Date: March 31, 2020
The above artefact, 'discovered' by Republic TV, contains a long monologue where Maulana Saad, Delhi Nazimuddin Markaz Chief, publicly defies the country’s lockdown norms and encouraging the attendees to do the same by citing the conspiracy theories against Muslims in India. This artefact was taken up extensively by media houses that further added a new layer of Islamophobia in the country, which was already reeling from the polarising news rhetoric on Tablighi Jamaat's attendees. India is a country that is already harsh on its minorities, and as a consequence of the social media hype surrounding this news clip, Muslim vendors were shunned, there was a tremendous explosion of fake news, and general harassment of Muslims saw a peak. The audio clip was noted to have been spread widely & extensively over platforms like WhatsApp where verification of sources becomes hard, once the artefact becomes viral and where it was served by the temporality of circulation & reflexive discourse (Warner) to add on to the already vilifying narrative against Muslims.
Though there is no proof that the audio was doctored, there is also no proof that it wasn’t. And yet, without any verification from any source, the media & circulatory platforms took it in part to fuel a narrative that sensationalized the spread of disease via a gathering and opened the doors to let an entire community be attacked. Ever since, there has been a rise in fake contents targeting Muslims, which is perpetuated by the media and public were unable to distinguish between these, leading to there being religious profiling among patients. that carried on till WHO put a stop to it. This clip has also led to the majority faction to come together to take a stance against Muslims as a whole in a self-organized fashion without caring to responsibly check for the sources and verification. The anti-Muslim sentiment became the public discourse propagated by mainstream media, thereby leading the community of Muslims to become a counterpublic.
The above four artifacts give a broad overview of the kind of narrative being circulated during the incident. In the next artefact, we shall observe an example of the consequences which the Muslim community had to face as a result of this narrative.