{"id":184040,"date":"2021-05-03T12:00:09","date_gmt":"2021-05-03T11:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=184040"},"modified":"2021-05-02T08:51:54","modified_gmt":"2021-05-02T07:51:54","slug":"we-are-witnessing-a-crime-against-humanity-arundhati-roy-on-indias-covid-catastrophe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/05\/we-are-witnessing-a-crime-against-humanity-arundhati-roy-on-indias-covid-catastrophe\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018We Are Witnessing a Crime against Humanity\u2019: Arundhati Roy on India\u2019s Covid Catastrophe"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s hard to convey the full depth and range of the trauma, the chaos and the indignity that people are being subjected to. Meanwhile, Modi and his allies are telling us not to complain.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Burying a person who died of Covid-19 in Gauhati, India April 2021
Photograph: Anupam Nath\/AP<\/p><\/div>\n

28 Apr 2021 – <\/em>D<\/span><\/span>uring a particularly polarising election campaign in the state of Uttar Pradesh in 2017, India\u2019s prime minister, Narendra Modi, waded into the fray to stir things up even further. From a public podium, he accused the state government \u2013 which was led by an opposition party \u2013 of pandering to the Muslim community by spending more on Muslim graveyards (kabristans<\/em>) than on Hindu cremation grounds (shamshans<\/em>). With his customary braying sneer, in which every taunt and barb rises to a high note mid-sentence before it falls away in a menacing echo, he stirred up the crowd. \u201cIf a kabristan is built in a village, a shamshan should also be constructed there,\u201d he said<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cShamshan! Shamshan!\u201d the mesmerised, adoring crowd echoed back.<\/p>\n

Perhaps he is happy now that the haunting image of the flames rising from the mass funerals in India\u2019s cremation grounds is making the front page of international newspapers. And that all the kabristans and shamshans in his country are working properly, in direct proportion to the populations they cater for, and far beyond their capacities.<\/p>\n

\u201cCan India, population 1.3 billion, be isolated?\u201d the Washington Post asked rhetorically in a recent editorial<\/a> about India\u2019s unfolding catastrophe and the difficulty of containing new, fast-spreading Covid variants within national borders. \u201cNot easily,\u201d it replied. It\u2019s unlikely this question was posed in quite the same way when the coronavirus was raging through the UK and Europe just a few months ago. But we in India have little right to take offence, given our prime minister\u2019s words<\/a> at the World Economic Forum in January this year.<\/p>\n

Modi spoke at a time when people in Europe and the US were suffering through the peak of the second wave of the pandemic. He had not one word of sympathy to offer, only a long, gloating boast about India\u2019s infrastructure and Covid-preparedness. I downloaded the speech because I fear that when history is rewritten by the Modi regime, as it soon will be, it might disappear, or become hard to find. Here are some priceless snippets:<\/p>\n

\u201cFriends, I have brought the message of confidence, positivity and hope from 1.3 billion Indians amid these times of apprehension \u2026 It was predicted that India would be the most affected country from corona all over the world. It was said that there would be a tsunami of corona infections in India, somebody said 700-800 million Indians would get infected while others said 2 million Indians would die.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFriends, it would not be advisable to judge India\u2019s success with that of another country. In a country which is home to 18% of the world population, that country has saved humanity from a big disaster by containing corona effectively.\u201d<\/p>\n

Modi the magician takes a bow for saving humanity by containing the coronavirus effectively. Now that it turns out that he has not contained it, can we complain about being viewed as though we are radioactive? That other countries\u2019 borders are being closed to us and flights are being cancelled? That we\u2019re being sealed in with our virus and our prime minister, along with all the sickness, the anti-science, the hatred and the idiocy that he, his party and its brand of politics represent?<\/p>\n

W<\/span><\/span>hen the first wave of Covid came to India and then subsided last year, the government and its supportive commentariat were triumphant. \u201cIndia isn\u2019t having a picnic,\u201d tweeted<\/a> Shekhar Gupta, the editor-in-chief of the online news site the Print. \u201cBut our drains aren\u2019t choked with bodies, hospitals aren\u2019t out of beds, nor crematoriums & graveyards out of wood or space. Too good to be true? Bring data if you disagree. Unless you think you\u2019re god.\u201d Leave aside the callous, disrespectful imagery \u2013 did we need a god to tell us that most pandemics have a second wave?<\/span><\/p>\n

This one was predicted, although its virulence has taken even scientists and virologists by surprise. So where is the Covid-specific infrastructure and the \u201cpeople\u2019s movement\u201d against the virus that Modi boasted about in his speech? Hospital beds are unavailable. Doctors and medical staff are at breaking point. Friends call with stories about wards with no staff and more dead patients than live ones. People are dying in hospital corridors, on roads and in their homes. Crematoriums in Delhi have run out of firewood. The forest department has had to give special permission for the felling of city trees<\/a>. Desperate people are using whatever kindling they can find. Parks and car parks are being turned into<\/a> cremation grounds. It\u2019s as if there\u2019s an invisible UFO parked in our skies, sucking the air out of our lungs. An air raid of a kind we\u2019ve never known.<\/p>\n

Oxygen is the new currency on India\u2019s morbid new stock exchange. Senior politicians, journalists, lawyers \u2013 India\u2019s elite \u2013 are on Twitter pleading for hospital beds and oxygen cylinders. The hidden market for cylinders is booming. Oxygen saturation machines and drugs are hard to come by.<\/p>\n

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