Decoding Delhi Nizamuddin Markaz and COVID India Issue

There are a lot of supporting and opposing sides of this story that are being posted all over the news & social media platforms for the past 10 days after the COVID outbreak that are related to Delhi Nizamuddin Markaz and Tablighi Jamat in India.

Did Nizamuddin Markaz import COVID-19 to India..? Who are all should be held responsible for this entire mess? Can we give a clean chit to Markaz? Who are these Tablighi Jamat folks?  Are they for conversion and preaching extremism?   

Let me write my take on this story. 

Tablighi Jamat people wait outside Nizamuddin Markaz

Tablighi Jamath - Who are they..?

Tablighi Jamath (TJ) is a non-political, century-old Islamic religious reformative and missionary movement that was established in India in 1927 and currently has 150 to 200 million followers who are present in 200 countries. The objective of this movement is to make the Muslims, to live the perfect Muslim life that is preached by Islam and live away from committing any sins, in simple terms spiritual reformation of oneness and preach the same (“only”) to other Muslims, which is called “Dawah”. I emphasize this point again.. they meet, preach and put spiritual efforts only and 100% to Muslims because their objective is the spiritual reformation of Muslims. The followers of this movement will mostly be more devout.

No membership cards, no donations, no elections, no PR work and no participation in any of the modern-day democratic protests and no politics or current world problems related speeches during their sermons.  All their spiritual self-reformation and Dawa travel expenses will be borne by the individuals and all their modern life problems will be posted only to God Almighty.  

Such self-reformation and dawa travels of Tablighi Jamat followers have created a huge impact and positive changes to the Muslim community around the world.. so it's benefits automatically reflected in the societies they live in. 

What is Nizamuddin Markaz..? 

Delhi Nizamuddin Markaz (Center) is the international Head Quarters of the TJ followers from all over the world. This center hosts at least 1500 to 2000 followers from different parts of the world and India throughout the year, ie. 24 X 7 X 365. These travelers come to the Markaz first, they get their routes and then they travel.  

All such details about Tabligi Jamath and Nizamuddin Markaz are well known by all power centers of Central and Delhi govts., whoever ruled so far and by almost all Delhiites since this center has been there for a century. By knowing such peaceful objectives of this movement..none of the govts. of the center & Delhi ever wanted to disturb them. And apart from that, the travel and related industries getting a lot of businesses due to these travelers visiting throughout the year is another reason why no govts wanted to disturb the Markaz.

Ex-Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao's condolence letter on the demise of ex-Chief of Markaz in 1995 

Did Nizamuddin Markaz import COVID19 to India..?

Markaz doesn’t run its own flights and airports to bring its foreign visitors from their countries. Like many other foreigners and Indians who visited India during this time, visitors of the Markaz also entered the country in the same way after passing all airport screenings. Another important fact to mention here is that all these trips are planned well ahead, at least a year before since these travelers have to plan their annual leaves and make arrangements for their jobs/businesses because these dawah trips usually will last for 40 days or 4 months or 5 months.   

Then.. how did infected people enter the country?

Until March 13th, India was only doing the thermal screening, which is just checking COVID patients' symptoms for incoming passengers. Only after this date. we have started quarantining all incoming passengers regardless of whether they show symptoms or not.  That too we didn't start for all the countries but set by set.

The following are the dates of different announcements on this part:

March 13 - Quarantine all passengers from China, Italy, Iran, South Korea, France, Spain and Germany.    

March 16 - Quarantining extended to UAE, Kuwait, Qatar

March 17 - All incoming passengers from Afghan, Philipines, Malaysia are banned

March 18 - All incomings from EU countries, UK, Turkey are banned

March 21 - Compulsory quarantined extended to all international incoming passengers.

March 26 - All international flights canceled

So.. in this case, the asymptomatic COVID patients, that is, those who are infected but don't show any symptoms, can't be identified through thermal screening and they were allowed to enter the country until March 13th at least.  

So before we start quarantining all incoming passengers, many of asymptomatic patients who carry the virus have already entered and started infecting others.  All around the world, 10 to 50% of the cases are spread by asymptotic patients.

So.. who should be blamed here for infected people being in Markaz ... Markaz or Govt..?

We can also raise a question here is that why did Markaz allow foreigners to visit at this pandemic time? 

First of all, not all foreigners have visited Markaz only during this time. Many of them are already available in our country since as I said it is a routine process and people visit throughout the year for their 40 days / 4 months / 5 months trips.  Secondly, for those who arrived in this time, since all their trips are planned and tickets were booked a long time ago maybe Markaz would have thought that Govt would do all necessary screenings and allow only non-infected visitors and they might have not been aware of these asymptomatic and symptomatic theories in those early times as same as Indian govt and many of us. Even our Health Ministry said, "Corona is not a health emergency" just a month ago (13th March).

So.. If the Indian govt had started quarantining all incoming passengers much earlier than when it happened, then a lot of infectious patients would have not arrived in the country.  Even BJP leader and Rajyasabha MP Subramanian Swamy has questioned it. 

Can we give a clean chit to Markaz?

Delhi Government has accused Markaz and filed an FIR for violating Delhi govt. notifications that were issued banning the conferences. 

But Markaz has defended their actions, saying their conferences were held before such notifications and people could not be moved out of Markaz due to the continuation of lockdowns from the center and state govts.

Whether Markaz did violate or not should be thoroughly investigated and necessary actions to be taken if their violations have been proven.

Even some TJ followers say Markaz would have avoided at least the last conference.

Based on that I do have some questions and concerns over Markaz's actions on conducting conferences. 

Though it is true as Markaz claims that these programs were planned a year before and all arrangements were made, Couldn't they have stopped conducting at least their last conferences upon seeing the pandemic threat and understanding the necessity of social distancing..??  

A historic and century-old Markaz that has been working for some noble purposes and which has millions of followers all around the world should have been more careful and acted in a more responsible way than how it has acted now.  The act of negligence will also be called haram and an act of crime in Islam.  

Delhi Govt and Delhi Police (which has a police station just next door to Markaz) should have also acted more vigilantly and would have stopped any violations of Markaz before it happened. 

Another big blunder..!

On 18th March, 8 Indonesians who traveled after attending a conference from Markaz tested positive in Telangana. As soon as this news came out, the Central and Delhi Govts should have acted swiftly and should have quarantined the complete Markaz and should not have let anyone get out of Markaz.  But no actions have been taken on this part and on 23rd of March around 1500 people left the Markazand they are the ones who returned to Tamil Nadu in the majority and contributed 763 cases out of Tamil Nadu’s 834 total cases.  What a blunder!!!

So.. Who all are should be held responsible?

1. Union Govt.’s carelessness of not quarantining incoming passengers from much earlier, 
2. Markaz carelessness of conducting conferences at their premises during this pandemic time
3. Central, State and Markaz carelessness on releasing 1500 guests of Markaz five days after the news of 8 Indonesian positive cases 
4. Delhi Govt and Delhi Police inaction in letting Markaz conduct conferences

all these have turned the century-old Markaz into one of the major COVID hotspots and contributed more cases to the country than any other event (so far at least). That, too, is not to a single state but many states, which has created big headaches and hectic works to the frontline workers such as healthcare, sanitation, police, and administrators of the district, state, and center and created big hassles for the general public of those states.

This issue has also created problems for the Muslim community, as this community already has enough trouble to go through in the country and now this issue has added more fuel to the already burning communal fire against the community. Sangh IT cells even went on trending hashtags such as Corona Jihad, COVID 786, Tabligh Virus, etc.  In some places, Tablighi workers and Muslims are being attacked. 

So.. proper investigations need to be done at the all level starting from Central Govt., Markaz, Delhi Police, and Delhi Govt and the necessary action should be taken on those who are responsible for this chaos. 

What about other mass gatherings that happened?

Many have raised questions about other mass gatherings that happened during the same time as well.  

Honest investigations should take place and necessary actions should be taken on those whoever has violated the orders of that time.