Government policies set the scene for it to grow

The argument

Proponents of this view locate the source of India's pandemic-era Islamophobia in the year that preceded the outbreak rather than in the outbreak itself. In the twelve months before the pandemic, they argue, an Islamophobic government campaign proved dangerously successful, and its apex came in December 2019 with the passing of the Citizenship Amendment Bill. The law allowed members of India's major religious groups who had immigrated to India before 2015 to become legal citizens. Islam is the second most popular religion in the country, yet Muslims were excluded from that list. The significance attached to the exclusion is less about the number of people denied a pathway than about what the omission communicated. A citizenship law is an official statement of who belongs, and singling out one religious community for exclusion from a benefit extended to every other is read here as the state itself drawing a line around the nation. Once that line has been drawn in law, everyday hostility towards Muslims no longer has to justify itself against the government's position, because it can present itself as consistent with it. On this reading, government actions have effectively sanctioned this kind of racist abuse, lending it a legitimacy it would not otherwise have had. That is why the argument treats the pandemic as an accelerant rather than a cause. Any Islamophobia the country is now experiencing stems from what came before; the prejudice did not have to be created, because the ground for it was prepared by the campaign that culminated in the Citizenship Amendment Bill. What the virus supplied was an occasion in which blame could be attached to an already-marked community, and a moment in which the responses to the pandemic were being placed under global scrutiny, making the resulting hostility visible in a way it had not been before.

Context

The Modi government has been widely criticised for introducing a series of Islamophobic policies since it came into power. Prior to the outbreak false statistics flooded the media, pushing for population controls to be introduced on Muslim citizens. These petitions are amassing support, with a "subtext [that] reflects a core belief of right-wing Hindu organisations: that Muslims are trying to "overtake" Hindus."

Premises

Counter-arguments

The situation has been politically charged for some time. The outbreak has not exacerbated this; tensions were already at crisis point when the outbreak began. In times of crisis people look to someone to blame, and government policies have perfectly established who this group is. Consequently, anti-Muslim sentiment has been legitimised.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The account of the Citizenship Amendment Act's exclusion of Muslims is accurate, but the premise dates the problem too narrowly. Communal tension in India long predates the twelve months described, so a campaign within that window cannot be the origin of what followed. [Rejecting P2] Saying that policy "sanctions" prejudice describes a climate rather than a mechanism. The premise does not distinguish between policy creating hostility and policy licensing hostility that already existed, and only the first would support the conclusion as stated. [Rejecting P3] If tensions were already at crisis point when the outbreak began, the pandemic supplied an occasion and a target for blame rather than aggravating the underlying condition. The argument's own wording — that coronavirus is "simply bringing those to the fore" — concedes increased visibility, which is weaker than the aggravation it concludes to.