Nearly a year ago, the Tablighi Jamaat controversy took over India’s media. Around 3,500 foreign nationals had visited India to attend the Tablighi Jamaat event at the Nizamuddin Markaz Mosque in Delhi.

With the lockdown being announced on March 24, 2020, several attendees had moved to different parts of the country to attend smaller gatherings in local mosques.
Around 960 foreign nationals were held at quarantine and in states like UP, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Karnataka, etc. were sent straight to prison.
There was an outpour of Anti-Muslim bigotry in much of Indian news media with this event where it ramped up its demonisation of the community.
For weeks, the attendees of the Tablighi Jamaat event were named the “super-spreaders” of COVID and in several cases, Maulana Mohammad Saad was called a terrorist and “the maulana of death”.
The Tablighis were bigotedly and unjustifiably blamed for aggravating the COVID situation in the country leading to egregious effects on many Muslims across the country.
On March 31 2020 during his news time show called “Bindaas Bol” Suresh Chavhanke of Sudharshan News called the Tablighis “human bombs carrying coronavirus” and proclaimed that what they did was, in fact, “corona jihad”.
OpIndia wrote several articles on how the attendees of the event had engaged in unlawful and unethical behaviour by spitting on people, attacking doctors and nurses, etc. All of these reports were later fact-checked as being fake news formulated to criminalise Muslims.
On his show, DNA, Zee News editor Sudhir Chaudhary, accused the Tablighi Jamaat of lying and betraying the whole nation. He also tweeted aerial images and videos of the Nizamuddin Markaz Mosque by making it look like the prime source of COVID cases in India.
Arnab Goswami of Republic TV asked whether this event was a conspiracy to turn Delhi into Italy and questioned the loyalty of the attendees to the nation.
Zee News came back into its communal frenzy on April 2 2020 when Aman Chopra, during his show Taal Thok Ke, crafted a new form of Jihad known as “spitting Jihad” which was aimed at targeting the attendees of the event.
Rahul Kanwal’s infamous sting on India Today, a channel that normally postures itself to be liberal, accused two Madarassas in Delhi in Noida of hiding their children in violation of lockdown and linking their teachers to the Tablighi Jamaat congregation.
He called this special investigation “The Madrassa Hotspot”. India Today also published a poster to analyse the COVID statistics in the country which was evidently loaded with communal symbols meant to demonize Muslims.
It’s nearly been a year since the media trail of the Tablighi Jamaat. Using the discourse of "COVID nationalism" dominant across the globe with a twist of home-grown Hindutva-oriented Islamophobia, this media trial went on for months.
Countrywide, there were cases of Muslims facing discrimination at the hands of their neighbours and government officials because of the numerous communally hate-filled stings and reports by the Indian Media.
In December 2020, Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Arun Kumar Garg acquitted the 36 remaining foreigners from 14 countries of all charges in the case which involved Section 3 of Epidemic Diseases Act, Sections 51/58 (1) of Disaster Management Act, 2005, and Sections 188/269 of the..
…Indian Penal Code.
A year on, in terms of the prejudiced origin stories of COVID in the country, not much has changed. Several media houses still stand by their narratives that the Tablighi Jamaat attendees were the source of the pandemic in the country.
Large-scale damage has already been done.

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This is a piece I've been thinking about for a long time. One of the most dominant policy ideas in Washington is that policy should, always and everywhere, move parents into paid labor. But what if that's wrong?

My reporting here convinced me that there's no large effect in either direction on labor force participation from child allowances. Canada has a bigger one than either Romney or Biden are considering, and more labor force participation among women.

But what if that wasn't true?

Forcing parents into low-wage, often exploitative, jobs by threatening them and their children with poverty may be counted as a success by some policymakers, but it’s a sign of a society that doesn’t value the most essential forms of labor.

The problem is in the very language we use. If I left my job as a New York Times columnist to care for my 2-year-old son, I’d be described as leaving the labor force. But as much as I adore him, there is no doubt I’d be working harder. I wouldn't have stopped working!

I tried to render conservative objections here fairly. I appreciate that @swinshi talked with me, and I'm sorry I couldn't include everything he said. I'll say I believe I used his strongest arguments, not more speculative ones, in the piece.
Two things can be true at once:
1. There is an issue with hostility some academics have faced on some issues
2. Another academic who himself uses threats of legal action to bully colleagues into silence is not a good faith champion of the free speech cause


I have kept quiet about Matthew's recent outpourings on here but as my estwhile co-author has now seen fit to portray me as an enabler of oppression I think I have a right to reply. So I will.

I consider Matthew to be a colleague and a friend, and we had a longstanding agreement not to engage in disputes on twitter. I disagree with much in the article @UOzkirimli wrote on his research in @openDemocracy but I strongly support his right to express such critical views

I therefore find it outrageous that Matthew saw fit to bully @openDemocracy with legal threats, seeking it seems to stifle criticism of his own work. Such behaviour is simply wrong, and completely inconsistent with an academic commitment to free speech.

I am not embroiling myself in the various other cases Matt lists because, unlike him, I think attention to the detail matters and I don't have time to research each of these cases in detail.

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