Pandemic scapegoating escalated from media smears to physical violence and economic boycotts

Evidence

After the lies came the batons, cricket bats, and boycotts. Hindu extremists mobbed and then pounced on Muslims in New Delhi. Muslims were being beaten physically, then financially. “In Punjab State, loudspeakers at Sikh temples broadcast messages telling people not to buy milk from Muslim dairy farmers because it was infected by coronavirus,” and shops owned by Muslims in both big cities and small towns were boycotted as sources of COVID-19 outbreak. “We wanted to pick up our things and leave, go somewhere far away,” shared Abdullah, who owned a store targeted by mobs in New Delhi. Those with money could flee. For poor and working-class Muslims in Delhi, which comprised a sizable segment of its population, there was no exit. — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 466

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how did the Punjabi Sikh temple messaging against Muslim dairy farmers fit into Hindutva politics, given Sikh-Hindu tensions?
• SHARE: The detail of Sikh temple loudspeakers telling people not to buy virus-infected Muslim milk would fascinate anyone tracking intercommunal politics in Punjab specifically.