Coronavirus And Bigotry

Around 11am today when my first meeting (online) was over and I was out of my house, I came across a group of not less than twelve men standing at the dilapidated gate of an abandoned plot by Kali river. Each one of them knows there is a lockdown, a national curfew. Just days ago on one night, there was a vehicle roaming on street with a loudspeaker announcing ‘hereby people are informed not to gather in a crowd of more than five, to maintain a distance of at least six feet, not touch each other’ so that COVID-19 (a type of coronavirus) does not spread. I was curious about what they were discussing and what was really happening. What was so important that these people thought to gather like this against the advice risking not only their life but also of their families. I was just looking and one man from the group walked up to me. Before he walked over, one of them had asked me to bring a pen and paper — I had rather rudely ignored the request and just moved into my house then. This guy, who isn’t local to this area and lives some kilometre or so away, I later learnt, was a member of the gram panchayat.

Is it legal to block the road? Do you think if we wrote to panchayat they will give us permission to block the road?

I duly said no. Roads are public properties. No individual has any right to block them.

Immediately as I said no, the guy shouted to the people standing far, ‘look he is saying no…” I had no idea my voice carried such weight here! The reason I think was that they probably had reached a point were both parties had fought and upon reaching stalemate needed a fresh voice. Whatever the case, the crowd was thereby dispersed. And now they all started moving to where I was standing. They were standing at my earshot now. The panchayat guy continued, 

These people.. I don’t know what they are talking… Tomorrow if something happens then whoever blocked the road would be held responsible… 

Before I could add something, another guy wearing a white shirt and mask (almost everyone standing there was either wearing a mask, home-stitched or medical, or hand kerchief) walked towards me. All this while I was ensuring I was maintaining a safe distance while speaking to them. They were all standing now on the concrete road which was around 20 centimetres above the ground on which I was standing. He said, not directly addressed to me,

Many villages have closed entry to their villages with gates and thorny bushes…

This is when I observed how these men have felled two branches of a thorny jujube tree. They were planning to put these branches on a road. But where? There is one concrete road by the riverside that leads to where we all were standing. So naturally, that road has two sides to it. The immediate end opens to a new road (meaning two new ends). As we move farther and farther on the road, it joins another thereby increasing the entry/exit points. Like anywhere else in the world. I was curious to know which point were they targeting. There were two points that eventually met national-highway. Those points made some sense to stop the flow of outside people. Sometimes some foreigners just walked with their expensive cameras to click the sunset or sunrise from the hills by the riverside.

Felled jujube tree

One of my cousin who was just around told me where the point was. The road at the other end in fifty meters went on to the hill behind our house. It then climbed on to the hill and eventually opened into another village. This village had two wood mills where everyone went for wood cutting and only a decade ago for wood to our ovens. This village mainly consisted of Muslim houses. All of them poor) mostly poor living on daily wages or small enterprises — none of which will sustain them for three months now.

The concrete road taking a turn onto the hill leading to another village

The guy in white shirt went on about how people from that village come to this side multiple times of the day putting our lives in danger. He was suggesting that they will spread the virus.

What do we know about SARS-Cov-2 (or COVID-19)?

It originated in Wuhan, China in a wet market. It jumped from some animal (so far we don’t know which — most suggest bats because virus that caused SARS which was also a coronavirus had come from bats) onto human. Virus spreads from human-to-human. It spreads via cough droplets which at most travel a distance of one meter that is why we have to maintain distance of a meter or two from each other and also avoid touching each other meaning no handshakes or hugs. There is no vaccine yet so the only action item to contain the spread of virus is to maintain proper hygiene and distance.

Also, it is not airborne. Virus does not travel via air. It’s droplets are heavy making such a travel not possible. So at most it travels a meter resulting into social distancing suggestion.

To whoever was listening, I just said,

We can’t legally put any barrier on road. It would mean obstructing the traffic and also constraining people’s movement. How can we stop them from using the road? And why? Your saying that they will spread the virus assumes that they have it. You are assuming Muslims have the virus. There is no basis in that line of thought. And why are you thinking this? And what is this “Muslims will come, Muslims will come?” What does being Muslim has got to do with any of this? We might want to differentiate this way. But Virus does not care if you’re Hindu or Muslim. And it is illegal to put such a barrier… 

This was not continuous lecture but broken speech stressing on the impartiality of virus and meaninglessness of blocking the road. Panchayat guys also suggested how police will take action if we obstructed road this way after all even they travelled by this road for their rounds. During the course of this speech/conversation, people broke into two groups and to one group the white shirt guy started saying

There are other villages who have put such barriers… If people feared this way we would have never got independence… You people are not showing any courage… You are all so feared a lot..

I quickly added

There is no courage in putting two branches of jujube tree on road!

My uncle who was a close friend of the white shirt guy tried to calm the situation with some humour which did not work but I understood things were heating up so I stopped saying anything further. Their whole plan involved getting me to ghost-write a letter addressing panchayat president seeking permission to block the road but given my arguments, the panchayat member started his vehicle and left the scene. And with him, most people dispersed into further smaller groups. I had by now switched my line of conversation from blocking of the road to their stupidity.

There were two reasons behind road blocking idea. One was plain bigotry. Most people, across India and especially in villages, believe that it is Muslims who travel abroad in large numbers. They believe that there exists at least one member in a Muslim family who is abroad. So now, there is fear (in part thanks to channels like Zee news which fan this unverified and unfounded hatred) that these members have come back to India and are hiding in their homes. There is no basis to this fear except one that is coming from a bigoted mind. The second reason has its root in pseudoscience. Whatsapp University is full of coronavirus. There are videos, texts and audio messages about what to eat and drink, how the virus spreads, what Chinese people eat, how they fry live snakes and bats and god-knows-what and other information (rather misinformation) about the virus. Lots of it also suggest it spreads — just like that. So people have come to think that if a biker used a road going through your village, he will go through that road spreading the virus. Like this potent medicine was sprinkled on Janata Curfew day. People had closed their open wells here to protect their open well from this medicine.

WHO has clarified how virus isn’t airborne so a biker going on his bike won’t spread the virus this way. And even if he could (which he can’t), he would first have to be infected — which in this case, we have no evidence of except of course, our plain old bigotry.

I was just stressing how they were concentrating on blocking of road (an imaginary threat) while making close contact groups that flouted one important and primary medical guideline — maintaining distance from each other. And just when we were talking, this white-shirt-guy’s brother made an entry on his bike. And my cousin quipped in a funny tone, 

Here’s virus…

There was a reason for this. This brother made the most rounds to market from here. He went and sat with multiple people. He was still getting drunk every day with his regular people, by his own admission and he was proud of being a daily drinker, with one police constable — probably why when police was beating just everyone with lathi he was never touched — and some other govt servant alongwith a certain petrol pump guy — there is news that petrol pumps will not provide petrol to ordinary citizens making everyone think that his visits to market will now stop but thanks to probably this friend, his visits continued unabated. So he who met multiple people every day from outside the village and even met policeman who himself would be traveling across the place had more chances to carry the virus into this locality than the other imagined threat of a Muslim man, with imagined relative in hiding, carrying the virus on a bike which wouldn’t even halt in this locality.

His tirade of spineless men who feared everything, how Indian independence struggle would never happen with men like us continued for long with even a flying mention of Gandhi ji — I don’t know if Gandhi was mentioned in positive tone or negative. I’m just glad Gandhi still lives on, whatever way it may be.