COVID-19: New Opportunity of Discrimination & Violence for the Creation of Hindu Rashtra

Dr. Goldy M. George

Dec 2021

In July 2021, the threat of covid has resurfaced in parts of India with its third wave. India has been under severe pressure since March 2020; coronavirus being the primary reason but more specifically due to the lockdown that disrupted life in the entire nation. Lockdown has witnessed several disasters with hundreds of laborers committing suicide, migrant laborer walking thousands of kilometers without food, water and shelter and finally succumbing to the death trap.

In India the caste system was officially abolished in 1950 through the Constitution, but the 3500-year-old system of social hierarchy – based on purity of blood by birth – still haunts in almost every aspect of life. Oppressed and marginalized groups have long endured social isolation, but it seems that some of the measures to stop rapid spread of the coronavirus has worsened this segregation.

The current phase of COVID-19 has already exposed several instances of upholding the caste system and its practices. Right from the beginning of the lockdown one after other cases of caste-based discrimination began to surface which included discrimination with Dalits in isolation/ quarantine centers, low graded medical care and support of Dalit patients, non-extension of financial support to people from these sections, selectively not providing vaccination to Dalits, etc. Apart from this another set of fabricated cases, arbitrary arrests despite the spread of coronavirus, increase of physical attacks, rapes, murders, and arson continued against the oppressed Dalits and marginalized Adivasis.

Few examples like the arrest of Anand Teltumbde’s during the pandemic in a fictitious case of Bhima Koregaon/ Elgar Parishad violence, media’s creation of coronasur myth, glorification of caste system as a measure of social distancing to keep away the socially unwanted elements in society by Jonnavithula Ramalingeswara Rao, a Telugu film lyricist and poet as well as a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Andhra Pradesh, indiscriminately promoting the idea of ‘social’ distancing, gang rape and killing of Manisha Valmiki, arrest of Madkam Hidme as a Maoist, attack on religious minorities particularly Christians and Muslims, institutionalized state murder of Stan Swamy are only a few tips of the larger iceberg of discrimination, hatred, violence, exploitation and rule of the oppressive Brahminical structure in the creation of a Hindu Rashtra.

For instance, in a caste society like India promotion of the notion of ‘social distancing’ provides the ground for the casteist precept of distancing one from each other based on birth. It can reinvent and legitimize an oppressive form of isolation and segregation as in a classical caste society. This in one way advocates caste-based untouchability and taking pride in their upper caste status that they are not untouchables.

While it is eventual that everything will inevitably become political in a democracy, promotion of the ideal of Hindu Rashtra systematically legitimizes the social legacy and pattern of hatred, violence and discrimination that ideally shouldn’t exist in a civilized society. It is for these reasons that Ambedkar critically dismissed the notion of Hindutva and Hinduism – not only in his writings and as chairperson of the Constitution drafting committee, but at large by embracing Buddhism towards the end of his life. The continued promotion of any fascist agenda dismisses the very sense and meaning of all affirmative actions for the socially oppressed and culturally marginalized social groups. Despite all limitations and criticism, affirmative action has at least helped a few individuals to have upward mobility through access to education, employment, and political space. It is this very space that has challenged the dominant social fabric, which is why they are under constant attack and suffer inhuman behavior.

In a logical sense the history of caste and identity-based polarization is nothing new. It has received enough political acknowledgement too. However the rush in further polarizing the society during the entire phase of Covid-19 has certainly created new opportunities of caste humiliation, stigma, discrimination and violence. It has become the ‘new normal’ today. Even in a nondiscriminatory pattern, pandemic or disasters do not affect everyone equally. People who are socially vulnerable and exposed to natural and man-made hazards are hit hardest when any disaster strikes. Those who are already stigmatized on the basis of purity and pollution are further excluded in the era of COVID-19, due to their lack of social and cultural capital.

As Gopal Guru says ‘the ideology of purity-pollution cancels out a vast section of people from social interactions, both in time and space. The caste system and the ideology of the purity-pollution produces a kind of total rejection which seeks to push a person or an entire social group in question beyond the civilizational framework, rendering the latter completely unseeable, unapproachable and untouchable.’ .

Indian state, even under a pandemic like coronavirus, is not governed based on her Constitution, rather the societal structures shaped by oppressive structural forces of casteism, classism, communalism, identity, elitism, and patriarchy. This undoubtedly renders the oppressed section vulnerable during the pandemic due to poverty, lack of information, paucity in education, access to resources and a set of welfare programs and schemes full of corruption.

It took centuries of struggle by Dalit-Bahujan leaders – particularly in recent centuries the ones like Jyotirao Phule, Iyothee Thass, BR Ambedkar, Baba Mangu Ram, Periyar, Aiyyankali, Narayana Guru, and others – to unveil casteism and expose the anti-human religious structure. In this context, we must realize that patterns that emerge during difficult phases of history becomes the culture of the society that leaves its imprint in power, rule and governance. What bothers today is how blatantly the state looks for opportunities to snatch away the constitutional rights and civil liberties of her citizens, particularly those hailing for oppressed sections of society in the creation of Hindu Rashtra.

The author is an activist, social scientist, and writer in India. He has been associated with a number of Dalit and Adivasi human rights movements and has worked on various issues for more than three decades. Currently he is the Contributing Editor with Forward Press.