New Delhi on Thursday urged the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation not to “communalise” the fight against Covid-19 after the grouping on Sunday condemned the “Islamophobic campaign” in India in the context of the outbreak.
A statement from the OIC’s Independent Permanent Human Rights Commission had flagged the “unrelenting vicious Islamophobic campaign in India maligning Muslims for spread of Covid-19 as well as their negative profiling in media subjecting them to discrimination and violence with impunity”.
Asked for a response to this, Indian sources said it was “deeply regrettable” that the OIC “continues to make factually incorrect and misleading statements”.
“We will advise OIC not to communalise the fight against the pandemic,” a source said.
Sources highlighted that some of the social media handles propagating the narrative in the Arab world about the state of Muslims in India had been called out as fakes. They highlighted a tweet from a parody account of an Omani princess.
“There is a deliberate attempt to create social disharmony in India and also affect our relations with Gulf countries. Heads of missions have appealed to the Indian community not to fall for such fake news,” a source said.
India’s missions in the UAE, Qatar and Oman have in the past couple of days had to intervene to warn the Indian diaspora. The ambassador in Dubai had to remind Indians that “discrimination is against our moral fabric and the rule of law” after some expats posted derogatory messages targeting a particular community.
The Doha and Muscat mission have issued warnings against fake news.
The subject featured also in a letter signed by several retired bureaucrats to chief ministers and lieutenant governors urging them to ensure there was no social boycott of any community on their watch.
The retired civil servants underlined how India had traditionally maintained good relations with Muslim nations and was seen as their friend.
“Millions of our fellow citizens live and work in these countries. There has been serious concern expressed in these countries about the recent developments. We should ensure, through our non-discriminatory action and relief measures, that the minorities have nothing to fear in India,” the letter said.
“This will help assuage the misgivings of these countries and avoid any consequential detriment to the prospects of the sizable Indian diaspora there.”
Among the signatories were former national security adviser Shivshankar Menon, former foreign secretary Shyam Saran and retired ambassadors Deb Mukharji, Nareshwar Dayal, Sushil Dubey, K.P. Fabian, Shiv Shankar Mukherjee, Aftab Seth, Ashok Kumar Sharma and Navrekha Sharma.
“We request you to instruct all public functionaries to be particularly vigilant to prevent social boycott of any community in the state and to ensure that all the entitlements including medical and hospital care, rations and financial assistance are available equally to all those in need,” said the letter, written on behalf of the retired bureaucrats’ platform, Constitutional Conduct.
The letter articulates the anguish felt by these veterans over the reports of the harassment of Muslims in parts of the country, particularly following the Tablighi Jamaat gathering in New Delhi in March.
While the letter describes as “misguided and condemnable” the Jamaat’s holding of the event against the Delhi government’s advisories, it says the media’s action in communalising it and tarnishing the Muslim community as a whole is “utterly irresponsible and reprehensible”.
