By Saaransh Mishra
The Central Government has been issuing elaborate guidelines for the phased reopening of India’s economy following a prolonged period of complete lockdown across the country. In the first phase, referred to as Unlock-1, the Centre decided to reopen shopping malls, restaurants as well as religious places outside containment zones, albeit with a tremendous amount of precaution. While the move to reopen the former two is justifiable in congruence with the vision to push India’s crumbling economy back on track, the latter has raised multiple eyebrows from an epidemiological point of view.
This decision came in the month of June when the infections were rising at an alarming intensity, with the doubling rate at 18 days. The reopening came right as India recorded its biggest one-day jump in cases. There was also an adequate number of precedents to indicate the counterproductivity of this decision. The Tablighi Jamaat congregation turned out to be a catastrophic ‘super-spreader’ after hundreds of congregants tested positive for the virus. Similarly, 17 people in Ganjam district of Odisha (the most affected district in the State) had been arrested in March for taking out a procession in contravention of lockdown rules. Hundreds were also arrested after attending a Temple Festival in Karnataka’s Covid Hotspot, Kalburgi, in April. Despite these precedents and the Standard Operating procedures (SOPs) mandating sanitization and social distancing to avoid the perils of mass gatherings, devotees inevitably trickled down to offer their prayers after having been deprived for about two and a half months.
The reopening of religious places meant that some of the most prominent temples in India like the famous hill shrine of Lord Venkateswara in Tirupati opened too. Unlike the 60,000 visitors that the temple sees daily, devotees approached the temple by hundreds. All necessary precautions were taken, the shrine’s employees wore full protective gear, and rituals that could possibly exacerbate chances of infections were prohibited. In the month of June itself, the grand Rath Yatra took place in Odisha after the Chief Justice of India reversed his own decision within a couple of days. In line with the directives issued by the apex court, all 1,143 functionaries involved in the rituals were tested, and concerningly one functionary did positive and was left out of the celebration. While the Rath Yatra did not turn into a nightmare, considering no spike in infections was attributed to the event per se, 140 employees at the Tirupati temple have already tested positive as on 17th of July. Yet, the Chairperson of the Shrine’s Board, YV Subba Reddy, said that there was no evidence that the devotees were getting infected and thus, the temple would continue to remain open for visitors.
The aforementioned cases raise extremely pertinent questions about religious sentiments taking precedence over public health safety. Was it necessary for the Centre to allow the opening of places of worship with the hope that only precautions would contain infections? Despite various previous incidents where worshippers tended to flout lockdown guidelines, this move by the government to open up places of worship seems extremely premature, said Jugal Kishore, the Head of community medicine at Delhi’s Safdarjung Hospital. The decision has been met with scepticism by health and policy experts across India and rightly so. Even though several states have decided not to allow the reopening of religious places, the general directive by the Central Government appears to be a failure on the policy front, given the urgent attention that the economy requires and rising infections would only jeopardize that. Notwithstanding the precautionary measures put in place, with India being home to a sizable number of religious adherents, the congregations in these religious places are still large enough to heighten the already daunting situation that exists in the country. In light of the prevailing situation, there is an urgent need to act more responsibly and reassess priorities.
Sources:
The Wire
Washington Post
The Hindu
News 18