrabad to Seelampur. And now the illegal gathering of the radical Tablighi Jamaat at the markaz. It needs a fix!

On April 6, 2020, BJP MP Shobha Karandlaje claimed that members of Tablighi Jamaat who were admitted to a hospital in Belagavi in Karnataka were spitting, misbehaving with the hotel staff, and dancing and gesturing indecently. Her claim was later denied by the deputy commissioner of the district and hospital authorities. No action was taken against her by her party.

On April 4, 2020, Himachal Pradesh BJP chief Rajeev Bindal claimed that ‘the Centre and state governments are leaving no stone unturned in the decisive fight against COVID-19 but some people, including Tablighi Jamaat, members are moving like human bombs to thwart their efforts’. On April 9, 2020, senior BJP leader and former chief minister of Maharashtra Devendra Fadnavis also referred to members of Tablighi Jamaat who were returning from Delhi as ‘human bombs’.

The BJP was clearly using the pandemic to target members of the Tablighi Jamaat – and by extension all Muslims. Which is why Prime Minister Modi’s statement on Twitter on April 19, 2020, came as a surprise to many. He tweeted to say,

‘COVID-19 does not see race, religion, colour, caste, creed, language or borders before striking it. Our response and conduct thereafter should attach primacy to unity and brotherhood. We are in this together’.

If the message was aimed at people within India, his choice of medium was odd. The words were taken from an article he wrote in English for the LinkedIn networking website, and intended for a global and not an Indian audience. The timing of Modi’s ‘message’ was perhaps not a coincidence, as it has come in handy for Indian ambassadors in the Gulf dealing with massive local pushback over the various Islamophobic incidents that have occurred across India in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis. The Organisation of Islamic Conference has also raised concerns about this:

A 2015 tweet from BJP MP Tejasvi Surya was dug out and shared by prominent Arab voices. The tweet said, ‘95% Arab women have never had an orgasm in the last few hundred years. Every mother has produced kids as act of sex and not love’.

Surya hurriedly deleted his offensive tweet but unfortunately for the young BJP leader the damage had already been done. A screenshot of his tweet was picked up by activists like Abdur Rahman Nassar from Kuwait, who have a large following on social media, and circulated.

Nassar tagged the PMO and Modi’s personal account and tweeted, ‘Prime Minister…An Indian Member of Parliament accuses Arab women, and we Arabs are asking for his membership to be dropped!!’.

Other tweets from Nassar displayed the full import of the criticism and why the sentiment could not be ignored by the government.

Nassar’s claim that expats from 53 Muslim countries remit $120 billion annually to India had obviously touched a raw nerve. The same sentiment was echoed by Mejbal Al Sharika, a Kuwaiti lawyer and director of International Human Rights.