India-world’s largest democracy has found itself in the midst of the crises, it ostensibly created itself. As India grapples with a devastating second wave of the coronavirus, millions of devotees gathering for Hindu festivals have become ‘super spreaders’, threatening to unleash an apocalyptic explosion.
India’s death toll from Covid-19 has surpassed 200,000 mark with many independent sources claiming that this number is 10 times larger than the official Covid death counts, as a virus surge sweeps the country, rooted in so-called super-spreader events that were allowed to happen in the months after India thought it had the pandemic under control.
But, India is writing its darkest chapter yet, with a catastrophe being fuelled by a series of crowded events, like mass rallies by politicians, religious holidays and religious Hindu pilgrimages.
Hundreds of thousands of devotees descended upon a weeks-long Mahakumbh festival that began in March and peaked in April in the Himalayan holy town of Haridwar, next to the Ganges. Ash-smeared devout Hindus jostled to take a dip in the river Ganges during a religious festival in hope to wash away their sins, but little did they knew that they kicked off a vicious death cycle- as authorities reported more than 1000 positive cases, just in the first two days of the festival .
But the crisis was emanated by its own extremist Hindutva government, where India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, refused to call off the festival, possibly over fears of a backlash from religious leaders in the Hindu-majority country.
Calling out Modi regime’s, the national vice-president of the Indian Medical Association (IMA) Dr Navjot Dahiya has already termed PM Modi a ‘super spreader’ and blamed him and his government for the second wave of Covid-19. Talking to the Tribune ,Dr Dahiya continued that under the Modi government, despite the severity of the health crisis, election rallies and religious congregations like the Kumbh Mela in Haridwar continued, raising questions over the seriousness of the Modi government to tackle the spread of the deadly virus.
Adding insult to the injury, the local government in Indian illegally occupied Kashmir, is now contemplating setting up makeshift shelters and facilities for 600,000 Hindu pilgrims for the annual Amarnath pilgrimage, which it intends to host this summer.
Although authorities have temporarily suspended online registration for the pilgrimage in the wake of a spike in daily coronavirus cases, the site still says that the pilgrimage will take place as scheduled from June 28 through August 22.
The congregation of devotees during the pandemic has raised concerns among health experts in the region, who believe that Amarnath pilgrimage could possibly unleash a disaster in Kashmir.
Kashmir has meager healthcare facilities, with just 2,599 COVID beds, including 324 ICU beds, for a population of 13 million. Out of those, 1220 beds are already occupied. But, still the health advisory issued for the Amarnath pilgrimage makes no mention of the virus and contains no guidelines.
Any ‘super spreader’ event in Kashmir can prove fatal for both to pilgrims as well as locals, because oxygen levels are low at high altitudes, and this disease mainly targets the respiratory system. Prominent social activist Sheikh Ghulam Rasool, noting the severity of the situation, said that it can prove to be a super spreading event and overwhelm our poor healthcare system. The government should behave responsibly and call off the pilgrimage.
The annual pilgrimage was suspended in 2019 and 2020, first due to New Delhi’s decision to end the region’s special constitutional status and later due to the first wave of the pandemic.
But, despite horrifying television images of a crowd of devotees taking a ritual bath together in the Ganges River in blatant violation of social distancing rules triggering calls for authorities to call off such event, the suggestions had been scorned by the local government, which had given preference to the festival, ignoring the reality that the virus was spreading faster.
Talking to CNN, Head of Covid ICU Unit, Lok Navak Hospital, Dr Farah Husain has called the Covid wave a tsunami which has washed away India’s health system, and revealed that it seems that Covid is in every house, as people had put down their guard following an apparent triumph in the second wave.
Indian author Arundhati Roy has also slammed Narendra Modi’s government for mishandling of the coronavirus crisis, criticizing him for his early triumph over coronavirus and describing it as “outright crime against humanity.” Roy lamented that “the system hasn’t collapsed. The government has failed. Perhaps ‘failed’ is an inaccurate word, because what we are witnessing is not criminal negligence, but an outright crime against humanity,” she wrote in The Guardian. Describing the current government as a “crisis-generating machine,” Ms Roy said it is “incapable of leading us out of this disaster”.
Since, the Indian government has become an epitome of a disastrous regime, hell-bent on not just killing its own people, but also becoming a vehicle in spreading the killer virus across the region, the world must take immediate action, before the ‘super spreader’ hybrid regime in India unleash this crisis beyond its borders.