By A.J. Philip
An acquaintance asked me why I did not write about the Tablighi Jamaat as if I write about everything under the sun. I write only about things about which I am comfortable.
When I sent a reply to him, I realised that he was more interested in deriving some communal advantage from it.
I did not know that Tablighi Jamaat, which literally means Outreach Society, had its roots in the Mewat region of Haryana and Rajasthan. That is until I read a post by my friend Faizi S. It is the most backward region in the country.
It is a shame that Mewat’s abject poverty neighbours Gurgaon’s absolute prosperity. I will consider India a developed nation only when the socio-economic profile of Mewat equals that of any district in Kerala, including Malappuram.
The glittering malls of Gurgaon cannot hide the dirt and squalor that one comes across in Mewat, situates on both sides of the fast-disappearing Aravali ranges on which once stood the Raisina Hills, flattened to build the Viceroy’s House, now called Rashtrapati Bhavan.
Mewat is an area of great interest to me as I go there often in furtherance of our grassroots-based work to ameliorate the conditions of the people through education, women empowerment and healthcare.
To return to Tablighi Jamaat, its headquarters, known as Markaz, has little to do with Márquez, the Colombian writer whose first names are Gabriel García. By the way, Marquez is a very popular writer in India.
I saw almost all his books in my friend Vijayan Punnathur’s collection. One of the books he authored is Love In The Time of Cholera. Headline writers, including yours humbly, have paraphrased it to give headlines like Life In The Time of Coronavirus.
Needless to say, Márquez and Markaz are like chalk and cheese. Markaz is an Urdu word and it means Centre, Concentrate, Core, Essence, Eye, Focus, Gist, Halfway, Heart, Inwardness, Kernel, Mall, Marrow, Meat, Middle, Midway, Nub, Pith, Plaza, Pore, Rivet, Snapper, Substance.
The Thesaurus gives more words.
To come to the brass tacks, today’s Hindustan Times has a misleading eight-column banner headline titled “Markaz trail widens; cases hit 2,000” on its front page. It gives the impression that there are 2000 Corona cases linkable to Markaz.
The headline gave me a scare in the morning.
Buried in the story is a sub-headlined piece which says, “MAPPING THE FOOTPRINT, TN, Telangana account for 2,000 people who might have visited Tablighi headquarters”. The headline-giver deserves a rosebud if HT follows the practice promoted by Sanjay Dutt in his block-buster movie Laghe Raho Munna Bhai.
Why single out HT, when I heard a TV anchor in Kerala using outright abusive language to describe Tablighi Jamaat, which, to be fair to the organisation, wants everyone in the world to land in heaven, like the BJP which wants every MP and MLA to join the party.
It is a different matter that, nowadays, all that is required to start an Internet-based TV channel and call it Marunadan or whatever is a good mobile phone and a good data plan.
I myself had planned a programme in Kerala on March 15 and booked air tickets accordingly but when the Kerala Government introduced strong restrictions in the wake of a family from Ranny allegedly spreading Covid 19, we postponed the programme indefinitely. Incidentally, I am yet to get back the money from the airlines.
Long before it, on January 30, the first Coronavirus case was reported in India. It had a China connection. Nearly a month after the first case was reported, the government went out of the way to organise a massive gathering for President Trump on February 24.
Namaste Trump was a vainglorious PR exercise for both Trump and Modi, who persisted with the programme even as Coronavirus was spreading its tentacles far and wide.
Tablighi Jamaat should have been more sensible than Modi and Trump and should have called off its programme at Markaz, given the rising Covid-19 graph all over the world. That it did not is unpardonable.
To be the Devil’s Advocate, a term Catholics are more familiar with, Tablighi Jamaat did not violate any specific government order.
True, the Delhi government had first banned gatherings of more than 200 people. Yet, it did not prevent holding of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha sessions. Both Houses have more than 200 members each.
Then the government reduced the number of people who could assemble to 50. Tablighi Jamaat surely had violated these orders.
I saw a group photograph of MPs who had a breakfast meeting organised by a VVIP. It was in violation of the Delhi government order. One of the MPs had allegedly met a singer in Lucknow, who was tested positive. This forced the VVIP to go in for self-quarantine.
When Modi gave a call for a 14-hour Janata Curfew on March 22, the Jamaat gathering was on. And when Modi announced a 21-day Lockdown from the midnight of March 24, he specifically mentioned that the people should stay wherever they were.
Given this background, did Tablighi Jamaat violate any of the government orders? Is it true that the help the organisation sought to disperse the crowd was not given?
To be fair to the state government, how could government organise vehicles for them when the lockdown was in force? Anyway, all of them present at Markaz have been dispersed and quarantined.
Now the question is, was the Tablighi Jamaat gathering a gathering of Covid-19 patients? No, it was not. Tens of thousands of migrant labour assembled at the Interstate bus stand days after the lockdown was announced. Was it by observing social distancing?
I saw visuals of a train load of people leaving Mumbai for Bihar just before the lockdown began. Millions of people have moved from place to place since the lockdown came into force. Were they not carriers of Coronavirus? Why single out Tablighi Jamaat, when a certain chief minister organised an elaborate puja in wanton violation of the PM’s order?
Tablighi Jamaat is a 100-year-old organisation, which is more bothered about after life than life in this world like many other so-called spiritual organisations.
Instead of focusing on Markaz and allowing communal elements to exploit its name for devious purposes, let all of us join hands to fight Coronavirus.
The writer is a senior journalist. He can be reached at
[email protected]