The Pandemic Radically Altered My Relationship with India. I Don’t Know If I Can Ever Go Back
16 June 2020 – my 22nd birthday. I woke up and checked my phone for customary wishes from my friends and family, all scattered around the world, locked down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As I began to scroll, I felt a gnawing itch in my throat. Panicking, I guzzled water, hoping it would get washed away. It didn’t. Before I knew it, I’d developed a fever.
Initially, I just isolated myself from my parents and took herbal medicines, hoping it would pass like any other time I’d had the flu. But it didn’t.
On day five, still not getting better, I started feeling increasingly weak. Unable to take a deep breath, I felt like there was a dearth of oxygen in the room. I’d read enough to know the symptoms all too well. But I couldn’t accept it. How had I contracted the dreaded coronavirus? I’d followed all the rules. It didn’t make sense.
What would my friends think of me? In an environment where Muslims were being blamed for the pandemic in India, I was terrified to tell them I’d contracted it. What would their parents say about me?
These questions raced through my mind as I lay on the bed on my first night in the hospital, with an intravenous drip in my right wrist, staring at the ceiling in the dark. I was overcome with fear and shame. Fear of what the virus, which I really knew so little about, could do to me. And shame that something I’d done had given it access to my body, my home, and possibly, my parents.
***
8 January 2020 –– “Show your solidarity and patriotism towards your nation,” read a forwarded message on a WhatsApp group chat with mothers of my high school classmates. “Stand up for your country. Come join us to counter ... anti-India slogans and false propaganda."
The message was referring to the nationwide protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), a legislation passed in December 2019 that uses religion as a criterion for determining whether illegal migrants in India can be fast-tracked for citizenship, favoring members of all South Asia’s major religions except Islam.
“Too many misconceptions and the youth are targeted,” the sender, Bharati aunty, added, “converting them to oppose and hate everything our nation does so forwarding this message.”
The group chat, until then, had largely always steered away from politics. This was new territory. The nation was, after all, in the throes of a political crisis, with unprecedented pushback against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist agenda. His Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in 2014, bringing with it a disproportionate rise in mob lynchings of Muslims and Dalits, a network of vicious internet trolls, and an intolerant political climate. After his re-election in 2019, he more brazenly dialed up the majoritarianism, reaching a tipping point with the CAA.
As a child of interfaith parents, the kind particularly despised by the BJP, this news felt deeply personal and distressing to me. Since 2017, however, I’d been distanced from it, pursuing a social science degree at NYU Abu Dhabi. Compulsively following the news while studying political science, sociology, and anthropology gave me a strange sense of solace. It made me feel seen, validating my suppressed high school experiences of Islamophobia and arming me with knowledge and frameworks with which to process and articulate them. I even joined my college newspaper in early 2018, hoping to find and develop my voice as an aspiring journalist.
And yet, while reading Bharati aunty’s messages, I felt an acute pain at the back of my throat, taking me right back to primary school, when I’d always been too flustered to directly confront the bigotry around me.
Coming to the rescue, Jheel, an ‘enlightened’ classmate, responded to Bharati aunty’s messages from her mother’s phone. “Many legal scholars have noted that CAA and NRC work together to threaten Indian Muslims’ citizenship,” Jheel explained. “It is explicitly not secular and against basic principles of human rights. It arbitrarily discriminates against Muslims, and by supporting that you are agreeing with that sentiment.”
“Lastly, what does it mean for our Muslim classmates when you send messages like this?” she asked, referring to the approximately five Muslims out of our class of 100 students. “Please consider this the next time you think about sending these messages, as we “youth” are not just converted but are using our educations to read about the very real legal implications on the Muslims living in India.”
I felt grateful for Jheel’s allyship; she’d said what needed to be said so eloquently and precisely. But I couldn’t shake off some resentment about not having had the courage or capital to do the same. Would I ever feel empowered enough to stand up against this kind of gaslighting and express my viewpoint with the same courage and conviction? And then how is it fair, I wondered, that after facing all kinds of discrimination, it is the disenfranchised who have to take on the burden of convincing those with privilege of their very disenfranchisement?
“Please please stop listening to [the] New York Times kind of media,” Bharati aunty responded, calling them “biased media.” She was referring to notable international publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, TIME, The Guardian, and The New Yorker, along with Indian publications like NDTV, Scroll.in, The Quint, The Wire, and The Caravan: essentially, publications that were unsparingly critical of the BJP’s majoritarian politics, that I felt spoke truth to power.
“CAA IS NOT ABOUT MUSLIMS AT ALL,” she emphasized. “THIS COUNTRY DOES NOT DISTINGUISH BETWEEN RELIGIONS.”
While protestors of the CAA comprised people from different backgrounds and identities, the police disproportionately targeted Muslims. Unsurprising. “From the visuals on TV,” said Modi, pointedly at a rally, “those setting the fire can be identified by their clothes.” Naturally, the BJP propaganda machinery amplified the ‘Muslim’ or ‘anti-India,’ ‘anti-Hindu’ aspect of the protest. Cue Bharati aunty’s forwarded message, which went one step further and invited people to a gathering to discuss the CAA.
“Pro-CAA” rallies were not uncommon: many felt the need to express their vociferous support for this bigoted legislation. At one such rally on 23 February 2020, Kapil Mishra, a local BJP politician, issued an ultimatum to the police: either clear out the demonstrators or he and his followers would do it themselves.
Within hours, the worst Hindu-Muslim violence in India in years exploded, with people fighting each other with swords and bats. Shops were ablaze, bricks sailed through the air, mobs rained blows on cornered men. More than 40 people were killed and more than 200 people, mostly Muslims, were injured in what has increasingly been referred to as a pogrom instigated by Mishra’s speech.
It is in this context that the coronavirus first came knocking on India’s door. The state of the country could perhaps be captured by journalist Rana Ayyub’s tweet on 16 March 2020: “What is left for a virus to kill in a morally corrupt nation”?
***
9 March 2020 –– a warm, sunny day in New York. I was having a picnic with my friends at Washington Square Park, planning our spring break trip to Puerto Rico. Between weekends in Boston and Providence and weekday lunches on MacDougal Street, my semester abroad was looking near impossibly idyllic.
But the coronavirus had different plans for me.
On the 10th, we cancelled our trip, making a conciliatory list of things we would do in New York instead. On the 11th, amid rising cases, imminent border closures, and flight bans, I realized I had to leave New York.
On the 13th, I left.
19 March. After my first week back home in Bombay –– jetlag, insomnia, and blurry denial –– India finally woke up to the threat of COVID-19. I sat with my parents on the living room couch, nervously watching our Prime Minister address the nation. We were afraid, hoping for some direction, a plan, anything concrete. In his trademark slow, calculatedly measured speaking style, he emphasized the importance of social distancing. He also announced a “people’s curfew” on the 22nd, where for one day, we would not be able to leave our houses from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. On this day, he added, everyone should come to their windows or balconies and offer thanks to essential workers “by clapping, banging pots and pans, and ringing bells.”
And everybody unquestioningly participated in the circus, including my parents. “This isn’t about him,” they said. “It’s about thanking the medical fraternity and showing solidarity.”
I felt utterly confused. Was this supposed to scare off COVID? How would our healthcare system endure the pandemic with such an enormous population? These were only some of the many pressing questions that a leader of the world’s largest democracy should have been able to answer. But our Prime Minister has, thus far, not answered a single question at a press conference.
My parents’ WhatsApp, meanwhile, was flooded with forwarded messages claiming that the 14-hour curfew would somehow break the chain of COVID transmission. And, better still, that 22 March was the darkest day of the month, where viruses, bacteria, and evil forces have maximum power, and the joint sounds of the banging, ringing, and clapping would create so much vibration that the virus would lose all its potency. “A masterstroke by Modi” appeared like an irritating musical motif in every text, read and circulated by millions of Indians.
On 24 March at 8 p.m., Modi announced a three-week nationwide lockdown –– the strictest and harshest of its kind in the world –– with only four hours notice. Naturally, panic buying ensued as people began crowding supermarkets. My father, too, crippled with anxiety and a fear of scarcity, tried to stock up on unnecessary amounts of food supplies at home: cans of tuna, dal, onions, anything with a long shelf life.
“The virus doesn't discriminate,” he said, suggesting that in times like these, no one is safe. “It screws all of us equally.”
Privileged urban folk like us were perched in our comfortable homes, complaining about trivial things, irrationally worrying about scarcity, while millions of migrant workers were forced to travel to their villages on foot, with no secure arrangements, battling not only the virus, but also starvation, exhaustion, and police brutality along the way.
All I could do was helplessly scroll on Twitter, I hoped the discourse would, as usual, validate my dismay and bewilderment, and I turned to journalists like Rana Ayyub, Barkha Dutt, Ravish Kumar, and Faye D’Souza, who, despite government suppression, unflaggingly kept reporting on the bitter realities of the pandemic. But it felt different. This time, I had to experience the news I’d been peacefully reading about from a distance before. Now, I couldn't simply put my phone away and seek solace in my friends. I was trapped, forced to confront the realities head on.
“As an appalled world watched,” wrote famed writer Arundhati Roy of the lockdown, “India revealed herself in all her shame — her brutal, structural, social and economic inequality, her callous indifference to suffering.”
***
1 April 2020 –– Life under lockdown. I’d never lived under curfew before. The streets of Bombay, otherwise bustling, busy, brimming with people, were completely empty and deserted. It was surreal.
Just days after the lockdown was announced, news surfaced that an annual event held by the Tablighi Jamaat in Delhi in early March had become a major COVID-19 hotspot. How could anyone be so foolish, I thought, to host a religious event amid such an immediately terrifying pandemic?
But I could never have imagined the vitriolic, vile rhetoric it would unleash. Fake news clogged with Islamophobia crawled all over the country, blaming Muslims for spreading the virus. Hashtags like #CoronaJihad and #BioJihad inundated Twitter. Even my parents’ WhatsApp group chats were not spared, with parents of some of my closest high school friends sending bigoted forwarded images and videos of Muslims sneezing in unison, licking utensils, and spitting on fruits. “WATCH OUT!!” the captions read. “BE CAREFUL!”
TV news anchors too used it as an excuse to launch a bitter attack on Muslims. One of them accused the Jamaat of “lying and betraying the nation in the name of Islam.” Another channel played staccato flashes of images of Muslims, while the anchor asked: “Are there corona bombs in your neighbourhood?” A particularly notorious news anchor histrionically raged, “Is this a conspiracy? Is this a conspiracy to turn Delhi to Italy?”
Watching it all, I wondered: is this the kind of media that, for the likes of Bharati aunty, produces unbiased, “hard facts”? Meanwhile, it was the “New York Times kind of media” that was actually reporting what I was seeing and feeling so viscerally: “As the world looks for coronavirus scapegoats, Muslims are blamed in India.” “It Was Already Dangerous to Be Muslim in India. Then Came the Coronavirus.” “Attacks on Muslims in the Name of COVID-19 Surge Across India.”
One night, I sat on my bed at 3 a.m, feeling lost. How did the people whom I grew up with, whose houses I ate at, who had loved me dearly, harbour such vicious hate towards a community I belonged to?
As I processed my emotions, a poem came out of me:
I felt sad about the islamophobia,
The attacks on Muslims by our mainstream media -
So I told my friend, I don’t think Muslims are safe in India.
He said why don’t you go to Pakistan.
I said no you don’t understand -
I’m too Muslim for India, too kaafir for that land,
Can’t do without pork and a beer in my hand.
He said, so why don’t you go to America,
To Europe, New Zealand or Australia,
If you have such a problem with India.
You’re missing the point, I said.
Our ancestors bled
So we could all feel safe here,
Not live in fear.
They fought for a pluralist India
For you and for me, an India for everybody
To feel absolutely free to be whoever they want to be.
So why should I go?
This is my home, and home to everyone I know.
But it doesn’t feel like home anymore.
So I come to you, my friend, and tell you how I feel,
And you gaslight me, and say this isn’t real.
But how would you know?
This just doesn’t feel like home anymore.
***
3 April 2020 –– lockdown day nine. Amid severe anti-Muslim hate, a migrant crisis, and rising hysteria, our Prime Minister once again addressed the nation through an 11-minute pre-recorded message. By then, my parents and I had formed a ritual of gathering together in hopeless anticipation to listen to his latest directives.
“Friends, in the darkness spread during this crisis, we have to relentlessly [move] towards the light,” he said. “Therefore, us 130 crore Indians should, at 9 p.m. on April 5th, switch off all [the] lights and stand at the door or balcony, [and] light up a candle, diya, torch, or mobile flashlight for nine minutes.”
Sure enough, the WhatsApp messages came in, celebrating the ‘genius’ of such a move. Consider this gem sent by one of the well-read parents of my high school friends:
“It seems India has resolved to fight the pandemic on cosmic, divine, and mythical planes,” wrote Brahma Prakash, assistant professor of Theatre and Performance Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, calling it the “psychology of the spectacle.” “There is no doubt that several countries have failed to tackle the crisis, but the uniqueness of India’s response lies in the fact that it celebrates its failed system in such a ceremonial way that no one asks about the failing of the system.”
And the failing of the system was abundantly clear: the “New York Times kind of media” diligently reported gut-wrenching stories of migrant workers dying on their way home, rampant police brutality, and rising caste discrimination.
Compulsively reading the news while living part of it was deeply disturbing. I’d spend most days catastrophizing, grappling with questions of identity and belonging in a country I’d spent 19 years growing up in. A country that still felt so alien and foreign to me. Raised in Bombay’s cosmopolitan suburb of Bandra, I had always downplayed my Muslim identity at my elite school, which helped me create an alloyed façade of secularism and religious tolerance. Now, returning home for an extended period amid a global catastrophe had painfully ripped off the veneer, laying bare the pervasive bigotry, illogical superstition, and wilful class indifference.
This was my ‘home’. But I could never see India the same way again. After this experience, I wondered, would I ever truly be able to see myself returning? Would I find a sense of belonging beyond the alienation and discomfort? Was there any hope of redemption?
These thoughts and anxieties continued to weigh on me as the government used the pandemic to further its assault on dissent and democracy, arresting activists and students on baseless charges, while the likes of Mishra stayed scot free.
***
31 August 2020 –– after six months in Bombay, I left for my senior year at NYU Abu Dhabi, feeling a deep sense of relief. When offered the opportunity to return home in the December break, I didn’t take it, opting instead for the comfort on campus with my friends and Abu Dhabi’s good weather, going to the movies and restaurants all over the city, to bars, beaches, parks, kayaking in the mangroves.
In November, when my campus had its first COVID-19 case of the semester, I wrote a personal essay for my college publication, now as Editor-in-Chief, about COVID-shaming and the pandemic’s disproportionate impact on minorities.
“I didn’t need the shame as well,” I wrote, reflecting on the horrific symptoms, overwhelming loneliness, and the impending fear of passing the virus to loved ones. “When you hear of someone contracting the virus, let your first thoughts be, “Are they alright? How can we support them?” instead of “How did they contract it? Were they not wearing their mask around campus?””
Writing about my experience felt healing, a powerful way to reclaim agency over the shame I had felt alone in that hospital. Whatever I’d always felt unable to say to the likes of Bharati aunty, I could freely and confidently express in my writing. Many peers and professors also offered validation, making me feel like my words mattered. “Very moving, Kaashif,” an Indian professor said to me. “Thanks for writing this.”
***
7 March 2021 –– "We are in the endgame of [the] COVID-19 pandemic in India," stated India’s Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare. Modi had already declared ‘victory’ in January. Movie theatres had reopened, and restaurants too. People had stopped wearing masks on the street. At the end of February, tens of thousands of cricket fans gathered at the narcissistically named Narendra Modi Stadium for an India vs. England match.
Cases started to rise in early April. Sitting in Abu Dhabi, I read about large election rallies and the Kumbh Mela, a long Hindu religious festival attended by 1-5 million people daily. I felt enraged as I recalled the circus over the Tablighi Jamaat last year. How blatantly did our country discriminate between religious gatherings? Where was the outrage this time?
My father had a different strategy to channel his anger: he would forward memes and jokes about the Kumbh Mela on group chats, particularly those that had exposed their Islamophobia last year.
The rest of the story can be captured by the following article I co-wrote on 2 May: “As the nation of 1.3 billion experiences a deadly second wave of the pandemic and the health system collapses out of overburden and sheer dearth of supplies, the world watches in horror. Desperate pleas for oxygen cylinders and hospital beds now fill social media feeds, parking lots and parks have become crematorium sites and people are dying in hospital corridors, on roads and in their homes. Amidst this chaos, the government has carried on with political rallies, using vaccines as bait for votes. Experts have interpreted the crisis as a man-made catastrophe … It is estimated that the actual daily count of Covid-19 deaths in India has already crossed 10,000 –– higher than even the United States.”
Every other Indian on campus had lost someone close to them: one student lost her mother, another her grandmother. A contracted colleague lost his uncle. My own father and uncle got COVID-19 too, though they recovered with relative ease. “I have grandparents back home who are just in the middle of this absolute apocalypse,” said one student, originally from Kerala. “I don't know if i'm going to see them again.”
“No one writes emails announcing loss anymore. There is no time for that,” said a professor from Bombay. “A close friend wrote, ‘Lost a dozen colleagues within a fortnight.’ I did not have the courage to ask if amongst these were anyone I know…”
It was a radically different experience from last year. But the distance now didn’t help like I thought it would. I felt even more helpless, overcome with guilt about my security while my country burned. Would I rather have been home like last year, to support my parents and family through this catastrophe while bearing the brunt of their anxieties? Or was I better off far away in a safer, secure space, just laden with guilt and anxiety about their wellbeing?
***
16 June 2021 –– my 23rd birthday, a warm summer day in Abu Dhabi. I spent the day at the beach, reading a book, listening to the sound of the waves hitting the shore. The second wave in India had passed. I’d managed to find a job that would keep me in Abu Dhabi for a while.
But I still haven't returned to India since last year. My relationship with home was always complicated and became increasingly strained since I first left in 2017. But the pandemic undeniably caused a rupture, one that I don’t know if I can go back from.
I often find myself thinking of Jheel’s intervention in the mothers’ WhatsApp group chat, particularly other mothers’ responses to her. Some had expressed flimsy “both sides” platitudes. Most had remained silent. But they all read it.
And a few, especially the handful of Muslims, had an overwhelmingly emotional response. “Proud of you,” expressed one. “Wow ... hats off to you,” cheered another. “Our country desperately needs such minds.”
My mother, too, usually silent, deferential, and non-confrontational, felt empowered enough to say something: “More power to youngsters like you … the future of this country has hope.”
Perhaps writing, if at all, can be the only redemption.
Born and raised in Bombay, Kaashif Hajee is passionate about film, philosophy, and food. He is currently working as a Research Assistant at NYU Abu Dhabi. Follow him on Twitter @HajeeKaashif
Artwork by Simone Hadebe