India’s Muslim minority was scapegoated by Hindu extremists for the domestic outbreak of COVID-19
Evidence
The coronavirus preyed on the immune systems of individuals regardless of location, race, or religion, and in India it converged with Modi’s rapidly spreading Islamophobia. Three months after the CAA was enacted into law, Muslim citizens were forced to face the compounded effect of hateful policy and popular scapegoating, during a global pandemic that was infected by a hysteria that knew no ceiling and had no exit. Islamophobia in India took its most vile turn yet as Hindu extremists, seeking to scapegoat Islam through any measure and purge Muslims from India by any means, blamed the outbreak of COVID-19 in India on no other than the country’s Muslim community. As a pandemic was shutting the world down in March 2020, Muslims in India found themselves locked between intensifying Hindutva violence and what became one of its deadliest weapons: the coronavirus. — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 457
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to Kumar Iftikhar’s account of post-9/11 American Muslim scapegoating — India recapitulating the same logic during COVID. — connects to: Trump scapegoated minorities to deflect COVID-19 blame — Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry, The Flag and the Cross: White Christian…, 127
- SHARE: Someone studying pandemic-era scapegoating or minority politics in India would want this framing of the virus as a weapon turned on Muslims.