India saw highest level of religious violence during Covid-19: PEW report

NEW DELHI: India has witnessed and experienced the highest levels of religious hatred and violence during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. Among the 198 countries analyzed by the Washington DC-based think tank, India fared among the worst in religious hostilities during the pandemic.

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According to a new report by The Pew Research Center, India ranked the worst in the Social Hostilities Index in 2020 with a score of 9.4 out of 10, worse than its neighbors Pakistan (7.5) and Afghanistan (8.0). 

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The report by PEW analyzed data from a time when lockdowns and restrictions affected religious groups and found that a quarter of the countries it studied used physical means on “worship services and other religious gatherings” to impose these restrictions. This included arrests and jail time.

The report mentioned the Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) move to place 900 members of the Islamic group Tablighi Jamaat under quarantine after it held a religious congregation in Delhi in early 2020.

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The event renewed stigma against Muslims, triggering a wave of business boycotts and hate speech. Several cases were also filed against those who attended the congregation. 

The report also said that India was among the countries where pandemic-related killings of religious minorities took place in 2020.

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The PEW report also exposed religious prejudice of Modi regime, mentioning as to how it stopped scholarships for students of Islamic seminaries in classes 1-8. It says three months after BJP-ruled Uttar Pradesh state ordered a survey of Islamic seminaries in the state, the Modi government ordered the state to stop providing scholarships to students of Islamic seminaries enrolled in classes one to eight.

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Around 500,000 students of 16,558 seminaries in the state received scholarships last year. Teachers of the seminaries believe the move was triggered by the Hindu supremacist government’s disdain over scholarship benefits being offered only to students from minority communities.