Two events. Spaced across one year, one happened Mar 2020 and second in April 2021 (ongoing). Attendees of both failed to follow COVID protocol. Both can be considered as super-spreader events, along with many other super-spreader events (shouldn’t single them out) – I don’t think any detailed data analysis done or available on  impact of these events on the COVID infection numbers. Similarities stop there though.

It is little unfair to compare Tablighi from Mar 2020 to Haridwar Kumbhmela of April 2021. Tablighi happened when the information about COVID was very minimal, no restrictions were in place, we were still few days away from lockdown 1.0. Mistake they committed was not reaching out for help or inform the authorities when the lockdown came in place and they got stuck in a confined space with infected attendees. With Kumbhmela though, we had learnt a lot about COVID-19 in the last one year, we are in the middle of second wave with a variant that has high infectious rate and yet to hit the peak, and it is allowed to happen by the government with no enforcing of COVID protocol – with lakhs of devotees visiting daily.

What is blatantly different is the reaction from the governments, media, and major section of the population to these two events. How they are viewed differently by them. In the case of Tablighi, attendees were arrested, and cases filed against them. Media treated the event as if whole India got the infection because of this event. Attendees were called names and were shamed in debates. Reaction was extreme and there was no sense of proportion (Tablighi had few thousand attendees while Kumbhmela is in multiple millions). With Kumbhmela it was allowed to happen from April 1 2021 with all government permissions even as India is reeling under a second wave as I write this. Lakhs of devotees visit daily (millions have visited so far) and officials themselves have claimed it is hard to enforce COVID protocol – photographs confirm that and tests show thousands infected with the virus. Except for few print and online media outlets, from the rest reaction ranged from passive, gentle, restrained, to feeble. After some criticism, PM appealed to the attendees to make the coming days symbolic (this is a month-long event) around mid-April. CM of the state mentioned Maa Ganga will clean the virus. This is when in Bangalore we get fined for not wearing masks in public, crowd restrictions are in place for religious places and events (only rituals permitted no gatherings), marriages, and funerals (all right restrictions to be enforced and followed). Unlike Tablighi, no Kumbhmela attendees got arrested or cases filed against them for violating the protocol.

What explains the difference between the reaction to these two events? One treated with arrests and cases, and another with kid-gloves?  Yes, we all know the underlying reason. It is the elephant in the room and no one wants to acknowledge it. This is a classic case of seeing things through tinted glasses – biases, prejudices, and ideological filters. Tinted glasses corrupt the reasoning skills. Unless we start seeing things objectively removing the filters and leaving aside our tribal instincts, we will continue to be in this situation. Go by Science, reasoning, and humanism when it comes to public space (I would say even for private / personal life, but that will be too much to ask for) rather than clouded by collective beliefs and biases that don’t stand the scrutiny of science.

Two events. Blatantly different responses. What gives? Maybe one event is Children of Larger God…😔