The Nizamuddin Markaz and the politics of a pandemic

April 1, 2020

New Delhi: Any national calamity is a test for a people on various counts. The Covid 19 pandemic is certainly going to one such watershed phase of our times. It will set the course which India will take in decades ahead.

Will we as a nation rise above petty politics and sectarian barriers or will we sink further into the quagmire of a self-made pit of bitter social conflict, selfish political games and thus push the country into deep dark corner from which it will be very, very difficult to extricate it.

The ongoing controversy over the large number of devout Muslims who were trapped in a building owned by a leading Muslim religious organisation of the country near the famous Sufi shrine of the 13th century sufi saint Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia is a telling reminder of the archaic mindset which presently besets the Indian Muslim community and also the highly pernicious and machiavellian politics whose sole objective seems to be directed at othering the beleaguered Muslim community.

There is no denying fact that the Tableeghi Jamaat, a century old Muslim religious organisation, erred seriously in going forward with its convention in the middle of March. Dozens of participants from not just different Indian states but also from at least half a dozen foreign countries started descending at the cramped Markaz building by mid March. It was a gross miscalculation on the part of the organisers and they are accountable for this. The Delhi government has filed an FIR against the organisers including Maulana Saad. They, obviously will have a lot to answer.

It is also true that the Muslim ulema were by and large slow footed in responding to the pleas of several well meaning individuals who had in fact started mounting pressure on different Muslim religious organisations to issue edicts against the holding of congregational prayers and gatherings in the third week of March itself .

To be precise it was Maulana Sajjad Nomani, one of India’s leading religious scholars, who on March 23, issued a fervent appeal to all Muslim clerics and Muftis to immediately suspend all congregational events in the country.

But this is just one part of the story. There is another side to this story and the country can only ignore this at it’s own peril.

How and why were such a large number of foreign visitors allowed to enter the country when the whole world was reeling under the impact of this pandemic from the first week of March ? What were the standards of screening not just these visitors but also all others including Indians who were entering India from the middle of February ?
Religious gathering in different kept going on almost unchecked in several parts of the country even after the national lockdown was declared on March 25. We all know how some political luminaries have violated this lockdown even after the Prime Minister’s appeal .

But what seems to have been lost in the din over the Markaz controversy is the criminal failure of the Delhi government to prevent the mass exodus from the city of several lakh migrant workers who were forced to migrate in sub-human conditions. It was something disturbingly close to what happens in sub-Saharan countries.

Former Rajya Sabha member from Congress Mohammad Adeeb has demanded that an FIR should also be registered against Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal for his multitude failures connected not just with the Markaz gathering but all public gatherings which were held all over Delhi from the first week of March. Adeeb further said that an FIR should also be filed against the police SHO and the SDM of the Nizamuddin area.

According to the official spokesman of the Markaz, they had started getting the premises of the Markaz building vacated from the night of March 19 itself as soon as the gravity of the situation dawned upon them after the Prime Minister had announced a janta curfew for March 22. Most of the guests had left the premises by the night of March 25, but the evacuation could not be completed due to large scale cancellations of trains. Consequently when the Prime Minister announced the lockdown on the night of March 25 the Markaz officials made fervent appeals for help to the police and other officials in evacuating the premises by private vehicles. However by then all vehicular movement on highways had been banned.

On March 25, Maulana Yousuf on behalf of the Markaz wrote to the police SHO at the Nizamuddin police station urging him to help in vacating the complex . In a separate letter the Markaz wrote to the SDM informing him that a number of vehicles were available for evacuating the visitors and official passes should be provided for enabling the vehicles to travel. But to no avail.

The Tableeghi Jamat is known to be a totally apolitical organisation. They can be accused of being a fossilised organisation devoid of any modern vision or any commitment to genuine social reform. But to charge them with a sinister conspiracy, to deliberately plot some sort of “virus terrorism” as some media reports and motivated political voices are trying to suggest is not just the result of poisoned minds but infact smells of something much more diabolical: It looks more and more like a very well orchestrated move to shift public attention to what is infact a colossal failure of both the state and the central governments to anticipate a national disaster and failing to take timely remedial steps.

The first Corona virus victim in India was detected on January 31. Instead of blocking entry of foreign visitors, the month of February saw a plethora of national events involving large scale influx of foreign nationals.

Although medical experts are reluctant to categorically speak out on this volatile issue, privately they acknowledge that if the lockdown had been enforced in the first week of March and that too after some reasonable notice the country would have been saved from a lot of the ensuing tribulations .

—India News Stream