Speaking Up

Muslims as contagion: The image of “terrorists” carrying

COVID-19 in India
April 23, 2020 BRAHMA PRAKASH

Image Courtesy: UNI Photo

If we believe our government and the national media, then the most dreaded terrorists in India do not
carry grenades, rocket launchers or AK-47s. Instead, they carry COVID-19; bio-terrorists are equipped
with the latest biological weapons imported from the Maoist China; Tabligi Jamaat, the organization
responsible for a congregation in Delhi have implanted viral chips on Muslim bodies that produce a
contagion to eliminate Hindus. In place of exploding grenades, the new "terrorists"  sputter
coronavirus. They spit on fruit, they sneeze from windows, they cough from their houses, and they
vomit from buses, as part of their new "attacks".

Such violent imagination shows that Islamophobia in India is no longer closeted hatred, nor an open
secret. It is proliferating alongwith the pandemic. It is out during lockdowns. From villages to towns,
it is in blown out proportions amidst the public, branding all Indian Muslims as terrorists. They are
the source of all the evil. It is producing an analogy in which Hindus are seen as sacred contagion and
Muslims, dangerous contagion. While the sacred contagion has every right to spread, the dangerous
contagion has to be contained. Acts can be seen as attempts to impose a Hindu social order on Muslim
communities, wherein they are "terrorists" by birth, as one becomes a Brahmin or an "untouchable",
or as nomads become born "criminals", and members of performing communities are born as
"prostitutes".

This does not mean that Muslim societies do not practice the caste system, but their social systems
are not yet fully subservient to aggressive Hinduism.  Misapprehended Muslims are the world of chaos
for Hindus. They have the potential to produce dangerous contagions. It is about containing and
quarantining Muslims, who could not be contained during the anti-CAA-NRC protests. The disease is
a sign of both good and evil for the State, as in the gure of Bengal’s Shitala Mata. Evil has to be
dispelled like a mythical State dispels others’ right to divine citizenship. 

An epidemic is never only about the epidemic, nor is a disease only about the disease. Neither the
plague, nor the coronavirus, can be viewed in isolation. Virus, a microscopic agent creates its
microcosm before it enters the body and society. None other than Albert Camus has brought this
connection alive in his The Plague —  a classic about the epidemic, but also a metaphoric tale of the
Nazi occupation of the body and the city. It is also about the absurdity of life and death that we face in
times of catastrophes. It is also about the profundity of death that we don’t recognise, unless we face
it. Epidemic is a moment of turmoil. It lays out siege on our organised lives. It stops our movements
and shakes all the structures.  It creates a situation in which trivial concerns become insigni cant. It
leads human societies to open up in profound rupture. It is a time when we ask questions about life
and death, of prophecy and philosophy, of encounter and intimacy, about the power of a virus and the
collapse of the world order. Ideally, this should have been the case. Ideally, a disease that is causing
much concern around the world should not have been communalised. One can get infected at any
moment. At any moment, life can be at risk. Those who claim that homosexuality is a sin, are under
treatment. Those who manage security (the head of Mossad) have been quarantined. Everyone stands
vulnerable in the face of a pandemic. In such moments of helplessness, Camus says, what else can we
do but to love fellow human beings? He asks us to bring life to the hospice, never to the hospital. A
meaningful and compassionate life that capitalism and other systems of exploitation have divorced us
from.

It is believed that the epidemic has erased all forms of social and political di erences, but this is not
the case. Time and again, pandemics prove that we are but political animals and that politics has no
exit from our lives. Who will die and who will survive are not purely a matter of chance, but are  clearly
political. It has been proven before, and is being proven again with the frequent death of Blacks at the
heart of the US Empire. A timely slogan reads like this: "Coronavirus is a disease, capitalism is
pandemic". If this is the case, then it is a right to do politics. It is the right time to ask questions. Those
questions that we never asked about our health care systems, the pro t order, and life insurance
companies that promise us life after death. Let us question the lifeless health care system in which
even doctors are not safe, let alone the diseased. It is not the infection that is to be blamed for their
deaths, but the government and the system, for it is a case of negligence of the State. Who will ask
these questions when the conscience of those who ask questions, the media, has been sold out. With
their conscience gone for a toss, the bloodthirsty India media keeps looking for scapegoats. This time,
the scapegoat is the Tablighi Jamaat. The organisation has also become a scapegoat for the Hindu
State, for which it is holding millions of Indian Muslims responsible. 

Scapegoat of the Majority

Writing on the Plague, French critic Rene Girard says, "the distinctiveness of the plague is that it
ultimately destroys all forms of distinctiveness". Pandemics, however, could have been great
equalizers. Unfortunately, this is not the case. An epidemic is never an equalizer. Rather, it brings
discrimination, stigmatization, and xenophobia against its perceived "enemy". Jews were stigmatized
in Europe during the Plague, and Hindus and Sikhs during the Plague, cholera and meningitis
outbreak in the US Paci c and Canada. Hitler’s Germany almost exterminated its gypsies by decreeing
the focus on "Combating the Gypsy Plague".  Srijan Shukla rightly points out how "the coronavirus
pandemic is causing societies to nd their own personal scapegoat to blame". Americans are blaming
immigrant Chinese; Chinese are blaming Uyghurs, Pakistan is blaming Hazara minority, India is
blaming Muslims, and Muslims are blaming their jahil Muslims for spreading the virus. The Spanish
were blamed for the Spanish u and the Spanish called it the "French Flu".  Migrant labourers have
been viewed as suspects in the eyes of State. While cosmopolitans have thrown out their migrants,
upper caste feudal villages have found novel reasons to shut their villages for the already thrown-out
migrants. Is it not a riotous game to plan in the time of a pandemic? Moreover, by blaming Muslims,
the Indian state and media are shifting focus from narratives in which upper-classes (who y and
travel abroad) are considered the carriers of the disease. It was important to shift focus as it was
against the narratology of the nation and the corporate media. 

Muslims as Dangerous Contagion: From “Love Jihad” to “Corona Jihad”

At times when we are constantly thinking about a contagion which is overtaking our society, we need
to think about the contagion not only in a physical sense, but also in relation to our socio-cultural and
political life. Contagions can exist in various forms — from a plague virus to fascism. Not always seen,
but there seems to be a simmering connection between physical and ideological contagion. We don’t
need to go to Europe now to see the connection, for it is in front of our eyes.  If the coronavirus is a
bodily contagion, Muslims are projected as another dangerous contagion. When both are merged, it
creates a ripple e ect. While the disease becomes an evil, the community itself is considered
"diseased". The unfortunate congregation of Tabligi Jamaat is being viewed as a conspiracy, an act of
"treason", and a case of "Islamic insurrection". The state invoking the NSA (National Security Act)
against the members of the Jamaat, who themselves are victims of COVID-19, is no longer a
surprise.  From "Love Jihad"  to "Corona Jihad", Islamophobia has many names and forms. The
prevailing situation in India also proves that islamophobia is becoming insu cient, for it is proving to
be too mild to encompass the nature of the violence and ghettoisation, taking the form of apartheid.
This is quite similar to what BR Ambedkar has described as "permanent segregation"  in the case of
"untouchables".
 Image Courtesy: Reuters/Amit Dave

The notion of Muslims as a dangerous contagion cannot be separated from the Hindus as a "sacred
contagion". Hinduism as a sacred contagion has the right to spread anywhere, from air to earth, from
birds, animals to dust. One who comes in contact with it becomes pure — from the corrupt leaders to
the rape accused. It sacrileges everything — from economics to the judiciary. The truth is that even
the pandemic could not escape the endemic of the Hindu social order. There is a possibility that the
pandemic will consolidate the Hindu social order further.

This could be a controversial claim and perhaps a matter for further research, but one of the reasons
that the COVID-19 has not spread that much at the community level in India, in comparison to other
countries, could possibly be because communities have always been locked up in their own separate
caste-based ghettoes.

Islamophobia cannot be seen in isolation of Brahmanism. In the Hindu social order, if Dalits are dirt,
Muslims are infections. The image of Muslims as infections goes well with the spread of the
coronavirus. “To have been in the margins is to have been in contact with danger, to have been at a
source of power,” writes Mary Douglass. In one of his recent speeches, Narendra Modi said that
democratic “citizenry” are “manifestations of God”. Therefore, anything that harms citizens must be
a manifestation of vice, evil and demon. From secular notions, as per those enshrined in the Indian
Constitution, Indian citizenship has now acquired religious meanings as per Hindu tradition.
Democratic institutions, from the Legislative to the Judiciary have become part of the sacred. It is the
sacred contagion of Hinduism that holds the centre and it is a mythical archetype in which security
assumes the notion of sacredness and health becomes an a iction of “evil forces”. It is the
premonition of a mythical society that is ghting a “divine war” against the COVID-19.

The politics is obvious. The Indian government’s mission to ght COVID-19 is not only about
containing the virus, but also about “containing” the country’s Muslims forever. Both evils have to be
contained, in the eyes of the Hindu State, for the free ow of the sacred contagion of Brahmanism. It is
not surprising that sedition charges and arrests of Muslim activists have taken place in parallel with
the war against the pandemic. Also, the anxieties and failures to contain COVID-19 have resulted in
increased anger and hatred towards Muslims. Fanatics need to be shown how much the State cares
about their existence. The formula is clear: if you cannot contain COVID-19, “contain” Muslims — a
ght that is far more pro table than the ght against coronavirus.

Brahma Prakash is Assistant Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies at the School of Arts and
Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the writer's own, and do not necessarily represent
the views of the Indian Writers' Forum.