The symbiosis The Prime Minister mused on the reimagined workplace post-Covid-19, in an article posted on Linked-In, on how India’s youth could reimagine work while combating the virus. He concluded with an appeal for unity, saying we are all in it together, because the virus does not distinguish between class, caste, religion, race or nationality. This is a sentiment that should be drilled into the heads of a large number of people busy bashing Muslims in the midst of the pandemic , many of them ardent followers of the Prime Minister.The Tablighi Jamaat displayed criminal irresponsibility in going ahead with its planned international gathering to which delegates were scheduled to come from countries where Covid-19 was already entrenched, even after it was clear that the disease was a pandemic that had induced Saudi Arabia to cancel a holy pilgrimage. That cavalier disregard for this-worldly well-being called for condemnation of the Tablighis and an inquiry into why the Delhi Police allowed the gathering to proceed, although it violated the Delhi government’s directive then in force against gatherings larger than 200 people. It did not call for launching a smear campaign against Muslims in general, complete with innuendos of bio-jihad.A strong strand of public discourse has, for some time, sought to brand Muslims as being anti-national, a kind of Pak fifth column. The campaign around the National Register of Citizens and the Citizenship Amendment Act had sought to create insecurity among Muslims, especially the poor, about their right to live in this country and enjoy the rights to liberty, equality, non-discrimination, livelihood and dignity that non-Muslims enjoy, at least in theory. Riots in northeast Delhi, widely perceived to have been the result of instigation by a BJP leader promising to crush protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act, only served to strengthen the sense of insecurity.It is in this background that the Covid-19-related, Tablighi-centred hate campaign began and Muslim vendors started being chased away from localities.Recently, I came across an email message from an organisation called Indian Muslims for Progress and Reforms, which describes some vicious misinformation being spread among Muslims and seeking help to counter this propaganda. Specifically, Muslims are being told that:There are instructions from the top that healthy Muslim men will be injected with the corona virus in hospitals; quarantine centres are actually detention centres, being created on a large scale, which will later be made permanent centres; healthy Muslim men are being taken to hospitals to show a higher number of corona infected cases among Muslims; and Muslim patients are being discriminated against, beaten and mistreated by the staff at hospitals with separate facilities, and negative test results held back.If such claims strike many Muslims as being entirely plausible, blame the discourse that demonises them on television channels, Whatsapp groups and other social media, and the gathering practices of social exclusion, such as boycott of Muslim traders. If Muslims buy into this propaganda, and seek to avoid the organised management of the pandemic that is underway, it would hamper the fight against the virus, badly.Fighting a pandemic is not so much a medical challenge as a social challenge, of coordination, collective discipline, sharing and solidarity. That needed coherence is being corroded by the hate being spewed against Muslims.The communal virus, in other words, feeds the corona virus, just as the corona virus rode the pious garb of the Tablighis to reach wherever they went. Thus, we see perfect symbiosis between the corona virus and the communal virus, at the expense of the host, this nation we call India.Even those who see little virtue in not being sectarian in itself should see that being secular is an essential part of fighting the corona virus. It is not just Hindu communalists who have to cease and desist. Muslim leadership must seek responsible conduct from members of their community. It must seek cooperation with the authorities in combating the virus. That would include strictly following the injunction against communal prayer. Even during the holy month of Ramzan. Even if Pakistan has foolishly allowed such prayers.