Corona, communalism and class conflict – By Mani Shankar Aiyar

As in a time of war, the Covid – 19 pandemic should have united our country. Instead, the one – month lockdown has only aggravated communalism and class conflict.

The media’s premier godiwallah (lapdog) seized on the tragic midnight killing of two sadhus in Palghar, Maharashtra, to thunder, as if it were “breaking news”, that this country was 80 per cent Hindu and how it could tolerate the murder of two Hindu sants. This was despite the state government’s announcement that over a hundred suspected assailants – all Hindus – had been arrested.

Why, one must ask, has this incarnation of communalism not been outraged in similar incendiary terms at the numerous lynchings of Muslims in the last six years? Why, indeed, has his hero – the prime minister – done next to nothing about reining in the sangh parivar’s motormouths and youth gangs who terrify the minorities?