THE COVID-19 AND ITS IMPACT ON INDIAN SOCIAL LIFE: LIVED EXPERIENCES OF MUSLIMS AND DALIT COMMUNITY
Year 2022,
Volume: 3 Issue: 3, 113 - 128, 28.03.2022
Parvez Alam
,
Jawed Akhatar
Abstract
The coronavirus has changed the social fabric of many societies. It came with so many consequences in the life of people which cannot be described without taking into account the loss of life; trauma and psychological distress people are going through in their everyday life. The initial days of uncertainty and unpredictability in the unruly behavior of virus created the doomsday kind of situation for people and authorities, which has been mitigated gradually with the introduction of vaccines and booster doses and regimen of other combination of medicines. Yet people are into rumour spreading through social media platforms and there are doubters who are yet to believe the presence of coronavirus. This paper is an attempt to explain and understand the impact of coronavirus on Indian social life. One of the ways of studying Indian society is to bring in the phenomenological and political anthropology as a methodological tool to unravel the intricacies, social cleavages and the fault lines prevailing in the everyday life of people. By applying these methodological tools one can also understand the complexity it brings into social, political and economic life of an individual and community.
References
- Agamben, Giorgio. (2005). The State of Exception in Norris, Andrew (Ed.), Politics, Metaphysics, and Death: Essays on Giorgio Agamben's Homo Sacer (284-298), New York: Duke University Press .
- Ahmed, Hilal. (2021). The contemporary moment of Indian democracy in deSouza, Peter Ronald., Alam, Mohd. Sanjeer., and Hilal Ahmad (Eds.) Companion to Indian Democracy: Resilience, Fragility, Ambience, New Delhi: Routledge.
- Ambedkar, B.R. (1936). Annihilation of Caste. https://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/projects/mmt/ambedkar/web/readings/aoc_print_2004.pdf (Access: 07.01.2022).
- Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project. (2020). A Great and Sudden Change: The Global Political Violence Landscape Before and After the COVID-19 Pandemic. http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep25623 (Access: 10.02.2022).
- Balibar, Étienne (2009). Violence and Civility: On the Limits of Political Anthropology, Differences, 20(2-3): 9–35.
- Beck, Ulrich. (1992). Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. Mark Ritter (Trans.), London: Sage Publications.
- Bhattacharya, Sanjay. (2020). The Social Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic, ORF Issue Brief No. 406, https://www.orfonline.org/research/the-social-impact-of-the-covid19-pandemic/?amp (Access: 11.02.2022).
- Brass, Paul, R. (2003). The Production of Hindu-Muslim Violence in Contemporary India, Seattle, London: University of Washington Press.
- Calhoun, Craig (Ed.) (1992). Habermas and the Public Sphere, Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
- Chaturvedi K, Vishwakarma., DK, Singh N. (2021). COVID-19 and its impact on education, social life and mental health of students: A survey, Child and Youth Services Review, 10.1016/j.childyouth.2020.105866 (Access: 09.02.2022).
- Dumont, Louis. (1980). Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its Implications, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- Ellis-Petersen, Hannah. (2020, January 3). ‘We are not safe': India's Muslims tell of wave of police brutality. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/03/we-are-not-safe-indias-muslims-tell-of-wave-of-police-brutality (Access: 09.02.2022).
- Engineer, Asghar Ali. (2002). Gujarat Riots in the Light of the History of Communal Violence, Economic and Political Weekly, 37(50): 5047-5054.
- Foucault, Michel. (1977). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Alan Sheridan (Trans.), New York: Random House.
- George, Goldy M. (2020, May 18). COVID-19 Lockdown and the Pandemic of Caste. https://countercurrents.org/2020/05/covid-19-lockdown-and-the-pandemic-of-caste/ (Access: 07.02.2022).
- Gettleman, Jeffrey., Yasir, Sameer., Raj, Suhasini. et al. (2020, March 12). How Delhi’s Police Turned Against Muslims. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/12/world/asia/india-police-muslims.html (Access: 07.02.2022).
- Ghosh, Aritra., Nundy, Srijita., Mallick, Tapas K. (2020). How India is dealing with COVID-19 pandemic, Sensors International, 1(100021), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sintl.2020.100021 (Access: 07.02.2022).
- Human Rights Watch Report (2020, April 09). “Shoot the Traitors”: Discrimination against Muslims under India’s New Citizenship Policy. https://www.hrw.org/report/2020/04/09/shoot-traitors/discrimination-against-muslims-under-indias-new-citizenship-policy (Access: 10.02.2022).
- Jaffrelot, Christophe. (1996). The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics, C. Hurst & Co. Publishers.
- Khilnani, Sunil. (2016, 1997). The Idea of India, New Delhi: India Penguin.
- Kohli, Atul (Ed.) (1990). India's Democracy: An Analysis of Changing State-Society Relations, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
- Kohli, Atul. (1990). Democracy and Discontent: India's Growing Crisis of Governability, New York: Cambridge University Press.
- Lorenzini, Daniele. (2016). Foucault, Regimes of Truth and the Making of the Subject in Cremonesi, Laura., Irrera, Orazio., Lorenzini, Daniele., Martina, Tazzioli (Ed.), Foucault and the Making of Subjects (63-75), London: Rowman & Littlefield International.
- Noorani, AG. (2014, December 26). Muslims and police http://www.frontline.in/the-nation/muslims-and-police/article6672575.ece (Access: 06.02.2022).
- Pandey, Geeta. (2021, September 2). Beaten and humiliated by Hindu mobs for being a Muslim in India. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-58406194 (Access: 06.02.2022).
- Philpott, Daniel (1995). Sovereignty: An Introduction and Brief History, Journal of International Affairs, 48(2): 353–68.
- Quraishi, Humra. (2020, March 19). Delhi violence: We need to ask some difficult questions regarding composition of security forces. https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/opinion/delhi-violence-we-need-to-ask-some-difficult-questions-regarding-composition-of-security-forces (Access: 31.01.2022).
- Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. (2012, 22 October). Vision and Mission of RSS. https://www.rss.org/Encyc/2012/10/22/rss-vision-and-mission.html (Access: 12.02.2022).
- Rosenbaum, H. Jon, Sederberg, Peter C. (1974). Vigilantism: An Analysis of Establishment Violence, Comparative Politics, 6(4): 541–70.
- Roy Chowdhury, Debashish. (2021, October 4). Is India Headed for an Anti-Muslim Genocide?. https://time.com/6103284/india-hindu-supremacy-extremism-genocide-bjp-modi/ (Access: 12.02.2022).
- Rudolph Lloyd I., Rudolph, Susanne Hoeber. (1987). In Pursuit of Lakshmi: The Political Economy of the Indian State, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- Saini, Ajay. (2021, June 1). The pandemic, a mirror for Indian society, https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/the-pandemic-a-mirror-for-indian-society-7339949/lite/ (Access: 03.02.2022).
- Savarkar, Vinayak Damodar. (1925 1969). Hindutva; who is a Hindu?, Bombay: Veer Savarkar Prakashan.
- Schutz, Alfred. (1967). The Phenomenology of Social World, Vienna: Northwestern University Press.
- Sharma, Ashutosh. (2021, November 23). Anti-Farm Law Protest: A Detailed Account of the Year Long Agitation. https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/the-end-of-the-beginning/401768 (Access: 10.02.2022).
- Sikandar, Zainab. (2020, April 13). Indian media is waging a holy war against Muslims. It acts like hyenas. https://theprint.in/opinion/indian-media-waging-holy-war-against-muslims-hyenas/400407/ (Access: 10.02.2022).
- Teltumbde, Anand (2018). The New Normal in Modi’s ‘New India’, Economic and Political Weekly, 53(31):10-11.
- THE CITIZENSHIP (AMENDMENT) ACT, 2019 NO. 47 OF 2019 [12th December, 2019.] An Act further to amend the Citizenship Act, 1955. https://egazette.nic.in/WriteReadData/2019/214646.pdf (Access: 10.02.2022).
- The Constitution of India, 1950, Art. 17. https://www.constitutionofindia.net/constitution_of_india (Access: 15.02.2022).
- Tiwary, Deeptiman. (2020, August 31). NCRB data: Higher share of Dalits, tribals, Muslims in prison than numbers outside. https://indianexpress.com/article/india/ncrb-data-higher-share-of-dalits-tribals-muslims-in-prison-than-numbers-outside-6575446/ (Access: 07.02.2022).
- Urbinati, Nadia. (2014.) Democracy Disfigured: Opinion, Truth, and the People, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
Varshney, Deepak., Kumar,Anjani., Mishra, Ashok K. et al. (2021). India's COVID-19 social assistance package and its impact on the agriculture sector, Agricultural Systems, 189(103049) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2021.103049 (Access: 12.02.2022).
- Vohra, Anchal. (2020, March 3). India’s Muslims Accuse Police of Targeted Killings. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/03/03/india-muslims-accuse-police-targeted-killings-meerut-caa-protests/ (Access: 08.02.2022).
THE COVID-19 AND ITS IMPACT ON INDIAN SOCIAL LIFE: LIVED EXPERIENCES OF MUSLIMS AND DALIT COMMUNITY
Year 2022,
Volume: 3 Issue: 3, 113 - 128, 28.03.2022
Parvez Alam
,
Jawed Akhatar
Abstract
The coronavirus has changed the social fabric of many societies. It came with so many consequences in the life of people which cannot be described without taking into account the loss of life; trauma and psychological distress people are going through in their everyday life. The initial days of uncertainty and unpredictability in the unruly behavior of virus created the doomsday kind of situation for people and authorities, which has been mitigated gradually with the introduction of vaccines and booster doses and regimen of other combination of medicines. Yet people are into rumour spreading through social media platforms and there are doubters who are yet to believe the presence of coronavirus. This paper is an attempt to explain and understand the impact of coronavirus on Indian social life. One of the ways of studying Indian society is to bring in the phenomenological and political anthropology as a methodological tool to unravel the intricacies, social cleavages and the fault lines prevailing in the everyday life of people. By applying these methodological tools one can also understand the complexity it brings into social, political and economic life of an individual and community.
References
- Agamben, Giorgio. (2005). The State of Exception in Norris, Andrew (Ed.), Politics, Metaphysics, and Death: Essays on Giorgio Agamben's Homo Sacer (284-298), New York: Duke University Press .
- Ahmed, Hilal. (2021). The contemporary moment of Indian democracy in deSouza, Peter Ronald., Alam, Mohd. Sanjeer., and Hilal Ahmad (Eds.) Companion to Indian Democracy: Resilience, Fragility, Ambience, New Delhi: Routledge.
- Ambedkar, B.R. (1936). Annihilation of Caste. https://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/projects/mmt/ambedkar/web/readings/aoc_print_2004.pdf (Access: 07.01.2022).
- Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project. (2020). A Great and Sudden Change: The Global Political Violence Landscape Before and After the COVID-19 Pandemic. http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep25623 (Access: 10.02.2022).
- Balibar, Étienne (2009). Violence and Civility: On the Limits of Political Anthropology, Differences, 20(2-3): 9–35.
- Beck, Ulrich. (1992). Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. Mark Ritter (Trans.), London: Sage Publications.
- Bhattacharya, Sanjay. (2020). The Social Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic, ORF Issue Brief No. 406, https://www.orfonline.org/research/the-social-impact-of-the-covid19-pandemic/?amp (Access: 11.02.2022).
- Brass, Paul, R. (2003). The Production of Hindu-Muslim Violence in Contemporary India, Seattle, London: University of Washington Press.
- Calhoun, Craig (Ed.) (1992). Habermas and the Public Sphere, Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
- Chaturvedi K, Vishwakarma., DK, Singh N. (2021). COVID-19 and its impact on education, social life and mental health of students: A survey, Child and Youth Services Review, 10.1016/j.childyouth.2020.105866 (Access: 09.02.2022).
- Dumont, Louis. (1980). Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its Implications, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- Ellis-Petersen, Hannah. (2020, January 3). ‘We are not safe': India's Muslims tell of wave of police brutality. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/03/we-are-not-safe-indias-muslims-tell-of-wave-of-police-brutality (Access: 09.02.2022).
- Engineer, Asghar Ali. (2002). Gujarat Riots in the Light of the History of Communal Violence, Economic and Political Weekly, 37(50): 5047-5054.
- Foucault, Michel. (1977). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Alan Sheridan (Trans.), New York: Random House.
- George, Goldy M. (2020, May 18). COVID-19 Lockdown and the Pandemic of Caste. https://countercurrents.org/2020/05/covid-19-lockdown-and-the-pandemic-of-caste/ (Access: 07.02.2022).
- Gettleman, Jeffrey., Yasir, Sameer., Raj, Suhasini. et al. (2020, March 12). How Delhi’s Police Turned Against Muslims. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/12/world/asia/india-police-muslims.html (Access: 07.02.2022).
- Ghosh, Aritra., Nundy, Srijita., Mallick, Tapas K. (2020). How India is dealing with COVID-19 pandemic, Sensors International, 1(100021), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sintl.2020.100021 (Access: 07.02.2022).
- Human Rights Watch Report (2020, April 09). “Shoot the Traitors”: Discrimination against Muslims under India’s New Citizenship Policy. https://www.hrw.org/report/2020/04/09/shoot-traitors/discrimination-against-muslims-under-indias-new-citizenship-policy (Access: 10.02.2022).
- Jaffrelot, Christophe. (1996). The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics, C. Hurst & Co. Publishers.
- Khilnani, Sunil. (2016, 1997). The Idea of India, New Delhi: India Penguin.
- Kohli, Atul (Ed.) (1990). India's Democracy: An Analysis of Changing State-Society Relations, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
- Kohli, Atul. (1990). Democracy and Discontent: India's Growing Crisis of Governability, New York: Cambridge University Press.
- Lorenzini, Daniele. (2016). Foucault, Regimes of Truth and the Making of the Subject in Cremonesi, Laura., Irrera, Orazio., Lorenzini, Daniele., Martina, Tazzioli (Ed.), Foucault and the Making of Subjects (63-75), London: Rowman & Littlefield International.
- Noorani, AG. (2014, December 26). Muslims and police http://www.frontline.in/the-nation/muslims-and-police/article6672575.ece (Access: 06.02.2022).
- Pandey, Geeta. (2021, September 2). Beaten and humiliated by Hindu mobs for being a Muslim in India. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-58406194 (Access: 06.02.2022).
- Philpott, Daniel (1995). Sovereignty: An Introduction and Brief History, Journal of International Affairs, 48(2): 353–68.
- Quraishi, Humra. (2020, March 19). Delhi violence: We need to ask some difficult questions regarding composition of security forces. https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/opinion/delhi-violence-we-need-to-ask-some-difficult-questions-regarding-composition-of-security-forces (Access: 31.01.2022).
- Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. (2012, 22 October). Vision and Mission of RSS. https://www.rss.org/Encyc/2012/10/22/rss-vision-and-mission.html (Access: 12.02.2022).
- Rosenbaum, H. Jon, Sederberg, Peter C. (1974). Vigilantism: An Analysis of Establishment Violence, Comparative Politics, 6(4): 541–70.
- Roy Chowdhury, Debashish. (2021, October 4). Is India Headed for an Anti-Muslim Genocide?. https://time.com/6103284/india-hindu-supremacy-extremism-genocide-bjp-modi/ (Access: 12.02.2022).
- Rudolph Lloyd I., Rudolph, Susanne Hoeber. (1987). In Pursuit of Lakshmi: The Political Economy of the Indian State, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- Saini, Ajay. (2021, June 1). The pandemic, a mirror for Indian society, https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/the-pandemic-a-mirror-for-indian-society-7339949/lite/ (Access: 03.02.2022).
- Savarkar, Vinayak Damodar. (1925 1969). Hindutva; who is a Hindu?, Bombay: Veer Savarkar Prakashan.
- Schutz, Alfred. (1967). The Phenomenology of Social World, Vienna: Northwestern University Press.
- Sharma, Ashutosh. (2021, November 23). Anti-Farm Law Protest: A Detailed Account of the Year Long Agitation. https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/the-end-of-the-beginning/401768 (Access: 10.02.2022).
- Sikandar, Zainab. (2020, April 13). Indian media is waging a holy war against Muslims. It acts like hyenas. https://theprint.in/opinion/indian-media-waging-holy-war-against-muslims-hyenas/400407/ (Access: 10.02.2022).
- Teltumbde, Anand (2018). The New Normal in Modi’s ‘New India’, Economic and Political Weekly, 53(31):10-11.
- THE CITIZENSHIP (AMENDMENT) ACT, 2019 NO. 47 OF 2019 [12th December, 2019.] An Act further to amend the Citizenship Act, 1955. https://egazette.nic.in/WriteReadData/2019/214646.pdf (Access: 10.02.2022).
- The Constitution of India, 1950, Art. 17. https://www.constitutionofindia.net/constitution_of_india (Access: 15.02.2022).
- Tiwary, Deeptiman. (2020, August 31). NCRB data: Higher share of Dalits, tribals, Muslims in prison than numbers outside. https://indianexpress.com/article/india/ncrb-data-higher-share-of-dalits-tribals-muslims-in-prison-than-numbers-outside-6575446/ (Access: 07.02.2022).
- Urbinati, Nadia. (2014.) Democracy Disfigured: Opinion, Truth, and the People, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
Varshney, Deepak., Kumar,Anjani., Mishra, Ashok K. et al. (2021). India's COVID-19 social assistance package and its impact on the agriculture sector, Agricultural Systems, 189(103049) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2021.103049 (Access: 12.02.2022).
- Vohra, Anchal. (2020, March 3). India’s Muslims Accuse Police of Targeted Killings. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/03/03/india-muslims-accuse-police-targeted-killings-meerut-caa-protests/ (Access: 08.02.2022).