On 19 April 20, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrote in one of his post that: “COVID-19 does not see race, religion, colour, caste, creed, language or border before striking. Our response and conduct thereafter should attach primacy to unity and brotherhood”.
As the virus proliferates in India, propaganda and violence against Muslims and islamophobia depicts an altogether different situation. Muslims have become convenient scapegoats. On April 20, during the CONVID-19, India opted for new domicile rules for India-held Kashmir (IHK), eight months after the abrogation of Article 370. According to the domicile law, any person who has lived for more than 15 years in IHK can call it his domicile territory. This is a sinister plan to change the demographics
of IHK which was earlier used by Israel for demographic flooding of Palestine. This is in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits the transfer of population into occupied territories. India is also using the pandemic to consistently deny civil liberties to Kashmiris in IHK. The situation of providing health facilities regarding COVID-19 is distressing. In Kashmir, there is one ventilator for 79,000 patients and only one doctor to 39,000 people. In a stark contrast, there is one soldier for every nine people. Furthermore, the suspension of 4G internet has halted global effort to sensitize communities with measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Dragging Pakistan into low intensity conflicts like continuous LoC violations might lead South Asian region in to crisis instability
Other major developments include, enhanced curfew measures coupled with military operations targeting Kashmiri youth, crackdown on journalists and using counter-value targets as human shields by moving heavy artillery into the community. However, the use of human shields by the Indian army in IHK is not new. In the past, a picture of a man tied to an army jeep surfaced in media which was defended as an innovation by Indian Chief of Defence Staff Gen Bipin Rawat.
Since the breakout of the COVID-19 pandemic, situation inside India is also approaching genocidal for Indian Muslims that
has fully exposed India’s fault lines. The suppressions against Muslims in India during the pandemic exposed that the Modi government is suffering more from a crisis of hatred against Muslim communities in the country than that of the novel corona virus.
Under the guise of the novel corona virus, Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government is arresting people from Muslim communities who are unfairly blamed for spreading the disease. Health Minister Secretary Lav Agarwal, who updates on coronavirus situation in the country, is trying hard to emphasize that Muslims are responsible for spreading the virus in India. The hysteria does not end here, Hindu nationalist politicians, helped spur the trending topic “Coronajihad” on social media. The government is also arresting media personnel and fighting cases against lawyers.
Muslims in India, from the beginning, being the largest minority group, faced social, political, and economic marginalization. However, the veracity of the situation has risen to a new level of discrimination when the Hindu nationalist BJP came to power under Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014, where the novel virus is now adding fuel to the fire.
Inflaming the situation, Muslim patients and suspected cases at one hospital were segregated into wards depending on their faith. There were also reports that Muslim volunteers were been beaten up as they were distributing food among the needy. Summing up the situation against Muslims, Prime Minister Imran Khan very aptly said that Modi’s deliberate and violent targeting of Muslims in India is only to divert the backlash over its COVID-19 policy, akin to what Nazis did to Jews in Germany.
Exploiting the pandemic, BJP government went for an outbreak of war like situation at the India-Pakistan border, despite of the fact that the world including Pakistan is busy in tackling this difficult situation that is costing human lives. When the Line of Control (LoC) violations occur, the general public is forced to take refuge in community bunkers, henceforth, making it extremely difficult for them to practice social distancing during this pandemic.
Furthermore, the recent LoC violations depict that India can take an advantage of this non-traditional security threat and opt for military adventurism against Pakistan. However, as Lieutenant General (Retd) Khalid Kidwai stated that Pakistan will be ready with its policy of a quid-pro-quo plus against Indian aggression in a limited conflict.
Keeping in mind the above real-time evidences and facts being used by Indian fascist BJP government, it is time to sanitize Indian thinking and approach towards Muslims that needs a fix! Dragging Pakistan into low intensity conflicts like continuous LoC violations might lead South Asian region in to crisis instability. Furthermore, using Muslims as human shield in this pandemic to hide BJP’s failing domestic policies would be an improbable approach.
Anum A. Khan- Senior Research Fellow at Strategic Vision Institute (SVI), Islamabad, and a PhD Scholar at Defense and Strategic Studies