Saeed Naqvi
A piquant picture of the post pandemic world appeared in the spa town of Lazne Bohdanec, east of Prague, when Czech police patrol ordered a bevy of committed nudists to “cover up” – with face masks, the new fig leaf. The police penetration of their idyllic parks has caused deep consternation: nudism brought them close to nature, of course, but it also helped them tan. The latter objective stands compromised because of the pigmentation difference between the masked and unmasked parts of the body.
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The minor turbulence in nudist parks notwithstanding, the Czech Republic and indeed countries of Eastern Europe are feeling a little more satisfied than their West European cousins in the way they have controlled coronavirus. There is intense debate as to whether borders between nations be sealed for longer periods than was originally imagined.
Balkanization of Europe is therefore on the cards. There is, in Hungary, that looming figure of strongman Viktor Orban, causing a flutter in libertarian hearts because he accords efficiency with an iron fist, precedence over freedom. He calls his system “illiberal democracy”. Does Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s state also qualify for such a change in name? It would be disingenuous to hint that our very own Modi takes notes from Orban at dictation speed. There is just a coincidence:
In form and feature, face and limb,
I grew so like the Hungarian;
That folks went taking me for him;
Though I’m a vegetarian.
Yes, the manner in which Orban has consolidated power in the guise of fighting coronavirus bears resemblance. Orban has appropriated emergency powers for good. There is, on the other hand, no “declared” emergency in India. The Prime Minister does not need a formal emergency. His hold on the people is absolute. Can Orban, or any strongman anywhere in the world, bring the nation to its balconies beating pots and pans? Modi created the thousands of years old festival of Diwali lights in his very own image.
There could be some similarity with Orban in the way medics in the battle against coronavirus are being protected. Any interference with epidemiological isolation will attract a six-year imprisonment in Hungary. Modi, in his ordinance, has gone one better: there will be a seven-year jail and a fine of `50,00,000 fine if anti-corona doctors are obstructed.
The perverse will say that God has blessed Modi with luck. Just when the economy was in a nosedive, the pandemic came, it inviting a lockdown which has devastated the economy. The historian, like the godi (lapdog) media, will explain away record unemployment and looming hunger, on the virus. Ek na shud, do shud, goes the Persian saying, which means: the second has come as if one were not enough. Modi has been gifted with more grist to his mill of communalism.
The international “Markaz” or centre of Tableeghi Jamaat, a Muslim reform moment, headquartered in Nizamuddin, erupted last month with cases of coronavirus. Tableeghis from a dozen or so countries held a seminar on their mission. They are an innocuous group: they do not convert, nor do they preach jehad. But, in their appearance, they look like the two groups. A world in the grip of post 9/11 Islamophobia must have found the Tableeghis as Godsend sources of information.
One has to fall back on the testimony of Shishir Gupta of Hindustan Times. According to him National Security Adviser Ajit Doval visited the Markaz on March 28, strangely at 2 am, to meet the chief of Jamaat, Maulana Saad Khandalwi. The Maulana is ever since either missing or in some safe haven in Saharanpur.
As a result of this summit, all the six to eight floors (only deep insiders have been to the highest floor) of the Markaz have been cleared of devotees. During peak season, the Markaz can accommodate 10,000 devotees. During the conference in early March, there were some 6,000 Tableeghis in the Markaz.
A question the media has chosen not to ask: which official agency has over the years given permission to the Jamaat to build floors upon floors of structures which are brazenly illegal. Two floors were added in the past two years. This, when the Nizamuddin Police Station shares a wall with the Markaz. Nor does the archaeological survey show any interest in recovering Ghayasuddin Balban’s palace, the earliest such building in the area, which the Tableeghis have encroached upon.
It is an interesting aside that the Nizamuddin basti, its social texture, totally divorced from the Tablighis, has not reported a single case of the virus. It cannot be denied that infected Tableeghis somewhat stupidly travelled in all directions – Andaman and Nicobar, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Kashmir and so on.
Meanwhile, what is one to make of the BJP leadership accelerating cases under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act – Gautam Navlakha, Anand Teltumbde, Omar Khalid and Jamia Students associated with the anti CAA agitation which ballooned into the Shaheen Bagh movement. One had somehow, naively maybe, expected a more cooperative post corona atmosphere. A more confrontational one would mean swimming into ones ken.
All of this is happening at a time when the lockdown is increasingly in bad odour. Experts like Dr. Satyaprakash Muliyil, former Principal, Vellore Medical College, Dr. Mathew Varghese, St. Stephen’s Hospital and Prof. Johan Griesecke, Internationally recognised Swedish expert, have been advocating “herd immunity” as the preferred option. The theory behind this is that the coronavirus has come to stay, just as dengue and chikungunya have become unfortunate parts of our lives.
What does Modi do now? Does he lift the lockdown and face the attending risks? A spike in cases, and he will face the flak. If there is a no-spike scenario, the decision to have locked down the nation will begin to look like a government-made-economic disaster. In any case, when and how does the lockdown end?
Has Veer Abhimanyu entered the Chakravyuh and is there no Arjun or Krishna to guide him out of it?
The writer, a senior journalist, is a distinguished fellow at Observer Research Foundation.
