A lockdown... A protest...

This is a protest meeting, albeit, we are attending an academic lecture. In the winter of 2017-18, the admin introduced compulsory attendance system for all JNU scholars from undergraduate level till PhD. The move was accepted by neither students nor teachers.

JNU celebrates the culture of open lectures where classes are generally attended by one and all who is part of the community. Often some professors too attend a senior professor's lecture sitting alongside students. For the teachers, attendance register was an insult to their academic credibility.. they argued that students will come and attend or reject a lecture on their own.. the content and quality of the lecture made a professor or course important. Attendance was a mild form of corporal punishment to an otherwise tradition of learning for excellence.
 
Thus, the whole university unitedly imposed a lockdown. A lockdown of spaces that demanded attendance registation. The message was clear, classrooms will be locked down, but learning will go on.
 
We attended classes like this, in lawns, on the corridors, and anywhere we could do except classrooms. This is Prof. Janaki Nair giving a lecture on Capitalism and Colonialism. And those are us, the batch of MA CHS 2016-18.

Chinkis & Miyas: Stories of Xenophobia in times of Virus & Viral Videos

The Corona Virus outbreak has provably ripped apart the fundamental text book idea of “Unity in Diversity” which has been endorsed by BJP MP Tejaswi Surya on Kunal Kamra’s Podcast only two days back.

As the media started to report about the pandemic in its hyperactive form, most people started treating it as an act of war from China’s end and not a health emergency. This resulted in brewing hatred towards the North Eastern people who live in mega cities like Delhi, Bengaluru & Kolkata. In one particular case, a Manipuri girl was spat on at Delhi making Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal condemned the incident.

https://twitter.com/Alanagolmei/status/1241780620369334277

Other such cases have been reported throughout the month of March from across the country. Even Bollywood singer and former Indian Idol contestant Meiyang Chang said that while he was out on his morning walk in Mumbai, two men on a bike sped past him shouting "corona". Numerous other such cases have been reported since then and there has been a uniform voice against such discrimination. Last month the virus outbreak was mild and the public sentiment was sane.

One week into the lockdown, panic and anxiety started to kick in. On 2^nd April, Arunachal Pradesh got it’s first Corona infected patient. An asymptomatic yet positive Muslim man who visited the Tablighi Jamaat at Nizamuddhin Delhi. As the news spread, xenophobia started brewing on social media against the said man and his community. In a group called “Voice of Arunachal” on Facebook which has almost 2.4 Lakh members, people demanded that the infected person be not brought to the state even in a quarantine facility. Some over excited ones are abusing muslims in general for bringing the virus to their state. The saner members are trying to negotiate on the group.

Some Selected Screenshots from the Group:

The capital of Arunachal Pradesh, Itanagar is located in Papumpare district, a stronghold of the Nyishi tribe. The All Nyishi Youth Association (ANYA), a powerful mobilizer in the capital area, issued a video message on it’s Facebook page to not bring the patient back to the state. The video, captioned “No Means No” seems more like a warning than a request.

https://www.facebook.com/AllNyishiYouthAssociation/videos/146665680079944/

The video got following comments on the official page of ANYA

The eastern most state has a very tiny population of Muslims, mostly migrants from Assam or other parts of India, certainly not indigenous. As the mongoloid featured people are called Chinkis in the mainland, there are certain derogatory names in the hills too. In Arunachal Pradesh, a non-Tribal is generally called Haring. But in this case the word is Miya. Miya is a derogatory term which has been normalized in the discourse of Assamese identity movement for the last several decades. In Assam there are two types of Muslalmans – Miyas and Assamese muslims. Miyas are those who have migrated from East Bengal in the last century or so. And Assamese muslims are those who have been in the valley since pre-modern times. In Arunachal, muslims are miyas and miyas are not welcome – with the virus, never.

Speaking of Miyas, the reaction of Assam needs to be mentioned too. Angshuman Choudhury’s blog post published in Firstpost compiles the Assamese xenophobic reaction on the news of Nizamuddhin Markaz. It exposes Assam’s claim that it is not a land of communalism unlike mainland India. He further points out the strategic error on the part of Assamese government to release the names and identity of infected persons in public. Neighboring state has invoked section 188 of IPC and banned the publication of names or biodata of any Covid19 infected person.

Virus vs Viral Videos: Which is a bigger threat?

The other phenomenon which is seen among these Facebook groups is a flood of video posts which show how muslims are trying to spread corona virus. Some of them are fake/old videos reused to fuel and brew communal hatred, while some of them are recently made using popular video sharing app TikTok or another free editor. The central government told the Supreme Court on 31^st March that the biggest impediment in fighting the Corona Virus pandemic is fake news.

Huffpost has reported earlier that during the recent riots in Delhi, users of TikTok have made music videos of the violent clashes. TikTok is like atomic energy, it gives us all the power to create and share, but it is a bomb if abused. Video editing used to be a protected resource earlier and only trained professionals could edit videos, let alone publish them. But TikTok simplified the process bypassing the actual editing and giving predefined templates to work on. Horrific video recordings lose their importance once someone edits it without proper understanding and judgement. The videos once posted get viral organically due to its content. TikTok’s community monitors cannot review them before they have already done the damage.

Fake video production is confined not only to the IT cell of powerful organizations. Thanks to TikTok, and other such mobile based video editors anyone can edit and post a video at will. Independent factcheckers like Altnews and Boomlive are working overtime to counter these viral fakes. From author Rana Ayyub to JNUSU, big names have been victims and have shared misleading tweets and videos.

One way to check the authenticity of a video related to Corona Virus pandemic is to check if the people in the video have a mask. This small detail can differentiate a fake one from a real one. One such video has been busted by Altnews where a video of a man inside a police van, spitting on a cop, has been shared by numerous individuals online. Apart from everything else, it is clearly visible that none of the police personals have a mask on. But it went viral in a matter of hours.

Not only fake videos, but sometimes real videos with out the background context carry a fake narrative. The video of Indore incident where a mob chased and pelted stones on medical professionals went viral. All media houses carried the story on preliminary reports. The race of breaking the news intentionally or unintentionally put the real incident and its reason on a backfoot. Newslaundry went to find out the truth behind the video and what they found was shocking.

Locals informed that a WhatsApp message in circulation misnformed about a conspiracy that Muslims are being taken away for tests and given fake corona positive reports. And after sometime a fatal injection is given to take their life. The message asked Muslims to be careful and stay at home even if tested positive. Around the same time a video went viral in which a Muslim family claimed that they have been trapped and the authorities are declaring them corona positive without any reason. These two messages are claimed to be the trigger of April 1 violence.

The migrant exodus that happened in Delhi’s Anand Vihar is also allegedly a result of a viral whatsapp message. UP CM Yogi Adityanath’s tweeted on 28^th March that 1000 buses have been arranged for migrant workers.

https://twitter.com/myogioffice/status/1243785186858242048

Indian Express reported that a WhatsApp group -‘SDM Seelampur Group’- had a message that “people who are roaming on the streets and wish to cross the border may be escorted to Shastri Park”, and from there “DTC buses will take them to Ghaziabad border”. The message is attributed to the “Div Com and Home Secretary”. As thousands gathered at Anand Vihar, the frequency of buses proved to be too low. Even the Supreme Court observed that the migration of labourers have been triggered by fake news that the lockdown would continue for 3 months.

An edited version of this article has been publishd on Firstpost. Please find it here.