THE COVID PANDEMIC: A Report on the Scapegoating of Minorities in India Centre for Study of Society and Secularism i The Covid Pandemic: A Report on the Scapegoating of Minorities in India Centre for Study of Society and Secularism Mumbai ii Published and circulated as a digital copy in April 2021 © Centre for Study of Society and Secularism All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including, printing, photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher and without prominently acknowledging the publisher. Centre for Study of Society and Secularism, 603, New Silver Star, Prabhat Colony Road, Santacruz (East), Mumbai, India Tel: +91 9987853173 Email: [email protected] Website: www.csss-isla.com Cover Photo Credits: Danish Siddiqui/Reuters iii Preface Covid -19 pandemic shook the entire world, particularly from the last week of March 2020. The pandemic nearly brought the world to a standstill. Those of us who lived during the pandemic witnessed unknown times. The fear of getting infected of a very contagious disease that could even cause death was writ large on people’s faces. People were confined to their homes. They stepped out only when absolutely necessary, e.g. to buy provisions or to access medical services; or if they were serving in essential services like hospitals, security and police, etc. Economic activities were down to minimum. Means of public transportation were halted, all educational institutions, industries and work establishments were closed. People were afraid of strangers as they could potentially transmit the disease. In fact, they were afraid also of friends and relatives and kept their distance from everyone except those staying together. Health infrastructure proved grossly inadequate to deal with the situation. Over one and a half lakh people died in the pandemic due to the disease and almost 11 million people contracted the disease in India till 10th Feb 2021. Electronic media - the only source of contact with the outside world - reported the pandemic round the clock and reeled out the rising graphs of those affected by the disease and those who died. This was the most important news of the day and its reportage consumed lion’s share of the news time. On 23rd March 2020, when I returned from the US, the residents of my building, with whom I had very good relations, became paranoid about my return from the US. They told my driver not to go airport to receive me, and if he does receive me at the airport, not to bring me to the building. They contacted me and asked me to get myself admitted into any hospital that treats covid patients and come to stay in the building only after that. The security of our building was directed not to allow me inside the building. As I was returning from the US, I had no idea of the paranoia build up around covid in the country. I had to return to my home and had no alternative. In another extreme case narrated to me by a friend from Delhi, her neighbour living above her flat in Hauz Khas, would bathe outside their door before entering their house every time he returned from the market after buying provisions for home. She learnt about the fact as water from their door flowed down to their floor. Bathing outside their house was to ensure that the person was cleansed of the virus, if contracted when outside. The gated community and the middle class were more paranoid than others. Their incomes were mostly secured as they could work from home, although the owners and proprietors of small and medium enterprises too suffered loss of income under strict lockdown. The gates of the middleclass housing societies kept strangers outside - including the domestic helps, hawkers, personnel for home delivery and courier services, gig workers. This affected large numbers of casual and migrant workers who had no work and no wages. The attitude of the middle-class was like, “let me and my immediate family members survive and let others be damned and fend for themselves”. Medical and paramedical staff employed in hospitals were despised in housing societies as they were perceived as potential carriers of the virus from the hospitals. A few did come out on streets to organize and distribute food packets and dry rations, but they were more of exceptions. The casual workers employed in unorganized industries were worst hit during the pandemic. They were caught up in crowded and shared rooms constructed from tin sheets or huts, without work and wages, without food and not allowed to step out of iv their overcrowded shanties. There was no transportation to take them to their native villages to be with their families. After being trapped for over three months in such hopeless situation, many of them decided to walk to their permanent homes in their villages that were hundreds of kilo metres away, risking being caned, punished, humiliated and even jailed by the security personnel who were mandated with the powers and also duty to ensure minimum number of people were on public roads and only for an essential purpose. Some died walking back to their native places - Govt. did not keep records of their numbers. Others started walking on the railway tracks to avoid being caned and detained by the police. A few of them died when they were sleeping on the tracks, resting for a while before they commenced their journey the next day and a train ran over them. Entire families were walking with their luggage in tow and little children on their shoulders. The lasting image that stayed with me was that of a teenage daughter paddling a bicycle for hundreds of kilo metres with her sick father on the pillion. Luckily, both of them survived the ride. Followers of religious communities as well as secular people came on the streets offering food packets, foot- wears and all kinds of help to the stranded with the govt. doing next to nothing. The state was represented more by the policeman with cane in hands beating those who were travelling on foot, bicycles, autorickshaws for hundreds of kilo metres. Though there were some helpful cops too. It is only when the media started extensively covering the ordeals of those returning back homes that the govt. decided to run the trains and buses to ferry nearly 50 million stranded workers back to their native places. It is the middle class gated community that was most anxious and paranoid of the virus. Amidst this paranoia, media repeated ad-nauseum the message of keeping ‘social distance’ instead of ‘physical distance’ from everyone else. The social prejudices heightened against the vulnerable sections - particularly the minorities, the migrant workers and those employed as casual labourers in unorganized industries and living in slums. As the minorities were being targeted and scapegoated only for the religion they followed, the Centre for Study of Society and Secularism decided that it should document the process of scapegoating as well as the institutions, including the state and non-state actors that scapegoated the minorities. This project examines and studies the instances of discrimination and scapegoating of faith-based communities. The scapegoating of the vulnerable sections does not help in anyway fighting the pandemic. In fact, it allows those who must take effective action against the pandemic but failed to do so, to shift the blame on others who had no responsibility in the matter. If the duty bearers are not held accountable for their failures, they are more likely to be carefree and negligent in their work next time as well. They may inspire other duty bearers in other fields to be negligent as well. Why this project: The efforts made to document the scapegoating, and in the process strengthening communal polarization is to counter such a process, and arrest the deteriorating situation on the front of communal polarization and conflicts. Facts would not only help deal with the pandemic like disasters more effectively, but it would also ensure that religions play a positive role in motivating people to help each other in such situations. The experience of handling the pandemic, or for that matter, any disaster is important and there must be lessons learnt. Could the pandemic have been handled better? Did the scapegoating have any impact on the handling of the pandemic itself? v Methodology This study is largely based on the what appeared in the media. We selected six states for the study - Gujarat, UP, Delhi, Bihar, Tamil Nadu, and Odisha. The six states were selected to ensure that all the four regions were included as also the NDA as well as non-NDA Govt. Six teams scanned all the news media from each state. The CSSS office compiled the data to study the role of the state, non-state actors and the media in reporting the pandemic. We are thankful to the teams in the Six states which helped us scan the media and compile the data, which includes Dhirendra Panda, Dani Chandrakant, Ibad Razaa, Hozefa Ujjaini, Mushtaq Ali, Rahul Rajeev, Uday (Paridhi), Sr. Robancy Helen, Adv. S.G. Alli Chandrakumar, Dipshikha Vaishnav (Programme Coordinator, CSSS). Most of the team members who assisted in the data collection from their states were in the forefront of carrying out distribution of relief materials during the pandemic to those who were stranded. We are also thankful to the CSSS team which coordinated the entire project very efficiently and without whom the project would not have seen the light of the day.