TCN News
Indian Minorities Economic Development Association (IMEDA),a not for profit organization based in Delhi that connects youth for business opportunities has released a press statement condemning criminalization of Tableeghi Jamaat in the wake of the Nizamuddin controversy.
IMEDA opines that “singling out of the Tablighi Jamaat ignores other large gatherings that took place around the same time and even later, often attended by politicians.” Some of these events were not just religious, but social and political gatherings – the swearing-in ceremony of MP’s new CM Shivraj Singh Chauhan on March 23, Karnataka’s CM was reported to have attended a wedding on the March 15, while UP CM, on March 20, announced that the Chaitra Ram Navami celebrations would be held as planned. UP CM Adityanath, along with senior bureaucrats, had also attended the ceremony conducted to shift the idol of ‘Ram Lalla’ to a temporary shelter in Ayodhya on March 25. All these gatherings are in addition to the large daily gatherings in other religious sites like Tirupati (around 50,000 people a day) and more. PM Modi’s Janata curfew itself pulled people outside their homes in large numbers to bang utensils as a mark of honoring health workers working on the frontline in the Corona battle.
IMEDA, in mentioning the above, strongly voiced that the fact that other religious gatherings occurred without eliciting a similar response, the move by the Delhi police to file an FIR against members of the Jamaat is “unacceptable.”The statement resonates that much like all other events, this should have been immediately cancelled but “criminalizing the organizers and participants of the Jamaat is nothing short of finding a scapegoat within the Muslim minority community in India.”
In its conclusion, IMEDA has also blamed the mainstream media in fanning anti-Muslim rhetoric, where Muslims are being called ‘corona bombs’, and ‘enemies of the nation’ on TV channels, and anchors are mouthing phrases like ‘corona jihad’. One channel even ran a banner with the Islamophobic catchphrase “Corona aaya, maulana laaya”, the statement said.
In its end note, IMEDA has appealed the Central government to “to provide adequate access to testing, carry out contact tracing of people in this and similar gatherings, as well as community testing and refrain from criminalizing any community of people”, calling it the need of the hour.