NEW DELHI: India’s government is blaming an Islamic missionary meeting for a surge in coronavirus cases, triggering a wave of violence, business boycotts and hate speech towards Muslims that experts warn could worsen the pandemic in the world’s second-most populous country.

The stigma faced by India’s Muslims, poorer and with less access to health care than other groups, is making health workers’ battle against the virus even tougher, according to veterans of other epidemics. India has about 24,500 confirmed coronavirus cases about one in five of which have been linked to the missionary meeting and 775 deaths, and the outbreak may not peak until June.

Not only is the (Muslim) community at a higher risk of being infected, but they will also be at a high risk of spreading the virus, said Dr Anant Bhan, a bioethics and global health expert. “It becomes a cycle that will continue”.

About 8,000 people in the Tablighi Jamaat congregation met for three days in March at the group’s compound in the crowded Nizamuddin area of New Delhi, shortly before the Indian government banned large gatherings. The compound stayed open, later giving shelter to people stranded in a 21-day lockdown imposed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on March 24, according to the groups spokesman, Mujeeb ur Rehman.

On the second day of the lockdown, a government raid on the compound discovered the largest virus cluster in India. Police filed a case against some of the groups leaders for violating the ban, a charge the group denies. Officials said they have arrested 29 people, including 16 foreigners, who participated in the missionary meeting.

India’s communal fault lines, still stressed by deadly riots over a new naturalisation law that excludes Muslims, were split wide open by the allegations against Jamaat.

Politicians in Modi’s ruling Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party were quoted on TV and in newspapers describing the Jamaat incident as corona terrorism.

False news targeting Muslims began to circulate, including video clips purportedly showing congregation members spitting on authorities. The clips were quickly proven to be fake, yet by April 1, the hashtag CoronaJihad was trending on Twitter in India.

Lav Aggarwal, joint secretary of India’s health ministry, repeatedly called out the congregation by name in daily news briefings. On April 5, he said the number of virus cases was doubling in just 4.1 days, and would have been a slower 7.4 days if the additional ... cases due to the Tablighi Jamaat meeting would not have arisen.

That same day, Dilshad Mohammad took his life.

Panic, blame and stigma were spreading across India when the 37-year-old chicken peddler was shunned by his neighbors in Bangarh, a village in the hilly state of Himachal Pradesh, for giving two members of the Jamaat congregation a ride to their village on his scooter. Neighbours accused him of deliberately trying to infect them with the virus, which causes the Covid-19 disease.

Karthikeyan Gokulachandran, the district police superintendent, blamed his suicide on stigma.

In Rajasthan state, a pregnant Muslim woman was turned away from a public hospital because of her religion, resulting in the death of her 7-month-old fetus, said Vishvendra Singh, the states tourism minister.

In Uttarakhand, Hindu youths forced Muslim fruit vendors to stop selling. Shots were fired at a mosque in Gurugram, a suburb of New Delhi, and a Muslim family in the neighboring state of Haryana was attacked by neighbours who accused them of not turning off their lights on April 9, the night Modi had asked the country to extinguish household lights for 15 minutes in a show of national unity.

Doctors who studied previous epidemics warn that stigma and blame for a contagious disease weaken trust in marginalised communities, threatening decades-long efforts against illnesses such as polio and tuberculosis by making people less likely to seek treatment.

Stigma in general is adding to India’s coronavirus death toll, said Dr Randeep Guleria, head of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi and among the architects of the country’s response.

Published in Dawn, April 26th, 2020