India Saw Highest Communal Rift During COVID-19 Pandemic: Pew study

India was one of the few countries that witnessed religious hostilities in the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, according to a report by the US think-tank Pew Research Center on Tuesday.

In 2020, India had the highest rate of social tensions along religious lines globally. The rise in hostilities in the first year of the pandemic year also reflects, somewhat, in India’s official data.

India’s Social Hostilities Index (SHI) during the pandemic year was worse than its neighbouring countries Pakistan and Afghanistan at 9.4 out of a maximum possible score of 10. It saw a further rise in its own index value for 2019, the report said. The report has covered as many as 198 nations.

India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Egypt and Bangladesh were among the most populus countries that had “very high” social hostilities involving religion, the Pew data showed.

However, India fared much better on a second index: the Government Restrictions Index (GRI), which index at laws, policies and state actions restricting religious beliefs and practices.

With a score of 9.3, China ranked the worst, while India’s rank at 34 was enough to categorize it among nations with “high” levels of such government restrictions.

The report’s lead author, Samirah Majumdar told Mint, “While there may be correlations between countries with high social hostilities as well as government restrictions on religion, in countries like China, tight government control over religion means there is little space for social hostilities to bubble over.”

India was one of just four countries in the world that saw pandemic-related social hostilities against religious groups involving physical violence or vandalism by private individuals or organizations, according to the report which also looked at the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on religious persecution in 2020. Argentina, Italy and the US were among the other nations.

The report stated that there were multiple reports of Muslims being attacked after being accused of spreading the coronavirus in India.

“India was also among the countries in which private individuals or organizations linked the spread of the coronavirus to religious groups,” the report added, citing the circulation of Islamophobic hashtags such as “Corona Jihad”.

2020, however, was not India’s worst year on either index. The worst year with respect to social hostilities was in 2016, and on government restrictions was in 2018.

(With inputs from Mint)