In India, Coronavirus Fans Religious Hatred

NEW DELHI — After India’s health ministry repeatedly blamed an Islamic seminary for spreading the coronavirus — and governing party officials spoke of “human bombs” and “corona jihad” — a spree of anti-Muslim attacks has broken out across the country. In Punjab State, loudspeakers at Sikh temples broadcast messages telling people not to buy milk from Muslim dairy farmers because it was infected with coronavirus. Indian officials estimated last week that more than a third of the country’s cases were connected to the group, Tablighi Jamaat, which held a huge gathering of preachers in India in March. The neighborhood resembles one near a bus depot or a port; the seminary was the center of the economy, and all around it stand money changers, guesthouses, travel agencies and gift shops, catering to the Muslim missionaries who would flow through here. Mohammed Haider, who runs a milk stall, one of the few businesses allowed to stay open under India’s coronavirus lockdown, said, “Fear is staring at us, from everywhere.’’ Tahir Iqbal, a recent university graduate from Kashmir, was among the 4,000 or so gathered at the Tablighi Jamaat headquarters in early March for missionary training. On March 31, the Delhi authorities filed a criminal case against Maulana Kandhalvi for “deliberately, willfully, negligently and malignantly” putting the public’s health at risk. Though the nationwide total remains relatively low, many fear the highly contagious virus could rip through crowded urban areas, overwhelming India’s already beleaguered public hospitals. Some Hindu nationalist politicians and their supporters seized on the situation, eagerly piling on the anti-Muslim sentiments that have been building in recent years under Mr. Modi’s government. Raj Thackeray, the leader of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, a far-right nationalist party, told local news outlets that Tablighi Jamaat members “should be shot.”