New Delhi: Nizamuddin, a crowded bustling hamlet that grew around Sufi saint Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya’s (1238-1325) final resting place in south Delhi, is occupying the nation’s centre-stage like never before. A building near the saint’s ‘dargah’ has now become the Ground Zero of the dreaded COVID-19 in India.
Bit by bit, linkages and connections are unraveling of how the extremely contagious novel coronavirus may have possibly travelled from the international Tabhleeghi Jamaat (TJ) congregations from Malaysia and Pakistan to Nizamuddin, the world headquarters of the orthodox Sunni Islamic sect that is an offshoot of the hanafi school of Islamic thought.
Ironically the TJ, a brand of contemporary concept of dawah that originated in 1926 in Haryana’s Mewat region, is quite the anti-thesis of what the Sufi saint, an embodiment of inclusivity, stood for.
On Monday, Delhi police rounded up hundreds of TJ members from the ‘markaz’ (institutional centre) located near the Banglewali mosque in the Nizamuddin area for testing and consequent treatment or quarantining as the case may be. Incidentally, 24 have tested positive till now. There is a very strong likelihood that the number of cases will see a sharp spike.
Read: How religious gathering in Delhi led to COVID-19 spread in India
Let us consider the facts…
MALAYSIA
From February 27-March 1, 2020, nearly 16,000 TJ members, including hundreds from foreign countries, got together at Sri Petaling Mosque (Masjid Jamek) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
While a majority of the about 700 who tested positive in Malaysia for COVID 19 have been linked to the TJ gathering, nations like Singapore, Brunei, Cambodia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam have already reported cases of infections in their nationals directly or indirectly linked to the gathering.
PAKISTAN
From March 11-15, 2020, about 1,200 Tabhleeghis including more than 500 from 80 different countries got together in another global meet at Pakistan’s Raiwind, near Lahore in Punjab province. This was done in blatant violation of the Punjab provincial government’s orders to cancel their event in the backdrop of the virus scare.
Many of the Pakistani and foreign Tabhleeghis slept together on the mosque floor after it rained in the night at Raiwind. Interestingly, many Indian Tabhleeghis also went for the Raiwind meet.
The fact that the virus may have spread there is to state the obvious.
On Sunday, 27 TJ members of the 35 screened at the Tableeghi Markaz in Raiwind tested COVID 2019.
In a tweet, the deputy commissioner of Islamabad, Muhammad Hamza Shafqaat, accused a group of five Tabhleeghi preachers from Kyrgyzstan who developed COVID 2019 positive symptoms of criminal act after they stayed in a mosque in Islamabad after attending the Raiwind meet fully aware that they were carrying the virus.
Pakistan has till now reported about 1,870 positive cases of which 658 are from Punjab and 627 are from Sindh. After Punjab, Sindh had sent in the most TJ members for the Raiwind meet.
Read: Know all about Tablighi Jamaat- the epicenter of COVID-19 spread in India
NIZAMUDDIN, DELHI
The global TJ headquarters at Nizamuddin organizes several such gathering throughout the year where Indian Tabhleeghis and foreign TJ members attend.
Just a few days before Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s nationwide “lockout” announcement was made on March 23, till March 18, a major TJ event had taken place that was attended by about 1,830 members of whom 281 were foreigners, many of whom had misused the tourist visa to circumvent the visa restriction to stay on for the religious meet.
But it was well in violation of Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal’s March 16 announcement prohibiting religious, social, political gatherings of more than 50 people.
Besides the foreigners, there were TJ members from all across the country with the list topped by Tamil Nadu with 501 members, Assam with 216 members, and Uttar Pradesh with 156 members.
Stating that the government had a list of those who has returned from the Nizamuddin TJ meet, Assam’s heath minister Himanta Biswa Sarma tweeted on Tuesday that those “who were near hotspot of Tablighi Jamaat at Nizamuddin Dargarh” will be acted upon “in best possible manner to quarantine all of them, as and when they reach Assam or those who may have reached”.
The TJ holds several congregations all across the world especially in south and south-east Asia. After each such gathering, the members fan out worldwide in preaching missions that have modules of three-days, 40 days and four months.
The problem now is that most of the TJ members who attended the event have already spread out to their native places or to other places to preach. Veritably, this single event may turn the fight against the deadly virus to be steep, costly and of overwhelming odds for the government.
