Instead of preventing corona spread, India wasted time in welcoming Trump and provoking pogrom against Delhi Muslims. Will now India be able to contain virus when it is only busy hating Muslims?

After China and Italy the world has turned its attention to India. A country of 1.3 billion that has seen a surge in cases in the last three weeks will determine the impact of the CoronaVirus pandemic globally. While the Indian government was hosting the grand Trump- Modi event and while ministers were giving hate speeches that led to the Delhi carnage, administration wasted precious time in nipping the virus in the bud.

Fears are growing that India remains susceptible to a wider, potentially more damaging outbreak. Experts have cautioned that India is not testing enough people to know the true extent of the issue.

In Delhi carnage of Muslims, state-sponsored terror through police & RSS gangs is going to lead to radicalisation of the 200 mn Indian Muslims just as the Kashmiri youth has been radicalised through the oppression of Indian Occupation forces & deaths of almost 100,000 Kashmiris. pic.twitter.com/ybhZrdVhne — Imran Khan (@ImranKhanPTI) February 29, 2020

The destruction of India’s judicial independence had also started when the Supreme Court of India became an ally of the ruling government. On the appointment of justice Ranjan Gogoi to the Rajya Sabha and the imminent arrest of scholar Anand Teltumbde.

Recently former Prime Minister of India- Manmohan Singh said that he believes, it is elite’s solemn duty to speak truth to the people of India. The truth is that the current situation is very grim and morose. The India that people know and cherish is slipping away fast.

India once a liberal and democratic planned to went under ‘Jenta curfew’ for a day due to increasing pandemic death toll all over world and now extended it to twenty one days more, might be realizing the plight of recent continued severe and inhuman clampdown of Kashmir’s eight million Muslim inhabitants under siege for more than six month in Indian Held Jammu and Kashmir Region, the abrogation of bills and treaties that had previously guaranteed the minorities living in India a fair share.

Read more: Pakistani Hindu community cancels Holi celebrations to protest Delhi riots

Moreover, recent events in India have raised worldwide concern as the tempo of violence against the country’s 200 million Muslim minority by Hindu hooligans armed with swords and guns has increased. So much so that the OIC, the largest organisation of the Muslim world that had been quiet earlier had to make a very blunt statement.

In condemning the three day heinous events in Delhi, which resulted in the deaths of dozens of innocent Muslim civilians and terming the riots as ‘anti-Muslim and also asked the Modi-led BJP government to “bring the instigators and perpetrators of anti-Muslim violence to justice and to ensure the safety and security of all its Muslim citizens and the protection of Islamic holy places across the country.

Among those who strongly oppose the BJP-led bill are influential Hindus and scholars who see this as a death knell to India’s secular democracy according to Tariq A. Al Maeena, a Saudi commentator.

The OIC’s call was soon followed by the UN rights chief whose offices sought to join efforts challenging the legislation to India’s controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in the country’s highest court. The Act which was designed to target Muslims making it easier for religious minorities from three neighbouring countries to get Indian citizenship — but not if they are Muslim — was the spark for the recent deadly riots in New Delhi.

More than 50 people were killed and hundreds wounded in the worst sectarian violence to rock the capital in decades. Muslim property was ravaged and burnt throughout the city. BJP politician Kapil Mishra was behind whole massacre. Whereas Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also urged India to confront extremist Hindus and stop the massacre of Muslims.

Muslim world and other sane voices are slowly rising to the internal threat to India’s minorities and is no longer willing to shrug them off as an internal issue.

On economic front for the last three years, business has been slow. India’s banking sector, and public banks in particular, are groaning under the weight of nonperforming loans.

The problems in the banking sector are symptomatic of a wider malaise in the Indian economy. Growth is at its slowest in years, and consumption is weak.

The political and economic crises are tightly interwoven. When Narendra Modi became prime minister at the head of the Bharatiya Janata Party in 2014, he promised to do for India what he did for his home state of Gujarat, where he had presided over an economic growth spurt.

What Modi did carry over from his time in Gujarat, though, was inter-community violence. In 2002, while Modi ran the state, at least 1,000 people died in clashes between Hindus and Muslims.

Moreover, instead of using its mandate to tackle the mounting economic challenges, Modi’s government has doubled down on Hindutva, its populist, Hindu nationalist agenda. Backed by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a Hindu ultranationalist group seen as an ideological driving force behind Hindutva, it has tried to enforce Hinduism as central to India’s values and identity. This brutality is killing Indians more than the Virus. Almost all of the government’s political capital has been thrown into this massive social project. Economic reform has fallen by the wayside.

India’s Journey of boom to bust started and then accelerated by Modi Govt. People aren’t consuming because they fear the future. There is an atmosphere of mistrust. Private investment as a share of gross domestic product has slipped to its lowest level in years, while weakness in manufacturing and construction has been the heaviest drag on growth, according to data from consultancy TS Lombard.

During the campaign leading up to Delhi’s elections on Feb. 8, it was hard to believe that the two top of both parties contenders were taking part in the same contest for election. But the incumbent Aam Aadmi party, led by Arvind Kejriwal, emphasized its record of improving basic services, particularly education and won with an overwhelming majority over BJP.

Read more: Delhi Carnage is episode 2 of Gujrat Riots, writes cornered Delhi Muslim

At the end, the rise of Hinduism and the increasing saffron terrorism by Hindu militias against minorities that have begun sprouting in different parts of the country, while the government seems to turn a blind eye has many of people worried about the future of their so-called secular country.

Dr. Zeeshan Khan is a medical doctor by profession, a content writer, freelance writer, certified trainer and Poet. He is a motivational speaker, Cultural-cum-Political Analyst and columnist and has written for a number of English and Urdu dailies like Dawn, Express Tribune, The Business, The Educationist and Roznama Pakistan etc. He is also Alumni of LUMS and Winner of all Pakistan Ubqari story Writing Competition. The views expressed in this article are author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Global Village Space.