Tamil Nadu Health Secretary Beela Rajesh had informed that 84 out of 96 patients who had tested positive for the Wuhan Coronavirus on April 9 were from a ‘single source event’ while referring to Tablighi Jamaat event. She added that the very ‘single source’ accounted for a whopping 763 out of Tamil Nadu’s 834 live cases.
This has led to many questioning why was the Tamil Nadu Government withholding the name of the source when it accounts for 91% of the total confirmed cases of the Chinese virus.
84 persons out of the 96 persons who tested positive for #COVID19 today are from “single source” event; 763 cases out of the total 834 cases in the state are from “single source” event: Beela Rajesh, Tamil Nadu Health Secretary (File pic) pic.twitter.com/xCwxBki7Qa
— ANI (@ANI) April 9, 2020
This is, however, not a difficult question to answer, given the established trend of ‘political correctness’ in the society at large. The decision of the Tamil Nadu government to ‘secularise’ the role of the Tablighi Jamaat in jeopardising public health and safety by referring to them as a ‘single source’ is the representation of that very notion of political correctness.
India’s fight against the Wuhan Coronavirus had suffered a major blow ever since the role of Tablighi Jamaat as the ‘super spreader’ had surfaced. Around 3,400 Jamaatis had participated in a religious congregation at the Nizamuddin Markaz in Delhi between March 13 and March 15, despite government orders against mass-gatherings. As of April 6, 1445 cases of Coronavirus had been found to have links with the Markaz event.
At a time when the left-liberal jamaat is hellbent on whitewashing the Tablighi Jamaat for endangering the lives of fellow citizens by building a misleading narrative around “Islamophobia”, the Tamil Nadu Government seems to have cowed down under pressure. The AIADMK-led-Tamil-Nadu government has recently filed an FIR against a Tamil vlogger Maridhas for questioning the role of Tablighi Jamaat in the spread of Coronavirus.
Despite the overwhelming number of coronavirus positive cases, linked to the Tablighi Jamaat, emerging every day, the Delhi Minorities Commission has written a letter to the Delhi government urging it to drop the separate column of ‘Markaz Majid’ in its daily bulletins on coronavirus cases in Delhi.
The DMC Chairman Dr. Zafarul-Islam Khan said in his letter: “Your bulletins of Coronavirus victims are showing a separate column ‘Markaz Masjid’. Such thoughtless classification is feeding into the Islamophobia agenda of the lap media and Hindutva forces and has been easily turned into a handle to attack Muslims across the country.”
