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Disease, Stigma and a Culture of Profanity
Rooted in the stigmatisation of disease, our culture of profanity has wide-ranging social ramifications, including the potential to incite violence.
In a conversation with my cousin a few of months into the COVID-19 pandemic, I learnt that the Islamophobic propaganda of “corona jihad” had made so much of a dent in the communal harmony of his village that the Muslim and Hindu communities had started to boycott each other.
When 40 individuals who attended a congregation of an Islamic reformist organisation called Tablighi Jamaat had tested positive for the novel coronavirus, people were made to believe that members of the Islamic group were out to spread the virus in order to wreak havoc on the Hindu population. This nefarious propaganda, fanned largely by the right-wing Hindi media, had emboldened people to abuse and humiliate members of the Muslim community. And a systemic economic boycott ensued, not to mention heinous attacks on Muslims across the country.
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