By Jacob Peenikaparambil
Indore, June 17, 2020: The unprecedented spread of coronavirus in India should have increased sensitivity and concern for each other. But the opposite is happening such as objecting the burial of dead bodies of Covid-19 victims, leaving dead bodies unattended by family members, and ostracizing persons in quarantine.
In Telangana, an 80-year-old mother was not allowed into her own house for fear that she may be carrying Covid as she had returned from Maharashtra. In UP, a young widow and her three children were forced to live in the open on the outskirts of her village, in a quarantine that seemed more like social banishment.
During these days media reported a few incidents of disgusting insensitivity. Reporting on the death of Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput by a few TV channels and in the social media has come under severe criticism for insensitive coverage and not respecting the dignity of a dead person. Media on June 15 reported a 100-year-old woman being dragged on a cot by her 60-year-old daughter to a bank in Nuapada district of Odisha. The bank allegedly asked for physical verification of the 100-year-old beneficiary and refused to release the pension without it.
The approach of the central government and many ruling party politicians towards the agony and suffering of the migrant laborers was not sensitive. The prime minister failed to express his empathy towards more than hundred migrant workers who died in accident or due to exhaustion, hunger and thirst during their journey back to their home towns and villages.
The attitude of many private hospitals in Delhi towards the patients lacked sensitivity. Often patients were turned down on the excuse of not having enough beds. Some hospitals are accused of charging exorbitant rates for treatment and room rent. Saroj hospital in north Delhi had come into limelight after an internal communication of charging minimum 300,000 ruoees for each Covid-19 patient went viral on social media.
Sagarika Ghose in her article, “Covid-19 has exposed middle class paranoia and India’s class faultlines” in The Times of India on June 14, has pointed out that the urban middle class has become practitioners of a new class “untouchability.”
She concluded the article with an advice to the middle class in India. “Middle class India needs to instead rebuild relationships with domestic helps, pay their salaries, stop social ostracising and work towards ensuring health for all as a collective goal. In normal times, we trust “them” to cook “our” food, bring up our children and keep our home clean. Should we now shut them out when they need us the most?”
While there is high level of tolerance of insensitivity, intolerance to dissent and criticism of the government is increasing unprecedentedly. In a conversation with former US diplomat Nicholas Burns on ‘the coronavirus crisis is reshaping the world order’ on June 12, Rahul Gandhi said that the “open DNA” and tolerance that India and the US were known for has disappeared. “We are supposed to accept new ideas. We are supposed to be open. But the surprising thing is, that open DNA has sort of disappeared,” added the Congress leader.
The reaction of the federal government towards its critics exposes its intolerance and arrogance. The government has put behind the bars certain individuals who participated in the anti-CAA campaigns. They are accused of fomenting communal violence in Delhi. On the other hand no action has been taken against the ruling party members, including a junior federal minister, who openly made hate speeches that triggered the communal violence.
Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights (IFHR) has written to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Saha terming the detentions of several Indian human rights activists ‘arbitrary.’ The letter has mentioned the names of Devangana Kalita and Natasha Narwal, Meeran Haider, Gulfisha Fatima, Safoora Zargar, Shifa-ur-Rehman, Asif Iqbal, Akhil Gogoi, Khafeel Khan and Umar Khalid. All of them have been detained or charged this year for their role in the anti-CAA protests.
National and inter-national human rights organizations have demanded the government of India to release immediately Safoora Zargar, a pregnant activist. The 27-year-old was arrested on April 10 and charged under the country’s Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, 2019 (UAPA). She was three months pregnant at the time of her arrest.
On April 13, a court granted her bail. However, she was arrested again the same day under the FIR registered for the February violence and her bail application in this case was rejected. The Indian Chapter of Amnesty International severely criticized the Indian government for “ruthlessly arresting a pregnant woman and sending her to an overcrowded prison during Covid-19” and demanded her immediate release.
It seems that under the shade of Covid 19 the government is silencing the dissenting voices against its policies. While delivering the 15th PD Desai Memorial Lecture at the Gujarat High Court auditorium in Ahmadabad in February, Supreme Court judge Justice Chandra Chud described dissent as ‘safety valve’ of democracy. He had also said “blanket labelling” of dissent as anti-national or anti-democratic strikes at the “heart” of the country’s commitment to protect Constitutional values and promote deliberative democracy.
The overall atmosphere in India appears to be one of growing insensitivity towards the sufferings of the poor and the underprivileged on the one side and increasing intolerance to political dissent and criticism of the policies of the ruling dispensation on the other side. This development is definitely not in tune with the core values enshrined in the preamble of Indian Constitution. An ideology based on hatred, revenge and exclusion can make the people as well as rulers insensitive and arrogant.