Arundhati Roy slams Indian govt over almost 'genocidal' treatment of Muslims

Indian author and activist Arundhati Roy said that the Indian government is trying to  fan communal rifts by exploiting the coronavirus issue against its minority Muslim community, according to a DW report. The Ministry of Happiness author said that "the situation is approaching genocidal."

She told the foreign publication that the coronavirus pandemic has laid bare the facet of India that ‘all of us knew’. "We are suffering, not just from COVID, but from a crisis of hatred, from a crisis of hunger,” she said, adding that the world needs to keep its eyes on the matter of anti-Muslim hatred in India. Linking the fresh wave of singling out Muslims during the pandemic to the recent Delhi riots, she said that it began with people protesting against the anti-Muslim citizenship law. She continued that under the guise of COVID-19, the Hindu nationalist government is arresting young students, fighting cases against lawyers, media personnel, activists and intellectuals.

Roy said that the current wave of vitriol against Muslims is tantamount to the one by Nazis during the Holocaust. It currently emerged that  in wake of the pandemic, several fake videos made rounds on social media blaming Muslims behind the spread. According to The New York Times report, the outbreak of coronavirus in India has triggered a series of attacks against Muslims across the country, with the health ministry of the Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi claiming that Muslims are spreading the virus.

“Young Muslim men who were passing out food to the poor were assaulted with cricket bats,” the US publication said.

“Other Muslims have been beaten up, nearly lynched, run out of their neighborhoods or attacked in mosques, branded as virus spreaders,” the paper said, highlighting that Hindu extremists were scapegoating the country’s entire Muslim population for deliberately spreading the virus through “corona jihad”.

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