Post-Lockdown Politics

THERE IS AN amazing facet of the coronavirus pandemic that I can’t just get over: the fact that, as of April 8th morning, I don’t personally know anyone who has tested positive for coronavirus.

Initially, it was imagined that the coronavirus was more likely to infect those habitually accustomed to international travel. This conveyed the initial impression, in India at least, that the country is confronted with a grave problem that will be confined to the proverbial creamy layer. When they first started testing passengers on international flights, ministers were inundated with phone pleading that someone or the other be either exempted or pushed to the top of the queue because it was such a hassle. The panic in the political class of Delhi, for example, started after some of the more socialite MPs attended a dinner in Lucknow where one celebrity tested positive. That was when it was decided that discretion was a better part of valour and MPs should quietly go home to social distancing. But unless people have chosen to keep things totally under wraps, I still don’t know anyone who is either in hospital, having tested positive, or has recovered from a coronavirus attack.

In the past few weeks, it has also seemed that coronavirus is something you contact in overcrowded meetings, such as the Tablighi Jamaat conference that also had an overdose of foreign delegates. But in the context of India, the jamboree at Nizamuddin, Delhi, was an aberration since, for at least four to five days prior to the ‘janata curfew’, meetings—both small and big—were being cancelled. The only exception was in Kolkata which makes its own rules and violates them according to convenience. The organisers of the evangelical meet were both bloody-minded and stupid in persisting with a conference where people were coughing all around. They ended up spreading their virus all over India. But then, we don’t know anyone who goes to Tablighi meetings—not even the middle-class Muslims who persisted in standing up for their right to be human carriers.

The social pattern is so different in the West. I am not very familiar with the US and won’t comment on how the pandemic has disrupted New York and California, usually the two reference points of Indians. However, most of my friends in London—mainly middle-class professionals—seem to personally know someone who has been infected by the coronavirus. I don’t mean celebrity cases such as the Prince of Wales and the Prime Minister but less known individuals, like someone who was in school or college with us or the parents of someone we know. I think this difference is crucial. Once the alarm was sounded, we in India quickly decided to retreat into our bunkers and physically cut ourselves from the world. They weren’t so successful in doing that in the UK because they experimented with different approaches, including something called herd immunity.

In effect, this has meant that the old and the already sick were offered as human sacrifice. For example, the average age of those that died of the coronavirus in Italy was 79.5 years.

Overall, I think we in India have done rather well. If it hadn’t been for the Maulana who insisted that he would be protected by God and would also happily die in a mosque, our record would have been even more impressive. But there is no point crying over this human folly which has led to the epidemic becoming widespread in Muslim ghettos. It is a price we in India have to pay for trying to be unreasonably accommodative. I mean, if it requires the National Security Adviser to go to the Tablighi Jamaat headquarters at 3 AM to personally persuade the Emir of the sect to tell his flock to come out and be tested, there must be something wrong in the way we manage diversity.

Meanwhile, in days to come, angry scholars and activists will badger you with facts to show that there was a definite communal bias in the manner the coronavirus was tackled in India. They will suggest that the whole experience was probably aimed at reinforcing pre-existing prejudices and bolstering them with new ones about unhygienic practices and offensive behaviour.

My inclination will be to tell such pseudo-scholars to take a very long walk. I know they won’t. This is why I fear that post-lockdown politics will also have a strong toxic element to it.

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