The Coronavirus and India Riots
Author: Sultan Falah Basyah
Unlike in January, which is full of news headline about the US-Iran conflict and has caused the whole society to panic about the end of the world scenario because of the World War III talks, the month of February gave the society another scenario about the end of the world, that is the spread of Coronavirus. In this month, we got the whole world talking about the spreading virus, from February 2nd which is the first death case of Coronavirus outside China, reported in the Philippines[1], until the last day of February which is the first death case of Coronavirus reported in the United States.[2]
This Coronavirus problem evokes a new conspiracy from the Christian society, they claimed that Coronavirus is the deadly plague predicted by the Bible.[3] Another fun fact comes from Indonesia, where the narrations and conspiracies about Coronavirus were various. Many Muslims in Indonesia believed that Coronavirus was a punishment from God for China as they treated Uighur people badly and because they eat the forbidden and dirty food like bats. Until recently, Indonesia is one of the country which said to be still free from the Coronavirus infection. People in Indonesia believed that God has protected Indonesia from Coronavirus and the others also believed that the government was hiding the fact about the spread of Coronavirus in Indonesia.
However, February wasn’t only about the spread of Coronavirus, there are also series of riots and violent incidents that started February 24th in Delhi, India. It had killed 46 people and injured more than 200 people from both parties, Hindus and Muslims, even though the Muslims suffered more casualties. These riots caused by the Citizenship Amendment Act in 2019 that provides a path to Indian citizenship for illegal migrants of Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsees, and Christian religious minorities from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan. But, the problem was the Muslims from those countries were not given such eligibility.[4] This is the first time of Indian law to make religion overtly used as citizenship criterion. This is very unfortunate that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the ruling India party, by doing this they have weakened India secular foundation and increased the religious sentiment in India. It was so regrettable that such riots happened again in this modern time of India.
Reference:
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-51345855
[2] https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/29/health/us-coronavirus-saturday/index.html
[3] https://www.express.co.uk/news/weird/1244059/Coronavirus-plague-predicted-Bible-Book-of-Revelation-prophecy-coronavirus-end-of-world
[4] https://edition.cnn.com/2019/12/11/asia/india-citizenship-amendment-bill-intl-hnk/index.html
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