“Delhi’s dark underbelly is exploding! Last 3 months have seen an Islamic insurrection of sorts, first in the name of anti-CAA protests from Shaheen Bagh to Jamia, Jaffrabad to Seelampur. And now the illegal gathering of the radical Tablighi Jamaat at the markaz. It needs a fix!”
Date: April 1, 2020
This artefact is a tweet by Mr. Amit Malviya, the National leader of BJP's Information and Technology Department, on the infamous Tablighi Jamaat incident. In the tweet, Malviya seems to be making an explicit attempt to communalize the issue by using phrases like "Islamic insurrection," "radical Tablighi Jamaat," and "illegal gathering." Here, Malviya is not just referring to the Tablighi Jamaat meeting but also addressing the protests against the CAA that were seen all across the country. Considering the fact that the incident had already become an opportunity for triggering waves of Islamophobia in citizens on social media where most mainstream TV channels were not refraining from labeling the Tablighi Jamaat as an 'anti-national' organization and accusing it of 'endangering' the nation, such a move by not just a prominent figure in Indian politics but also a representative of the ruling party was not appropriate. A lot of gatherings that could have been dangerous in terms of the spread of the coronavirus disease took place in various areas during this time, but the Jamaat gathering was specifically targeted. The only possible reason for this could be to point fingers of suspicion at Islamic organizations by generalizing the incident and questioning their intent. As a representative of the ruling party, he failed to emphasize the fact that the gathering had taken place before the lockdown was imposed in the country.
By making the Tablighi Jamaat the sole scapegoat for the sudden spike in the number of coronavirus cases in India, BJP was trying to take the attention away from their own incompetency in handling the escalation of the pandemic in the country, especially with reference to the massive unregulated movement of migrants from one part of the country to the other. While the actions of the Tablighi Jamaat might deserve to be brought to trial in a court of law, the government seems to be more interested in propagating the agenda that their gathering had a malicious intent- that of trying to deliberately spread the infection to other vulnerable citizens. What truly needs a "fix," as being referred to by Amit Malviya, is not focusing on isolated incidents with an ulterior motive to spread hate in the country but to pacify the citizens and take measures to control the pandemic.
The above two artefacts might give the impression that there was a lack of sensible and responsible reporting during the incident, and excessive focus was placed on communalizing the issue. However, a small group of media houses did raise questions regarding how the government failed to prevent the incident from happening in the first place. The following is one such artifact.
