An FIR has been lodged at Vartak Nagar police station against Maharashtra cabinet minister Jitendra Awhad by a resident of Thane, alleging that two police constables and goons allegedly associated with Maharashtra minister and NCP strongman Jitendra Awhad had badly assaulted him. As per the complaint filed, the young man had opposed NCP leader Jitendra Awhad’s call to boycott PM Modi’s request to light a lamp for 9 minutes at 9 PM on April 5.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had requested the citizens of the country to light a lamp at 9 PM for 9 minutes on April 5 as a mark of support and solidarity for those carrying out the fight against the menace of coronavirus in the country. However, following PM Modi’s call to galvanise people into expressing their gratitude towards the doctors, healthcare workers and doctors battling coronavirus, some opposition leader expressed their protests against his call. Maharashtra cabinet minister Jitendra Awhad also criticized PM Modi’s initiative on Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms and asked people to boycott PM Modi’s request. Following his reaction, the victim posted an offensive post on social media opposing Awhad’s call to boycott PM Modi’s request.
Social media post by a user which invited Jitendra Awhad’s wrath
As per the FIR, around 11.50 pm on April 5, two policemen came to his house. The policemen asked him to come to the police station. The victim was not informed of why he was being taken to the police station. Why the victim’s wife enquired why is her husband being taken to the police station, the policemen responded that it is general interrogation and they would return him within 10 minutes.
Thereafter, the policemen took the victim in their white Scorpio to NCP MLA Jitendra Awhad’s Nath Bungalow situated near Viviana Mall. He was frisked and the policemen had taken away his mobile phone.
The victim claims that Jitendra Awhad was present at his bungalow and a posse of 15-20 goons was already there to beat him up. He was then mercilessly assaulted by the goons under the watch of Awhad until their wooden sticks broke off, the victim has alleged in the FIR.
After that, Awhad approached the badly injured victim and questioned him why did he make the offensive post. The young man then apologised to Awhad and said that out of enthusiasm, he uploaded the post. Awhad then called up the young man’s house and asked his wife to remove the contentious post.
However, the young man was still not released even after apologising. He was beaten again and a video of him admitting that he had made the post by mistake and is apologetic about it was recorded. The policemen later took him to the hospital for treatment, the complaint alleges.
After being treated at the hospital, the young man went to the Vartak Nagar police station where the police lodged a complaint against unknown assaulters. At the same time, a case has been booked against the victim under the IT act.
However, NCP leader and Maharashtra cabinet minister Jitendra Awhad defended himself by posting a tweet sharing the offensive post uploaded by the victim and asking a Twitter user if would tolerate such things done to him or one of his family members. In fact, he posted the same offensive image, which was morphed to depict Ahwad setting his buttocks on fire, and asked if such offensive images are to be tolerated.
However, Twitter users were unsparing in criticising Awhad for his manifestly lawless behaviour. One Twitter user shared the badly bruised image of the victim asking if this is not lawlessness then what is.
If this is not the lawlessness then what it is please answer to the residents of Maharashtra….. pic.twitter.com/KxP21bP2Fx
Another Twitter user mocked Awhad by sharing the same offensive picture with an insightful remark that what is depicted in the picture is scientifically impossible.
It is notable here that PM Modi’s call to the Indian citizens to switch off all lights at their homes on 9 pm on Sunday, 5th April, for 9 minutes and light a candle or diya to show solidarity against the pandemic had received widespread support across India.
Just as strategists and experts had started believing that India may have flattened the Wuhan Corornavirus curve with the strict 21-day nationwide lockdown, the Tablighi Jamaat super spreader caused a Coronavirus explosion in India and pushed back our efforts in fighting the pandemic. Prior to the Tablighi Jamaat catastrophe, the number of confirmed cases in India were doubling in 7.4 days, however, the Tablighi Jamaat event had resulted in doubling them in 4.1 days.
India, after a spike in cases due to Tablighi Jamaat cases, for the first time in a while has seen a decline in the number of new cases in the last 24 hours, once again providing a glimmer of hope.
According to the numbers provided by the joint secretary (health) Lav Agarwal on April 7 (Tuesday), India reported 354 cases in the last 24 hours. “Till now 326 persons have been discharged after recovery. Till now there are 4,421 #COVID19 positive cases in the country, including 354 cases in the last 24 hours”, Luv Agarwal was quoted by ANI as saying.
Till now 326 persons have been discharged after recovery. Till now there are 4,421 #COVID19 positive cases in the country, including 354 cases in the last 24 hours: Lav Aggarwal, Joint Secretary, Health Ministry pic.twitter.com/fIW5i0o9JZ
This is a remarkable decline from the 693 cases in the previous 24-hour window. On April 6 (Monda), Lav Agarwal was quoted by ANI as saying: 693 new #COVID19 cases have been reported in the last 24 hours, taking the total number to 4067 in India out of which 1445 cases are related to Tablighi Jamaat. 76 per cent of cases have been reported in males & 24 per cent in females: Lav Aggarwal, Joint Secretary, Health Ministry.
693 new #COVID19 cases have been reported in the last 24 hours, taking the total number to 4067 in India out of which 1445 cases are related to Jablighi Jamaat. 76 per cent cases have been reported in males & 24 per cent in females: Lav Aggarwal, Joint Secretary, Health Ministry pic.twitter.com/gV8OtOs664
Recently, economist Shamika Ravi, who is currently the Director of Research at Brookings India and former member, PM’s Economic Advisory Council, in a series of Tweets shared some graphical representation of statistical data showing a welcome turn in the Coronavirus growth rate in India where the curve seems to have flattened. She believes that even though it is a little too early to comment, but, if this trend continues, it will soon bring some relief for India.
The Indian authorities have been putting in tremendous amount of efforts to battle the pandemic especially after the Tablighi Jamaat event emerged as a super-spreader of the infection. According to latest numbers, more than 25,500 Tablighi Jamaat members and their contacts have been quarantined in the country till now after the Union and state governments conducted a “mega operation” to identify them, a senior Union Home Ministry official said on Monday.
The live cases of COVID-19 linked to Tablighi Jammat were reported in Andaman and Nicobar, Delhi, Assam, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh.
During the daily briefing, Joint Secretary Punya Salila Srivastava revealed that 1,750 foreign-based members of the Jamaat, out of the total 2,083, have been blacklisted till now by the Indian government.
The Union Home Ministry on Thursday blacklisted and cancelled the tourist visas of 960 foreign Tablighi Jamaat members for violating visa conditions by engaging in missionary activities while in India.
A couple of days ago, the role of Tablighi Jamaat in the spreading of the Wuhan Coronavirus across numerous states of India had come to light. Muslim clerics of Tablighi Jamaat organised a congregation, which was roughly attended by 1500 people both from various parts of the country as well as from abroad, in violation of the government’s lockdown orders, providing a conducive environment for the novel coronavirus to proliferate.
Ever since Tablighi Jamaat’s role as the super-spreader of the Wuhan coronavirus in India came to the fore, online crusaders such as Dhruv Rathee, along with self-proclaimed fact-checkers like Alt News, have gone overboard in declaring their innocence. Conspiracy theories and insidious fact-checks are being purveyed by them to slander the establishment while downplaying Tablighi Jamaat and other Muslim individuals’ culpability in the spread of the infection.
Freelance ‘journalist’ and Pro-AAP blogger Dhruv Rathee, who portrays himself to be a polymath, although a ludicrous one, and whose source of information is often limited to his own misconceived intuitions, recently uploaded a Facebook post with a list of 8 fact-checks done by propaganda portals in the last few days.
Cyber warrior Dhruv Rathee’s Facebook post containing so-called ‘fact-checks’ by propaganda portals
Let’s get to the truth of these purported fact-checks one by one-
Fact Check no. 1: ‘Muslim man spitting on fruits to spread Corona’
In his Facebook post, online crusader Dhruv Rathee has shared the link of ‘The Quint’, the platform which transformed an engineer into a doctor and peddled fake news about coronavirus spread in the country. This fact-check published by The Quint “attempts” to prove that the man named Sheru Mian was not spitting on the fruits. By sharing this link, Rathee has implied that Sheru Mian did not spit on the fruits and is being unfairly targeted by the people.
Here is the screenshot of the relevant portion from The Quint’s ‘fact-check’ report shared by social media warrior Dhruv Rathee. It is pertinent to note that the article clearly states that the investigation on whether Sheru Mian is guilty of putting saliva on the vegetables still ‘underway’. Yet, Rathee attempted to portray it as if Sheru Mian is innocent and is being vilified only because he is a Muslim.
Screenshot of the inconclusive report published on The Quint
A bland report about the developments happened in Sheru Mian’s case was deviously twisted by Dhruv Rathee to convey that a fact-check has been done by The Quint on the matter.
Notwithstanding the police verification which concluded that the video of Shru Mian was authentic, habitual fake news peddler Alt News appeared so desperate to shield Sheru Mian that instead of focusing on his criminality of applying saliva on the vegetables, they seemed keener on contriving a “fact-check” and harping on the date and time when the video was uploaded.
AltNews watering down Sheru Mian’s deeds
Amidst the gloomy scenario, where people are already panic-stricken because of the enigmatic nature of COVID-19, the video of the vegetable-seller spitting on his vegetables only added to their apprehension. Fact-checkers were visibly perturbed that people had informed the police about Mian’s misdoings. In their so-called fact-check, Alt News alleged that the video of a Muslim vegetable vendor spitting on the vegetables was not from April but from February, as if spitting on the vegetables in February was totally in accordance with the prevailing societal norms.
The question here is, what was the fact-check in this article? Firstly, it is astoundingly ludicrous to premise one’s fact-check not on the event itself but the date and timing of the event. The police and other media had clearly verified that Sheru had indeed spit on the food and the video was totally authentic. However, after first contesting the veracity of the video, the likes of Dhruv Rathee, The Quint and the self-proclaimed fact-checker Alt News went on to question the date and time of the video.
They had no qualms if the person spat on the vegetables and fruits. They were primarily concerned with exculpating the Muslim vegetable vendor. Fact-check as to when and where the incident happened held more importance than the unscrupulous act committed by the man. They were preoccupied with their propaganda of salvaging Muslims, regardless of their culpability. If a Muslim is seen committing a depraved act in a video, the emphasis is placed on fact-checking extraneous minutiae such as whether the video is from Italy or China or if it’s from January or March. The debased nature of the act committed by the perpetrator is inconsequential to their fact-checking.
Fact Check no. 2: ‘Muslims licking utensils to spread Corona’
Self-proclaimed fact-checker which regularly likes to water down crimes committed by Islamists, Alt News, recently fact-checked a video that showed some Muslims licking utensils. Alt News claimed in their article that it is an unrelated and old video meant to maligns the Muslims. The article said that the video showing Muslims licking last remaining morsels of food in the utensils is from July 2018 which is being bandied about in recent times to whip up anti-Muslim sentiments.
AltNews fact-checking licking plate viral video
However, one must realise that there have been several instances such as a Maulvi praying for the death of 50 crore Hindus, a video of a Muslim man licking currency notes with the ulterior aim of infecting others of coronavirus, videos of radical Muslims discouraging others from maintaining social distancing and many other videos which have raised a general suspicion against the Muslim community. The emergence of Tablighi Jamaat as the newest and pernicious cluster of coronavirus has only added to the misgivings. In fact, an account of the habits espoused by Tablighi Jamaat members at Markaz Nizamuddin has served to amplify the suspicions against them. Tablighi Jamaat members performed ‘Wudu’, ceremonial washing of hands and legs from the same pool of water at Markaz. A group of 30-40 members ate from the same plate, escalating the chances of virus transmission.
AltNews ‘fact-checking’ viral video of Muslims eating from same plate and licking
The video exemplified the unhygienic practices followed by Muslims which has resulted in the disproportionate increase in the number of coronavirus cases in the country. However, slanted ‘fact-check’ were so engrossed in their Muslim salvation that they couldn’t see the forest for the trees. Dhruv Rathee, who hails himself as a fact-checker, deliberately missed the nuance and continued peddling propaganda by the fake-news peddler Alt News.
Fact Check no. 3: ‘Muslims sneezing in unison to spread Corona’
While claiming that the news about Muslims sneezing in unison to spread coronavirus is fake, online crusader Dhruv Rathee cited a dubious website ‘The Logical Indian’. In the fact-check, the website said that the charge against Muslims of sneezing to spread coronavirus is patently false.
The Logical Indian giving clean chit to Jamaatis
However, contrary to this assertion, if the news is to be believed, malevolent Jamaatis are indeed trying to disseminate the infection deliberately. Earlier, when the officials were shifting the Tablighi Jamaat members from Markaz Nizamuddin to containment facilities, many Tablighi Jamaat members, suspected of suffering from COVID-19 were found spitting on the roads of Delhi.
Tablighi Jamaatis deliberately trying to spit on walls to spread coronavirusHow Islamists urged people to spread coronavirus.
In a TV interview with India TV, Dr Aarti Lalchandani, the principal of Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi Medical College, who is tending the corona patients of Tablighi Jamaat in Uttar Pradesh’s Kanpur, claimed that many of the Jamaat members were stubbornly refusing to cooperate with the medical workers and spitting at different places in the hospital. Other reports from quarantine centres in Delhi have claimed that Tablighi Jamaat members spat not only in the containment facilities but also on doctors, nurses and attendants. However, according to Dhruv Rathi and the team of Alt News, whose expertise in fact-checking is only limited to reverse image-search, such intentionally perversely spiteful behaviour of Tablighi Jamaat members did not amount to spreading coronavirus.
Fact Check no. 4: Dhruv Rathee accused ANI of running fake story of Hindus in Karachi being denied rations
Propagandist Dhruv Rathee rubbished the ANI report of Hindus in Karachi being denied rations as fake by citing a Pakistani news media outlet. So intense is Rathee’s hatred for India that he places for more faith in obsequious news agencies of Pakistan instead of believing independent Indian news outlets. Rathee bases his belief that the news reported by ANI is false, on assertions made by Karachi Commissioner Samiullah who said there ain’t a single Hindu in the said village to be denied rations.
Pakistani website shared by Dhruv Rathee to rubbish ANI report as fake
First of all, it is ridiculous that Dhruv Rathee uses a report from Pakistani news media outlet to deem ANI’s report as fake. Hindus in Pakistan have often been kidnapped, raped and forcibly converted while the Pakistani media outlets either repudiate such news or ignore them altogether. Secondly, by giving credence to propagandist media outfits of Pakistan, Dhruv Rathee is only empowering them further to provide a cover-up for their heinous acts against Hindus. Thirdly, the investigative fact-checker should also ensure that the ‘sources’ sitting in Pakistan from whom he produces their fact-checked report, do not become part of any terrorist organization in Pakistan.
Fact Check no. 5: Old video used to claim Tablighi Jamaat members spitting on policemen to spread coronavirus
Avant-garde ‘fake-news’ buster Dhruv Rathee shares a link to BBC, the same website which published a report on how sex-life of people have been affected because of the mandated quarantine during the coronavirus outbreak, in which a fact-check about a 26-year-old young man named Mohammad Suhail Shaukat Ali being beaten to the pulp by police officers after he spits on them while being taken to Mumbai court for his hearing is done.
While technically the fact-check is perfect but it is worth noting that the youth who spits on police officers is a Muslim and the incident has a stark resemblance to members of Tablighi Jamaat who are found spitting on police officials, nurses, attendants and doctors in different parts of the country to spread their malady to others. The larger and undeniable point is that Muslim members, belonging to Tablighi Jamaat have unabashedly resorted to spitting, with the aim to infect others. The fact-check glosses over that fact to claim that old videos are being circulated to assert that Tablighi Jamaat members are spitting on others while giving a clean chit to the offenders.
Fact Check no. 6: Video falsely claiming Muslim policeman beating Hindu priest
In his 6th claim, Rathee shares a link to another dubious website-‘The Lallantop’ to contend that the video of a Muslim policeman beating a Hindu priest is fake. Social media was rife with many news, including SP of Rewa beating up a priest during the lockdown. However, ‘The Lallantop’ has managed to keep the secular fabric of its article intact by adding a line in its fact check that not only priests in the temples but Muslims have also been beaten alike during the lockdown.
Dhruv Rathee sharing misleading news
Fact Check no. 7: Muslim worker in restaurant spitting in food to spread coronavirus
The seventh claim is the biggest testament to the trickery of the routine fake-news peddlers-cum-self-proclaimed fact-checkers like Alt News. The title of the article shared by Dhruv Rathee states that it contains ‘fact-check’ about a Muslim man spitting in food to spread coronavirus. However, inside the body of the article, one realises that the fact-check is about whether the food is packaged in India or some other Gulf or Asian country. Even this fact is not established in the article as it explicitly includes a disclaimer that Alt News could not establish exact details about the video, meaning everything else in the article is nothing less than gobbledygook to exonerate Tablighi Jamaat members of any wrongdoing.
AltNews exonerating Tablighi Jamaat
Such videos are often shared on social media, in which people of the Muslim community are seen spitting food before a community meal or they are seen making such claims.
AltNews being selective in ‘fact-checking’
Instead of fact-checking why did the Muslim man in the video spat in the food, or what are the motivations for Muslims to dribble in the food, or if its a custom among Muslims to spit in the food, ‘fact-checker’ AltNews thought it more important to conduct a superficial fact-check to ascertain if the video is from Dubai or Singapore or any other Asian country.
Fact-check no.8: Muslim foreign nationals hiding in Patna mosque to avoid coronavirus testing
This is perhaps the most preposterous fact-check in the total list of 8 posted by Dhruv Rathee. The article, which is written by Alt-News co-founder Muhammad Zubair himself, says that the people hiding in the mosque of Patna were from Kyrgyzstan and not Italy. The interesting fact here is that according to Alt News co-founder Zubair, Kyrgyzstan is not a foreign country. Once again, the fact-check was done just for the sake of it, without having any objective quality to it.
Opindia, based on news sources (which were media and not Facebook page administrators), mentioned the possibility of their being from Turkmenistan in the report, which is quite natural.
AltNews’ selective ‘fact-checking’
In the absence of information, many times news from different sources can publish ‘wrong name/place’, where the purpose is only to convey the news to the readers with the available information. However, in the case of AltNews, where propaganda trumps fact-based reporting, incongruity about unimportant details are pointed out so that the larger point can be somehow masked. Here too, Alt News was busy determining whether the foreign nationals had Chinese passport or Italian citizenship, instead of focusing on the pertinent point that they had come from outside India and were suspected of carrying COVID-19.
Selective fact-checking of AltNews
The fact that they came from Kyrgyzstan, Italy, China or Turkey is secondary. The more important fact that Muslim foreign nationals who may be suspected of carrying COVID-19 were found hiding in Patna mosque was quietly swept under the carpet by the AltNews and irrelevant information points as to from which country they hailed from was given undue importance in their report.
In addition, Alt News in its report mentions that people in the Patna mosque had gotten suspicious of the foreign nationals living in the mosque. Instead of casting aspersions on OpIndia or Amar Ujala for their reportage, Alt News should have questioned the motive of those people who despite having suspicion continued to shelter the foreign nationals within the mosque premises. In fact, when these folks have been found indulging in religious activities while being on a tourist visa.
While Dhruv Rathee and ‘revolutionary’ fact-checkers that he has mentioned in his Facebook post may be under the impression that by composing a list of so-called ‘Fact-Checks’, they could downplay the role of Tablighi Jamaat Muslims in the spread of coronavirus in India, the reality is that by pulling off such an antic, their already diminishing credibility has taken another hit and their nefarious propaganda of confounding people in the name of ‘fact-checking’ stands exposed once again. Far from acquitting Muslims, their stunt has only accentuated their role in the spread of the coronavirus, not just in India but in Gulf cities and South Asian countries such as Dubai, Singapore etc.
Note: The article was originally published on OpIndia Hindi. You could read the Hindi version here.
Over the last two months, the world has been plunged into a pandemic and a global economic crisis. Most countries across the globe are on lockdown and have sealed their borders. Thousands of people have died and a sense of insecurity is looming over people.
Though the virus originated in China, and China has tried to keep the news of an epidemic hidden, from gagging doctors to suppressing news, China has been working overtime to deny its responsibility and has even tried to guilt-trip other nations about blaming them for the pandemic.
However, an online survey by Manoj Kewalramani, an Associate Fellow-China Studies at The Takshashila Institution has revealed that a significant majority of Indians also feel that China’s opacity and mismanagement are to be blamed for the coronavirus global pandemic.
The Takshishila Institution, based in Bengaluru, is an independent networked think tank on India’s strategic affairs, public policy and governance.
Manoj Kewalramani conducted an online survey from a period of March 26, 2020, until April 3, 2020. During that time, responses were invited through email and by sharing the questionnaire on different social media platforms. Respondents were required to log in with an email id to submit their answers. They were also requested to state their nationality. Out of the 1299 respondents, the author says that 1184 provided information about their nationality. Among these, 1156 are Indian nationals.
The survey contained five multiple-choice questions, with respondents being asked to choose one option per question. This survey was conducted to assess the respondents dominant perception.
The key findings from the survey are as follows:
China’s accountability for spreading the pandemic:
A significant majority of around 67% of respondants believe that China is to blame for the outbreak becoming a global pandemic. When this figure is broken down further it shows that out of thei 67%, a majority of 48.7% believe that the sole reason for the crornavirus spread is that China failed to stop its illegal wildlife trade, contain early outnreak and lied to the world. Moreover, 18.2% believe that the pandemic is an outcome of China biowarfare while 14.5% believe other governments are at fault for their lack of preparedness.
Graphical representation of the above statistics
While the negligence and cover-up of Chinese authorities have pushed the world to battle a pandemic, the Chinese government has peddled victimhood claiming that calling the pandemic a Chinese disease and terms like Chinese virus and Wuhan virus is ‘racism’.
The response to the question about the use of terms like “Chinese virus,” “Wuhan virus” and “Made in China pandemic” also underscores public anger.
Out of 1299 responses, a significant majority of 52.8% feel that it is just right to name it the ‘Chinese virus’ as it is needed to ensure that China doesn’t escape the responsibility.
Graphical representation of the above statistics
Mistrust of PRC’s Global Role:
Though China evidently failed to acknowledge the gravity of the problem then and allowed its lucrative wildlife trade to flourish, endowing the world with an even pernicious pandemic, for the past few weeks, Chinese diplomats and media have been pushing the narrative of China’s success in containing the outbreak and its emergence as a leading global public health goods provider.
Recently, UK think tank Chatham House, Jim O’Neill, also fawned over China’s exemplary measures to control the transmission of coronavirus.
Responses to the survey show that this narrative has not been very effective.
Out of 1299 responses, a majority of over 65% of the respondents feel that China’s response to the outbreak is opaque and draconian. They feel that China has covered up the true scale of the crisis, only 3.1% agree that China has emerged as a role model for the other countries when it comes to tackling the crisis.
Graphical representation of the above statistics
Meanwhile, when asked for an opinion on China providing support to other countries, a majority of the respondents, 56.4%, viewed this as geopolitical, claiming that China is using the crisis to project power. Nearly 19% believe that China is not doing enough to assist other states in dealing with the pandemic. In comparison to this, only 12.5% of responses were in support of China.
Beijing clearly faces a Catch-22, and it appears that its effort to spin a positive narrative is having little impact.
Graphical representation of the above statistics
Competition & Cooperation:
When asked about the dominant view regarding the Indo-China relationaship, majority of respondants, i.e 47% feel that while there is competition, both sides also have shared interests. On the other hand, 46.4% of the respondents either view China as a fundamental threat to India (33%) or want a decoupling of the two economies (13.4%).
Graphical representation of the above statistics
The Wuhan coronavirus reportedly started in China’s wildlife and seafood markets. China’s demand and consumption of wildlife have contributed significantly to a number of species being driven to the brink of extinction. The negligence and cover-up of Chinese authorities have pushed the world to battle a pandemic that has claimed thousands of lives and impacted global economies heavily.
The coronavirus is affecting 209 countries and territories around the world. The number of Covid-19 cases has reached 1,360,233 worldwide, and 75,961 people have died so far.
In India, the Left-Liberal establishment has always maintained firm control over the institutions that consist of critical positions in professions such as journalism and universities. What for? To primarily pervert public discourse and thereby derail the process of public policy in the country. Perverting the public discourse is of paramount importance to this establishment in order to legitimize, in the minds of the public, its disdain for primarily three things: Indian nationalism, Hinduism and Indic civilization. Hence, it has always painted any organization that disapproves of this disdain, as communal. In doing so, the establishment pits these ‘communal’ organizations against ‘secular’ Mahatma Gandhi, thereby trying to manufacture a false binary wherein the latter’s huge legacy & incandescent national influence is perverted to ‘sell’ the said disdain. Thus, it is important to unravel the Mahatma’s core beliefs regarding the three things mentioned above. Doing so will prove that the Mahatma, if understood objectively and correctly, is an anathema to the Left-Liberal establishment and not a mascot.
On Nationality
Through its academic and journalistic projects, the Left-Liberal establishment has always presented India as an empty landfilled by successive invaders and as a geographical construct of the English. It considers our country to have gained a spirit of nationalism/oneness only after the British arrived here. However, the Mahatma vehemently rejected this idea. In ‘Hind Swaraj’, he writes ‘We were one nation before they (Britishers) came to India. One thought inspired us. Out mode of life was the same. It was because we were one nation that they were able to establish one kingdom.” He also writes “.Our leading men travelled throughout India either on foot or in bullock-carts…What do you (to the interviewer) think could have been the intention of those farseeing ancestors who established Setubandha (Rameshwar) in the South, Jagannath in the East and Hardwar in the North as places of pilgrimage? They saw that India was one undivided land so made by nature. They…fired the people with an idea of nationality in a manner unknown in other parts of the world. And we Indians are one as no two Englishmen are.” In fact, he adds that only those who considered themselves ‘civilized’ and ‘superior’ persons “imagine that India is many nations” and not one unified whole. No doubt that the said self-styled ‘civilized’ establishment considers its comrades to be more civilized and superior to others!
On Hinduism
Also, the Left-Liberal cabal has always presented Hinduism as an assortment of disparate constituents. As Arun Shourie writes in his book ‘Eminent Historians’, “They (‘progressive’ elements of the cabal) consider the religion to be just a word used by Arabs to describe the assortment they encountered, just an invention of the communalists to impose uniformity.” Thus, the cabal’s ‘eminent historians’ have, he adds, “blackened the Hindu period of our history.” This, disdain for Hinduism would surely have hurt the Mahatma, for he found Hinduism’s holy scripture, Bhagavad Gita,to be an “infallible guide of conduct”, and Ramanama(Lord Ram’s name) to be an “infallible remedy”. He writes in his autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth, “..I quite remember being enraptured by his (a particular Hindu preacher) reading which laid the foundation of my deep devotion to the Ramayana. Today I regard Ramayana of Tulsidas as the greatest book in all devotional literature…..(and) Gita has become my dictionary of daily reference.”
It was Gita’s teaching of ‘non-possession’ that laid the foundation for his belief in his famous principle of ‘simplicity’. He mentions that Hinduism taught him to improve his thoughts, change his diet and follow the vow of brahmacharya for life, preparing him for the Satyagraha against the British. There are numerous instances in his life wherein he vehemently resists – attempts by missionaries to convert him to Christianity and consumption of ‘beef tea’ prescribed by allopathic/English doctors to cure his wife’s illnesses, instead preferring the Ayurveda water/earth treatment. His reverence for Hinduism & its constituent ethos is in complete contrast to the sheer disdain that India’s left-liberal establishment has for the religion.
On Indic civilization
As Arun Shourie writes in his book ‘Eminent Historians’, “These (leftist) intellectuals and their patrons have worked a diabolic inversion: the inclusive religion, the pluralist spiritual search of our people and land, they have projected as intolerant, narrow-minded, obscurantist.” The Indian civilization that the establishment, finds intolerant, was considered by the Mahatma to “represent the best that the world has ever seen.” He wrote in ‘Hind Swaraj’ – “The British Government in India constitutes a struggle between Modern Civilization, which is the Kingdom of Satan, and the Ancient (Indic) Civilization, which is the Kingdom of God…. I believe that (our) civilization is not to be beaten in the world. Nothing can equal the seeds sown by our ancestors. Rome went, Greece shared the same fate….but India is still…sound at the foundation…India remains immovable and that is her glory.”
Conclusion
Thus, whether it is about the Quit India Movement of 1942 or about the New India of 2020, Mahatma Gandhi continues to be an anathema to the Left-Liberal establishment. But should the makers of this New India be perturbed by the disdain that this establishment has for everything that the nation holds dear? Absolutely not. Why? Because, as the Mahatma wrote and said time and again “India awakened is not likely to fall asleep.”
Coronavirus-Manifesto is about understanding the criticality of the imminent threat to humanity, posed by the virus and the corresponding responses expected from the individual nations down to the community level to meet the horrendous challenge.
In the contemporary sense, complete globalisation, despite continued serious geopolitical antagonism prevailing in the world, a full-fledged conventional third world war has till date been mercifully averted. But COVID-19 caught the global community off guard, engulfed the planet so swiftly, triggering panic. The way even NATO countries are grappling with the pandemic what with the post-cold-war lone superpower USA amongst the worst affected, justifies vehement opposition to biological warfare.
It will be long before it’s formally ascertained whether the coronavirus- outbreak was accidental or of natural origin or as the parallel ‘theories’ speculate that the outbreak was indeed strategically targeted but there is an unambiguous understanding across the globe that the threat is for real and the world is at war on Coronavirus.
While China is officially claiming relative calm in the Wuhan, its epicentre, the pandemic has spread across the countries with the clouds of mass deaths looming large. While grappling with the ominously evolving situation, World has literally come to a standstill. Unprecedented crisis demanding unprecedented measures like ‘lockdown’ is enforced in most parts of the world.
As claimed by the Union Health Minister, India was following the developments & reacted to the evolving situation with concrete actions since the moment China alerted WHO on December 31, 2019, about the ‘unusual’ pneumonia cases in Wuhan followed by the formal identification of the virus as 2019-nCoV i.e. Novel Coronavirus 2019 now called COVID-19, by the Chinese on January 7, 2019. Precautionary measures were announced from time to time with an emphasis on personal hygiene and social distancing.
Encouraged by the overwhelming public participation witnessed during the pan India voluntary ‘Janata Curfew’ on 22nd March, a complete three weeks ‘lockdown’ was finally ordered on the 24th March to enforce social-distancing to break-the-chain. The second week into the lockdown, going by the rising figures, there is every possibility that the restrictions will be extended especially Intra-community unity infection spreads exponentially. Despite avoidable political cynicism, while both the central as well as the respective Govts. of the States and UTs across India are working overtime in unison under the able leadership of PM Narendra Modi, the role of the public at large at the community and individual levels is no less critical in meeting the challenges due to the humanity- threatening Coronavirus.
To begin with, adherence to the lockdown is fundamental to the community response. Why? Because social-distancing is the key to check the spread and it could be achieved by restricting the population to their homes, hence the lockdown. What is social-distancing? Social distancing is limiting human to human contact with break-the-chain. What is ‘break-the-chain’? Break-the-chain is meant to prevent one asymptomatic or positive person infect another. Even while the scientists are busy in deciphering the nature of Coronavirus & design the mitigating prescription against the disease, it’s the community effort that becomes paramount in containing the spread of the infection.
As the statistics suggest, the mortality rate due to corona is not as high as compared to the other forms of flue but it is the rapidity of its spread, unavailability of specific cure & lack of sufficient critical care medical capacity that makes the pandemic so precarious.
In terms of sheer logistics, lockdown is crucial to ‘flatten-the- curve’, i.e. to contain the spread in order to match the graph of the rising number of the affected with the available critical care infrastructure. Inability to manage this crucial interface would mean forced ‘triage’ to prioritise ‘life’ while optimising the available limited critical care facility, whereby patients with a higher degree of survival receive priority as is witnessed in other countries. Therefore, to avert the eventuality, compliance with the lockdown is imperative, demanding absolute community participation.
Social distancing ensures necessary intracommunity isolation, experts recommending social distancing even at home including celibacy, to rule out the possibility of intra-family transfer of infection, just in case a member is afflicted and is asymptomatic. Personal hygiene is equally essential.
The virus is released from the afflicted body in droplets through involuntary cough or sneeze, depositing itself either directly on the nearby human body or on the fomites and then travelling further again from human to human or human to fomites to humans and the chain goes on. Imagine, it’s the ‘fidgety’ hand that enables the ingress of the virus into the human body via mouth, nose and eyes. So, in addition to washing hands with water and soap frequently, ‘no-touch’ the face must be the resolve even if a naughty wasp chose to park itself on one’s pretty visage. Sanitising fomites including high-touch spots like knobs, handles, food packets-containers, post, phones, gadgets etc. and washing vegetables and fruits is equally important. There are apprehensions that if the virus bypassed the lungs reaching guts straight, it could appear in faeces, thereby making handling-disposal of faeces important particularly in case of sick and children. Self-medication especially prophylactic (chloroquine intake without doctor’s supervision can be dangerous) has to be avoided. Individuals’ response to such emergency restrictions can be varying, therefore, while children and elders would need extra attention, patience and compassion are necessary to avoid disharmony and psychological distress in the family. Don’t ignore the emotional needs of the pets and bring them on to domestic kitchen food gradually in a case dependent on packed pet- food to prepare for the extended lockdown. Cigarettes may not be in supply, smokers need to withdraw gradually. Maintain routine dietary and workout schedule. Start yoga, if not already practising. Keep in touch with your colleagues and friends. In case you are not on work- from- home regime, spend time on updating your professional skills, reading and explore or refresh abandoned hobbies. Your housekeeping staff, drivers etc. might require your emotional and monetary support. It’s time to show you care. Maintaining a safe distance, balcony interaction with neighbours can be very heartwarming.
At the community level the resident welfare associations, mohalla/ward/block committees, must in coordination with the local panchayat member, municipal councillor, MLA, MP, police and nearest designated hospital, besides ensuring thorough compliance with lockdown, mobilise volunteers for: in house waste disposal; water storage and distribution; pump house operations and maintenance; medical emergencies other than coronavirus (for coronavirus, only officially notified contact links must be followed ); psychiatric counselling of elderly & lonely residents as well as children who may experience emotional issues due to confinement; routine care and veterinary emergencies for pets as well as stray street animals including birds etc.; monetary needs of security staff; monetary and emotional support to needy residents; enforcing social distancing at essential services delivering outlets like shops and ATMs etc.; regular awareness campaign regarding lockdown, social distancing, sanitisation of fomites etc. through public address system; ensuring dignity and compassion for quarantined or ‘positive’ residents and their families.
The community must ensure security & utmost regard for residents who are at the ground combating coronavirus including medics; paramedics; biowaste handling & sanitary staff; communications & transport including aircrew personnel; police & civil defence personnel; defence & paramilitary personnel; media & other essential services personnel etc.
While the government is focused on overall governance and augmentation of additional medical care capacity, the role of the community is no less crucial. In fact, the success of the lockdown is directly proportional to the degree of compliance with the ‘stay home –stay safe’ purpose of it, by the individual citizens. Lockdown comes at an enormous cost on the national economy, experts suggesting, might take years to recover, it has to be a panic-less collective endeavour to ensure lockdown delivers the envisaged results and the human cost is restricted.
While the Wuhan coronavirus epidemic has been termed as fatal for older people, an an 82-year-old man has invalidated the perception after fully recovered from the contagion on Tuesday. Manmohan Singh, who was admitted to Delhi’s Lok Nayak Hospital after being diagnosed with novel Wuhan coronavirus infection has been reportedly recovered from the contagious disease and will be discharged soon.
#WATCH Manmohan Singh, an 82-year-old COVID19 patient at Delhi’s Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan hospital who has now fully recovered; he will be discharged soon. pic.twitter.com/R3BcI15sUc
While making this announcement the staff of the entire hospital applauded and welcomed him and addressed media with a victory sign stipulating the conquest over the contagion. In the video posted by news agency ANI, Singh is on wheelchair wearing, mask surrounded by health workers of the hospital. The doctors are also seen clapping over the exceptional recovery of the senior citizen.
Coronavirus disease causes respiratory illness (like the flu) with symptoms such as a cough, fever, and in more severe cases, difficulty breathing. Respiratory disease COVID-19 can be more fatal to children and senior citizens and those who are suffering from lung diseases. Coronavirus epidemic has reached a worrisome mark of 4421 confirmed cases across the country. 114 people have succumbed to the disease while 326 have been recovered.
An FIR has been lodged against 150 people who belong to Tablighi jamaat for fleeing quarantine and violating official preventive orders in Mumbai’s Azad Maidan Police station.
The FIR has been lodged under Sections 271 and 188 of the Indian Penal Code. A police official said, “FIR is registered against 150 people of Tablighi jamaat at Azad maidan police station for violating quarantine orders(IPC Section 271) and violating government official’s preventive order (section 188). Besides, FIR is also registered under IPC Section 269.”
However, as per reports only 10 of the jamaatis have been traced and rest are absconding.
#Breaking | FIR registered against 150 Tablighis in Mumbai for violating the quarantine. Only 10 out of the 150 have been traced. pic.twitter.com/RyU25U3lzz
Hundreds of positive cases have emerged from the Tablighi jamaat event held in Nizamuddin of South Delhi that has created panic across the country as the Jamaatis are violating the quarantine norms as well as harassing the health workers on duty.
Earlier on Tuesday, Maharashtra Home Minister had revealed that about 50 Tablighi Jamaat meet attendees in Maharashtra are on the run and their phones are switched off. He asserted that Fifty people who returned to Maharashtra from Tablighi Jamaat are missing. They are being searched. Out of 1400 people who returned from Tablighi Jamaat, 1350 people were tested. 50 people are still hiding and their phones are switched off.
Over 4000 people in India have been contracted by the contagion while 114 have succumbed to the disease and 326 have recovered. Maharashtra leads the list of states with the highest number of coronavirus cases in the country with the tally of affected nearly at the 750 mark and about 45 fatalities thus far.
The Indian Railways will now produce up to 1000 Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) type overalls on an everyday basis across 17 workshops. These protective overalls would be used by the Railway Doctors and the paramedics.
The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has also approved a PPE type overall produced by the Jagadhari workshop. The Ministry of Railways had also informed that the approved overall would be used for making other protective overalls in different workshops.
Facilities are being geared up in Railways to make up to 1000 such protective overalls for Railway Doctors & Paramedics every day. Around 17 workshops would be striving to contribute to this exercise: Ministry of Railways https://t.co/YFlUOEouw8
Raw materials for the overalls would be sourced from a Yamunanagar-based vendor, approved by the Ministry of Textiles. “Technical specifications of these PPEs are now ready, and material suppliers are in place. Now the production can start in right earnest. This development is a big boost to equip our doctors and paramedics on the front line of this battle against COVID-19”, the national carrier said in a statement.
Earlier, the Indian Railways came up with a remarkably ingenious solution to support the country’s public health system. It had decided to convert its coaches into quarantine wards for the treatment of patients infected by the Chinese virus. Furthermore, the Indian Railways had also offered to prepare 3 lakh patient beds if the need arose in the future.
In addition, all Railway divisions had identified a ward or building for setting up isolation beds for the Coronavirus patients. Similarly, Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) fleshed out a plan to provide meals in different parts of the country and hospitals if the need arose. Pantry cars will be disinfected and converted into the mobile kitchen so as to ensure a healthy and adequate supply of food at stations where there are no base kitchens.
On March 27, the official Twitter handle of the Indian Railways informed that more than 1,00,000 wagons of essential items had been readied in the wake of the Wuhan Coronavirus outbreak. The essential supplies included the likes of foodgrains, fruits, vegetables, sugar, salt, dairy products, coal, and petroleum products. The feat was achieved within 4 days wherein workers toiled 24 hours round the clock.
China has been struggling hard to wash its hands off its role in the spreading of the Wuhan Coronavirus pandemic. It has claimed that calling it the ‘Chinese Coronavirus’ or the ‘Wuhan Coronavirus’ is racist even though the pandemic was widely reported in China first. At the heart of it all is the wet markets of Wuhan, where live animals are sold for consumption, and speculations that the virus was either accidentally or deliberately leaked by the Chinese government or that it could be a bioweapon.
As it so happens, China has been the ground zero of numerous epidemics over the years, epidemics that have inflicted great damage in terms of life and economy. From SARS to SARS-CoV-2 and the Asian Flu before that, China is a hotspot for the rise of severe epidemics. In this report, we shall go through a few of such devastating epidemics with their origins in China.
A H7N9 Flu
The first case of A H7N9 avian influenza (bird flu) was reported in Shanghai, China from where it spread to other regions. Later, it was confirmed that the virus jumped from chickens at a wet poultry market to humans by a study in the medical journal The Lancet. The virus is of concern as most patients have been observed to become severely ill due to the infection. Most patients reported recent exposure to live poultry or potentially contaminated environments. The silver lining appears to be that human-to-human transmission hasn’t been widely reported.
Having said that, limited human-to-human transmission has not been ruled out for the virus. Thus far, there have been five phases of the epidemic since it began in 2017, the latest begin in 2017. It hasn’t caused a significant damage to life as of yet. However, the virus does have the potential to cause widespread human devastation. “H7N9 viruses have several features typically associated with human influenza viruses and therefore possess pandemic potential and need to be monitored closely,” said Yoshihiro Kawaoka, one of the world’s leading experts on avian flu. “If H7N9 viruses acquire the ability to transmit efficiently from person to person, a worldwide outbreak is almost certain since humans lack protective immune responses to these types of viruses,” according to Kawaoka.
SARS
The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) caused by SARS-CoV-1 first surfaced in 2002 in China. Fifteen years later, researchers discovered that the source of the virus could be traced to a group of infected bats at a remote cave in Yunnan province of China. SARS first appeared in November 2002 in Southern China before spreading around the world. It claimed the lives of 750 people across 37 countries before it was contained by placing patients in quarantine. The origin of the virus was traced to palm civets sold as exotic meat in southern Chinese food markets. SARS expert Jeremy Farrar noted, “There is no effective treatment and no vaccine. It was only contained the last time because it was possible to quarantine people while they were still infectious. Now we have a chance to create vaccines and treatments.”
The Wuhan Coronavirus is related to the SARS-CoV-1 and has been termed the SARS-CoV-2. The average incubation period of the SARS virus is 4-6 days, much shorter than the Chinese Coronavirus which has an average incubation period of two weeks. Symptoms of SARS are influenza-like and include fever, malaise, myalgia, headache, diarrhoea, and shivering (rigors). No individual symptom or cluster of symptoms has proved to be specific for a diagnosis of SARS.
H5N1 Bird Flu
The highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) A(H5N1) virus was first detected in China in geese in 1996 during a poultry outbreak in Hong Kong and has since been detected in poultry and wild birds in more than 50 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the USA, “Since its widespread re-emergence in 2003, rare, sporadic human infections with this virus have been reported in Asia, and later in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. Human infections with Asian H5N1 viruses have been associated with severe disease and death. Most human infections with avian influenza viruses, including HPAI Asian H5N1 viruses, have occurred after prolonged and close contact with infected birds. Rare human-to-human spread with this virus has occurred, but it has not been sustained and no community spread of this virus has ever been identified.”
Like avian viruses, the H5N1 has great pandemic potential. If the virus mutates to a form which can efficiently cause human-to-human transmission, then widespread devastation can be expected. Since emerging out of China, the virus has been reported from various other countries. Six countries are considered by the CDC to be endemic for Asian HPAI H5N1 virus in poultry (Bangladesh, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, and Vietnam).
Hong Kong Flu (1968)
The Hong Kong Flu which emerged in Hong Kong in 1968 killed an estimated one million people all over the world between 1968 and 1969. It was caused by an H3N2 strain of the influenza A virus, descended from H2N2 through antigenic shift. The first recorded case of the outbreak appeared in Hong Kong on the 13th of July, 1968. By the end of the month, extensive outbreaks of the virus was reported in Vietnam and Singapore. By September, the flu had spread to India, Phillippines, Australia and Europe. It became widespread in the United States by December 1968. It reached Japan, Africa, and South America by 1969.
The virus had a low case-fatality ratio (CFR), it was below 0.5% of the cases. The virus is believed to have infected 500,000 residents in Hong Kong alone, an estimated 15% of the population. About 100,000 people died in the United States alone. The H3N2 virus continues to circulate worldwide as a seasonal influenza A virus.
Asian Flu (1957)
The Asian Flu, caused by the H2N2 virus, is believed to have been originated in China although CDC claims that the first reported case observed in Singapore in February 1957. However, most sources say that the virus was first reported in Guizhou province the same month in the southwest region of China. Estimated deaths caused by the virus range between one million to two million worldwide, the CDC puts it at 1.1 million with 116,000 in the United States itself. The flu impacted the economy gravely as well and India is believed to have suffered over a million cases as well.
China: A Hotspot for pandemics?
As early as in November 2017, the Smithsonian Mag published a detailed report on the H7N9 epidemic where it asked its readers the question, “Is China Ground Zero for a Future Pandemic?” Three years later, the question appears to have been answered. President Trump’s trade czar, Peter Navarro, described China as a “disease incubator,” and that was before the outbreak of the Wuhan Coronavirus. Dr. Jennifer Huang Bouey, an epidemiologist and senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation, said, “There is quite a fair amount of epidemics originating in China or passing through China.”
There are numerous factors that make China a breeding ground for deadly viruses. The prominent among them being the unhealthy dietary preferences of the population. With epidemics originating from the country at such an alarming frequency, it could very well be that an even deadlier virus than the Wuhan Coronavirus emerged from China. Under such circumstances, it is of paramount importance that the world begins taking a greater interest in the underbelly of the country, in order to ensure the safety and security of its own population. Failing to do so could lead to a pandemic that has even more devastating consequences than the Wuhan Coronavirus.
