Activist Arundhati Roy says India’s treatment of Muslims during pandemic is almost ‘genocidal’

Indian author and activist Arundhati Roy said that the Indian government is trying to instigate communal rifts as it is exploiting the coronavirus issue against its minority Muslim community, according to a DW report.

The Ministry of Happiness author said that "the situation is approaching genocidal."

She told the foreign publication that the coronavirus pandemic has laid bare the facet of India that ‘all of us knew’.

"We are suffering, not just from COVID, but from a crisis of hatred, from a crisis of hunger,” she said, adding that the world needs to keep its eyes on the matter of anti-Muslim hatred in India.

Linking the fresh wave of singling out Muslims during the pandemic to the recent Delhi riots, she said that it began with people protesting against the anti-Muslim citizenship law.

She continued that under the guise of COVID-19, the Hindu nationalist government is arresting young students, fighting cases against lawyers, media personnel, activists and intellectuals.

Roy said that the current wave of vitriol against Muslims is tantamount to the one by Nazis during the Holocaust.

According to an earlier Reuters report, the coronavirus pandemic has come as a new form of misery for the already-beleaguered Muslim community in India, who now have to face persecution in the name of quarantine and isolation.

The report said the coronavirus has also exacerbated festering divisions between the country's Hindus and its sizable Muslim minority, many of whom have seen their livelihoods threatened by the establishment of quarantine zones in densely-packed areas.