Indian Press On Guru Nanak’s Philosophy, Faisal Khan And Gilgit: New Age Islam's Selection, 30 November 2020
By New Age Islam Edit
Desk
30 November
2020
• Guru Nanak’s Philosophy Is Of Eternal
Rrelevance
By Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
• In
Memory Of Frontier Gandhi, A Plea For Justice For Faisal Khan
By Rajmohan Gandhi
• Is Anyone Here A Muslim, With A Victim
Anecdote For My Column?'
By Farah Naqvi
• Electoral Fraud In Gilgit
By Tilak Devasher
• 3 Chinese Scientists Just Said Covid Came
From India, Bangladesh. It’s Politics, Not Science
By Sumaiya Shaikh
-----
Guru Nanak’s Philosophy Is Of Eternal
Rrelevance
By Sri Sri Ravi
Shankar
November
30, 2020
At a time
when people were lost in endless intellectual discussions about God and Self,
everyone arguing and believing themselves to be right, a simple saint of great
depth woke them up by giving a call: “The Divine cannot be reduced to thought,
even by thinking lakhs of times.”
Guru Nanak
Dev’s teachings continue to be relevant to the world. Of all rishis, sages and
seers who have blessed this planet, Guru Nanak Dev has a unique place. He put
forth the essence of all scriptures in the simplest words that people can
understand and absorb.
The first
guru of the Sikhs would say, “you don’t have to be scared of God.” After having
conversations with Siddhas, the ‘perfected ones,’ he said only a few people
will be able to renounce the world. But the highest knowledge is available here
for every human being beyond caste, class and circumstances. Young or old,
everybody is qualified to receive this knowledge. He spoke from experience and
revolutionised the world. Guru Nanak Dev’s contribution to Indian philosophy is
unique, beautiful and timeless; they need to be taught to every human being.
Another
beauty of Guru Nanak’s teachings is that philosophy and practical living go
hand-in-hand. We cannot speak of philosophy that cannot be practised in daily
life. For example, any talk about sustainability needs to be backed by strong
philosophy. Guru Nanak’s teachings seamlessly blend the two, where serving the
people, taking care of water, natural resources and the planet is considered
divine service.
The Japji
Sahib composed by Guru Nanak Dev says, “Ek Onkar, God is One; Satnam, His name
is true; Karta-purakh, creator; Nirbhau, without fear; Nirvair, inimical to
none; Akal-murat, immortal; Ajuni saibhang, beyond birth and death; Gurparsad,
realised by the kindness of the true guru; Jap, chanting his name; Aad sach,
the truth before creation; Jugaad Sach, eternal truth; hai bhi sach, truth here
and now; Nanak Hose Bhi Sach, He will be true in the future.”
The whole
world is born from one Onkaar. Around us everything is composed of its
vibrations alone. It is there everywhere, but it can only be understood through
the guru.
Guru Nanak
Dev spoke of the unity of mankind, that people of all faiths should work
together. He said, there is just one Karta Daata, doer-creator, who is
indivisible, and just one cause of causes.
A sense of
separation comes when we consider others as different from us but when we know
that the root, source, is one, can there be separation? Realising we are one,
all enmity disappears.
This
separation exists when we hold onto something, to our idea of right and wrong,
and there is no surrender. Then you will miss Gurprasad. Repeat God’s name –
jap karo. Being hateful leads a person towards self-destruction. But for
someone who is always in remembrance of God, in divine love, repetition of the
divine name comes naturally to them, and they find the highest joy in it.
Guru Nanak
Dev has given his blessed words. Gurbani, to enable us to lead a beautiful
life. Such knowledge should be listened to, with great sincerity, honour and
devotion. When you consider this knowledge as sacred, then life itself becomes
sacred.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/toi-edit-page/guru-nanaks-philosophy-is-of-eternal-rrelevance/
-----
In Memory Of Frontier Gandhi, A Plea For
Justice For Faisal Khan
By Rajmohan Gandhi
Nov 30,
2020
I
know Faisal Khan and have seen his selflessness, his tirelessness, and his
passion for friendship and reconciliation(Mint Archive)
------
It has been
exactly a month since the October 29 arrest in Delhi of Faisal Khan, national
convener of the Khudai Khidmatgars, an organisation he had revived 10 years
ago. Denied bail, he has also not been brought to trial. Moreover, there are
troubling reports that, after the arrest, he tested positive for Covid-19.
Khudai
Khidmatgars — God’s servants — were first organised 90 years ago, in the North
West Frontier Province of yore, by that astonishing figure, Khan Abdul Ghaffar
Khan, whose people called him Badshah or Bacha Khan. To others, he simply was
the Frontier Gandhi. Because they worked for Independence and for Hindu-Muslim
partnership, many Khudai Khidmatgars, including the Frontier Gandhi himself,
were jailed for long spells. They were among the freedom movement’s greatest
heroes, and their presence was an unforgettable rebuke to the pernicious
two-nation theory.
After
reviving the Khudai Khidmatgars in Delhi, Faisal Khan has striven without pause
for two goals — communal harmony and relief for the neediest. He is also a
wonderful singer of the Tulsi Ramayan. Hindus of all types, from venerated guru
to college students, have been charmed by his rendering of the Ramayan’s
verses. Keen, as part of his efforts towards harmony, to identify with the
traditions of his Hindu friends, Khan, along with associates, recently
performed the much-valued Braj Parikrama. On the last day of this 84-km yatra,
they went to Mathura’s Nand Baba Mandir, where they were courteously received
by the priest.
When Khan
bid farewell to the priest in order to offer namaaz elsewhere, the priest
apparently said, “This is a sacred place. You can read the namaaz here.” Khan
did this on a courtyard of the temple premises, along with one of his friends.
Three days later, however, the Uttar Pradesh police arrested him in Delhi on
charges of hurting relations between communities. It seems that misgivings were
caused by a video taken at the temple by one of Khan’s associates, which
perhaps was over-enthusiastically circulated. Anyone seeing this video, which
includes a glimpse of two men doing the namaaz, can observe the friendliness
and respect that marked their visit to Nand Baba, as also the priest’s courtesy
to the visitors.
A gesture
of respect and friendship, which was also a painstaking effort at
bridge-building, was later seen or described as an attempt to sow discord, even
to pollute a place of worship.
The real
question here is whether a dedicated individual whose organisation recalls one
of the finest chapters in our country’s history, and who himself has been
striving to strengthen relations between communities, should continue to be
kept behind bars and denied bail. How normal or acceptable is it that an Indian
citizen should remain a month or more in detention without an open trial? Not that
Khan is the only one caught this situation. Others have been shut away for much
longer, which is not a tribute to the police or the judiciary, or to the
ministers who control the police.
If I add my
voice to those of other citizens troubled by this episode, it’s for two
reasons.
One, I know
Faisal Khan and have seen his selflessness, his tirelessness, and his passion
for friendship and reconciliation. Second, I also knew Badshah Khan, whom I
first met in 1945, when I was 10 and he was staying in our Connaught Circus
home above the offices of the Hindustan Times, where my father, Devadas Gandhi,
was the editor. I last met Badshah Khan in Mumbai in 1987, a year before his
death at the age of 98. Later, I had the chance – and the privilege – of
writing Badshah Khan’s biography, where, among other things, I had to address
the betrayal meted out in 1947 to Badshah Khan and his Pathans.
That India
would permit the continuing incarceration of a gallant man who restarted, in
Delhi and elsewhere in the country, the work of the Khudai Khidmatgars[N1] is not a thought I can easily
stomach. I must express my anguish and request the authorities to free Faisal
Khan.
-----
Rajmohan Gandhi is presently teaching at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
https://www.hindustantimes.com/analysis/in-memory-of-frontier-gandhi-a-plea-for-justice-for-faisal-khan/story-Vzto6Dx07UrkVoriCGEHSP.html
-----
Is Anyone Here a Muslim, With a Victim Anecdote
for My Column?'
By Farah Naqvi
30 November
2020
Last week,
I received a message on my phone from a respected columnist. The call to
Muslims, sent to me and presumably to others, said the following: “Hi, This is
X. Please share a story about being Muslim in India today? One anecdote of
everyday Islamophobia. For my column.” End of message.
I found it
repugnant. The kind of offensive you immediately know when you see it. And it
raised questions about the need for self-reflexive progressive journalism in
times of war. For it is a social war against Muslims we are living through.
What exactly did I find so wrong about this journalistic practice? The
columnist in question is an upper-caste and upper-class Hindu. Substitute
‘Dalit’ for ‘Muslim’ in the formulation and you will see why a journalist may
have hesitated to send this message out to a Dalit. I tried it out for size:
“Hi. Please share a story about being Dalit in India today? One anecdote of
everyday Caste Oppression. For my column – Signed, Upper Caste Hindu.”
Dalit
writers, poets, intellectuals and activists in India regularly challenge
savarna takes on Dalit histories and lives. Arundhati Roy’s introduction to
Annihilation of Caste was one such controversial moment. More recently, Anubhav
Sinha’s film, Article 15, led to a debate about the ‘savarna saviour complex’. A
columnist doing this may have been named and called out on social media by any
number of Dalit writers, poets and activists. In the US, there are raging
debates on cultural appropriation – how whites have appropriated and portrayed
the Black experience (culture, manners, music, rap, voices, victimisation) in
writing and in film – often reductively and in highly stereotyped ways.
Is it
‘appropriative’ for journalists to solicit Muslim stories, and should all such
experiences be penned only by those who undergo them? Is there no place here
for empathy, no connection possible across identities – can the liberal-minded
privileged not legitimately speak for justice for others? I believe they can,
and should. But there has to be a better way to get these stories out there
than the message I received.
Debates on
media representations have unfortunately tended to look at the outcome of the
story-telling, and less at the practice of story-getting. On representations of
Muslims in India, for example, the discussion has centred on media and
Bollywood portrayals. It is well documented how the exotic tawaif of Pakeezah
and the good Muslim (Imam Saheb of Sholay), gradually gave way to the
terrorist, the Islamist, the oppressed Muslim woman.
These
critiques of Muslim representation have been different from the Dalit-Savarna
and Black-White power binaries. For they have not been Muslim-Hindu. They have
looked at the communications industry – and pointed fingers at ‘the media’ and
‘Bollywood’. They have also examined the overwhelmingly ‘negative’ portrayals
of Muslims (as terrorists and regressive Islamists), because there is simply so
much of that. And been silent and grateful for the sympathetic/progressive
writing.
After OIC
Asks India to Rescind August 5 Changes, India Questions its Locus Standi
It is
perhaps time to look at the practice of progressive, privileged journalism. For
Columnist X is a progressive and compassionate writer, a positive ‘influencer’
in these times. And it is important to bring into public writing the daily
humiliation that many Muslims are experiencing, which the mainstream seems
unaware of or does not recognise as humiliating. The point, then, is how
privileged liberals seek and tell that story. To modify one writer’s evocative
words – how do you dip your pen in someone else’s blood?
Unfortunately,
the text-message reeked of an unselfconscious entitlement. It recalled the
title of veteran war correspondent Edward Behr’s book – Anyone Here Been Raped
and Speaks English? That crass call for a rape story is what Behr heard shouted
out by a British journalist to survivors fleeing war-torn Congo in November
1964. It has been the gold standard for journalistic crudity for over 50 years.
It was not real enough to have suffered; that suffering had to be rendered
accessible and accorded legitimacy in the language of the teller – English, the
power language of the British journalist. There was also the presumption that
female victims would gladly tell a foreign male their story. He did not say,
‘Is anyone willing to speak to me?’ For that inverts the power moment, where
the victim now has something the journalist wants. He – white, privileged, with
access to the media space – had the power to simply ask for a victim-tale.
The
journalism of the text message was a polite version of the same. Muslims were
asked to please give precisely – ‘a’ story and ‘one’ anecdote. To have to
distil seamless human experience down to an anecdote is a challenge at the best
of times. Even for a child writing a diary entry about his flowering plant for
a school test. What if there were more than one anecdote, or a hundred? And
many stories from many people? How would each of them compete for space? Or
handle the rejection, after having trotted out rawness?
The stories
could range from a simple Islamophobic stare to downright lynching and murder.
A lynching story may not have made it to a curated column. Because the request
was for the real stuff of life – the soul-destroying identity-awareness of each
minute of an average 24-hour Muslim day in India today. ‘Everyday Islamophobia’
was the ask – but please, in brief. It was a crisp, synoptic request to
modulate oppression.
In essence,
the message, bursting as it did into my private phone space, was structurally
no different from ghoul-journalists who thrust mikes at people in harsh times –
fathers who have lost sons, mothers whose daughters are raped or incarcerated,
the families whose loved ones have died – and ask, ‘How do you feel?’ They want
pain in a sound byte. This ask was an anecdote. Journalists often do it because
they can. Structures of media power, structures of entitlement and the demand
for consumable stories determine that. For daily reporters, the pace of the
newsroom becomes an alibi for poor ethics in the field. Columnists have less
excuse to be unmindful.
Is it
alright for any journalist to tersely solicit a story of potential pain by
simply saying– ‘Share it. For my column’? No further nicety or persuasion
seemed necessary. The column was a power space I must automatically know and
value. Reasonable assumption. I can count on fingers the remaining number of
Muslim journalists who still have regular columns. A column is part of
structural privilege. And, just like the British journalist of Ed Behr’s title,
that power was exercised, unthinkingly, with all its benefits, including the
assumption that any Muslim, in these times, will be a) ready to morph
themselves into ‘victim of Islamophobia’ and b) be willing to modulate their
oppression for column-consumption. This electronic message was the exact
half-century-later equivalent of the Brit’s physical trawl through a Congo
airport. Shout-out-a-message in a war zone to potential victims – and get a
mail box flooded with accessible pain. Privilege can breed lazy journalistic
habits.
In our over
media-determined age, real grounded journalism in India is among the most
valued of responsibilities and duties. Seek fact, truth and justice, and deepen
democracy, by writing column upon column about the increasing structural
violence against the unequals. Progressive journalists who analyse sharply the
many injustices of our times spend well the currency of their privilege.
Columnist X’s journalism thus far has worked hard to do all of that. So, I hope the text-message was an
aberration. Muslims will gain little from any journalist soliciting oppression
anecdotes in this manner. For these are not equal-exchange invitations. Words
like power, privilege, minority and dominance are key to decoding all such
requests.
The
structurally privileged continue to be the dominant storytellers of our times.
Identity-privileged journalism means retaining the power of framing, of
editing, of deleting bits of oppression that do not work, and making those
choices with other people’s experiences. Exercising privilege is not an act of
individual ‘bad people.’ It is a system of structural inequity. The flip-side
of victim tales is the normalcy and habit of everyday entitlement. Privileged
journalism practices can be so ‘normal’ that they are hard to see. It is in
their very hiddenness that all practices of privilege – whether of gender,
caste or community – exercise their greatest power, and uphold the status quo.
Without some self-examination, all the compassionate columns in the world will
not dent the hierarchy such columns purport to bravely challenge.
It may be
good practice to turn the mirror inwards. Learn to inhabit discomfort. Try
being the subject instead. Imagine if one day a range of progressive,
privileged journalists received the following message on their phones: ‘Hi.
This is Farah Naqvi. Please share a story of being Upper-Caste Upper-Class
Hindu in India today. One anecdote (no more), of everyday UC-UC Hindu
privilege. For my article.’ What kind of response do you think I might get?
------
Farah Naqvi is an activist and writer who lives
and works in Delhi.
https://thewire.in/media/muslims-media-reporting-privilege
-----
Electoral Fraud In Gilgit
By Tilak Devasher
Nov 30,
2020
The run-up
to and the results of the keenly contested November 15 election to the
Legislative Assembly in Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) could have far-reaching
consequences for the region and for Pakistan.
Bilawal
Bhutto set the tone by arriving in the area weeks ahead of other political
leaders. His high decibel campaign set the standard, forcing others to emulate
him. His impressive campaigning should stand him in good stead in his future
political career.
The fact
that the PTI could not win a majority on its own reflects Imran Khan’s lack of
popularity in Gilgit-Baltistan.
Maryam Nawaz
followed Bilawal to GB and also undertook several rallies and campaigned across
the region during her seven-day stay. In her speeches, she remained focused on
Imran Khan and his ‘selected, rejected’ government.
Imran Khan
visited Gilgit briefly on November 1 to announce that GB would be granted
‘provisional’ provincial status, a thinly disguised ploy to win. However, the
PTI campaign was marked by the obnoxious and sexist comments of Ali Amin
Gandapur, federal minister for Kashmir affairs. He stated at a rally that
Maryam was beautiful, ‘but only because she has spent millions of taxpayer
money on surgeries to look the way she does’. He went on to target Bilawal
Bhutto in similar fashion, asking him to ‘be a man’.
The
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) boosted its electoral chances by poaching 10
leaders from the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N). Not surprisingly, it
emerged as the single-largest party, winning nine seats out of the 24 being
contested directly but fell short of a simple majority to form the government.
Independents won six seats, Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) three seats, PML-N
and others one each. Election in one seat was postponed due to the death of a
candidate that was subsequently won by the PTI. With five independents joining
the party, the PTI would form the government. However, the fact that the PTI
could not win a majority on its own reflects Imran Khan’s lack of popularity in
GB. In fact, in the absence of PML-N turncoats, the PTI would have come in
third.
The
credibility of the elections was marred by serious charges of rigging. The
independent Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN) reported an average of three
illegalities or irregularities per polling station. According to its
preliminary report, the irregularities included breach of secrecy of the vote,
stamping of ballots by others on behalf of voters and the prevention of
registered voters to cast their ballots. There were cases where excess and fake
postal ballot papers were issued leading to many of them being misused. In several
areas, women were barred from voting. In many cases, observers were asked to
leave the polling stations before counting began. The Human Rights Commission
of Pakistan and the Gilgit Union of Journalists confirmed this.
Both the
PPP and the PML-N rejected the results, with Bilawal coining a new slogan:
‘Vote per daaka namanzoor’, a slogan that is gaining popularity in GB. Maryam
tweeted that the PTI’s inability to get a ‘simple majority despite worst
rigging and changing loyalties through full state power, government
institutions, government machinery and black tactics’ was actually a ‘shameful
defeat’.
Due to the
electoral fraud, a series of protests have broken out in the region, forcing
the caretaker government to seek the army’s assistance to control the security
situation, especially in Gilgit and Chilas.
A notable
feature of the elections in GB (and so-called Azad Jammu Kashmir) was that the
ruling party in Islamabad had the edge. On the previous two occasions, the PPP
in 2009 and the PML-N in 2015 had won majorities when they were in power at the
centre. For the establishment it was important to make sure that the region
followed the Islamabad line so that there was uniformity of messaging from
Pakistan on the Kashmir issue.
The
elections took place against the backdrop of the larger political confrontation
between the PTI and the opposition alliance, the Pakistan Democratic Movement
(PDM). This was the underlying theme of the campaign rather than local issues
and developmental needs. Not surprisingly, the PTI claimed that the poll
outcome demolished the opposition’s narrative; the PPP and PML-N asserted that
the results were due to rigging.
There were
three takeaways from the election. Though both the PML-N and PPP fared poorly,
the PDM’s campaign and narrative have actually got a fillip. It has obtained
fresh ammunition of rigging and political engineering, strengthening its
overall narrative of the establishment’s interference in politics and
‘selecting’ governments. The PDM used this effectively in its November 22 rally
at Peshawar. However, by allowing a month’s gap between the Quetta and Peshawar
rallies to account for the GB election, the PDM could well have lost some of
the momentum the first three rallies had generated.
Second, GB
election, together with the 2008 general election, is indicative of the
establishment’s new play-list of political engineering — leave the ‘selected’
government short of a majority and make up the deficit with smaller parties and
independents. While such a strategy would produce a government beholden to the
establishment for survival, it is unlikely to provide a stable government.
Third, with
the elections over, it remains to be seen if Imran Khan would redeem his pledge
of making GB the fifth province of Pakistan. This would require constitutional
amendments for which he will have to take the opposition on board, something
that he is loath to do. It will also require an examination how such a move
would impact Pakistan’s position on the J&K issue and have implications for
India.
Tactically,
the army has succeeded in ensuring that the PTI cobbles a majority to form the
government. In the long run, however, it has given the PDM further ammunition
to push its agenda of the establishment’s interference in politics. With this
narrative gathering steam, the establishment could well rue rigging the GB
elections.
-----
Tilak Devasher is a Member, National Security
Advisory Board
https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/electoral-fraud-in-gilgit-177718
----
3 Chinese Scientists Just Said Covid Came From
India, Bangladesh. It’s Politics, Not Science
By Sumaiya Shaikh
30
November, 2020
The Chinese
culture of eating exotic animals has been widely condemned, including by the
people of China. Even within China, the difference between Beijing’s mandarin
cuisine — from the Southern Cantonese — and rural cuisine such as from
Guanzhou, is stark, not to mention the abundant use of exotic animals for
medicinal purposes. Many urban and expat Chinese have termed the culture of
eating wild animals ‘uncommon’. The viral ‘bat-soup’ video was denied by the
Wuhanese, which was allegedly from Palau — an island nation 2,100 km from
China.
The
expedition in science to trace back ‘patient zero’ of Covid-19 has been largely
unbiased, as opposed to the media and political class. The release of preprints
— scientific manuscripts yet to be peer-reviewed and thus open to
interpretation by the public that lacks the understanding to review science —
has been at the centre of such biases. Preprints can be hyped, misunderstood or
taken out of context to spread misinformation because quality checks by
independent scientists are missing. Previously, two Chinese scientists were
criticised for a conspiracy theory based on evidence-free assumptions that
claimed the origins of the novel coronavirus as ‘lab-created’. Thorough genetic
research published by The Lancet determined that the SARS-CoV-2 is closely
related to the SARS-CoV-1 in its receptor binding sites, only to be distinct in
some amino acid sequences, and therefore unlikely to be created through an
unnatural lab process.
Further
phylogenetic analysis of coronavirus from different species revealed that the
human SARS-CoV-2 found in 2019 in China is a close relative of the bat
coronavirus RATG13 and far from those isolated from other species. Thus, if
there was any evidence of a change in the coronavirus’ genome, it could have
been through neutral evolution in a host such as humans after an infection.
Such changes occur through mutations in five genes of the coronavirus genome,
namely S, N, ORF8, ORF3a, and ORF1ab, with about 42 per cent of the variations
occurring as non-synonymous mutations. Such mutations of nucleotide
substitutions in the amino acid sequence in the protein-coding gene reflect the
positive natural selection and evolution, far from the conspiracy theories of a
lab-made virus.
Pushing
unverified science
Despite
most scientists largely holding up the tent of evidence throughout this year,
the science available online before being awarded a publication status in a
journal has been a barrier in the public understanding of the scientific
process and the politics behind it.
The recent
preprint by Chinese scientists Libing Shen, Funan He and Zhao Zhang titled ‘The
early cryptic transmission and evolution of SARS-CoV-2 in human hosts’ suggests
that the origins of SARS-CoV-2 may not be in China, but in the Indian subcontinent,
coming via Australia before making its way into China — a ghastly allegation
given the ongoing nature of the dreadful second Covid-19 wave.
The paper
attracted a huge spotlight given that it is a Lancet preprint, even though that
has no correlation with the quality of the research, and was featured in many
international media platforms. The study claimed to have tested various
SARS-CoV-2 strains across the world to compare with the first strain identified
in China’s Wuhan. It suggests that this first strain found in Wuhan is not the
least mutated strain on the basis of the theory of post-infection mutation in
humans through adaptive evolution. It also suggests that the lesser the
mutations in the genome, the closer the strain is to the origin of the 2019
virus or patient zero.
The study
further claimed that the least mutated virus may have arisen from the Indian
subcontinent as the region has the highest strain diversity calculated via
statistics and the SARS-CoV-2 mutation rate. This hypothesis also made the
Chinese scientists believe that the earliest transmission in human hosts could
be in July-August 2019, and not in October-November in China as is widely
believed.
More
politics than science
Apart from
the unverified science, there are two problems with the theory of the Chinese
scientists. First, the Indian subcontinent — they specifically singled out
India and Bangladesh — is large, populated and well-traveled. It is highly
likely that the returning Indian expats, in huge numbers, got infected in their
respective countries, thus bringing back the range of diverse strains from
different parts of the world, perhaps even from China. At this time of the
pandemic, and especially when the world is open for travel, it is impossible to
label a group of viral strains as Indian or Chinese. In either case, peer
review and further studies are needed to ascertain such origins, and only if it
adds value to the current knowledge.
Second, the
spread of mutated strains across the globe has not occurred in a linear manner.
Once the virus enters the host, it can mutate, replicate and infect others, and
can further mutate, all of which occurs through a multiway process globally.
Diversity or mutation rate both, inevitably large in a highly populous country
like India, does not provide the evidence required to conclude the origins of
patient zero in India.
Perhaps
scientists need to focus on the existing challenge of the second wave, which is
in a terrible state, even in developed countries, despite copious knowledge
that the second wave was going to be more severe.
This
current pandemic problem is as political as it is scientific. If a scientist
intends to politicise a pandemic, the most unscientific method would be the
generation of populist theories without gathering further insight on their
data. While the need to develop and manufacture vaccines for the masses has
become a scientific race to push the human intellect forward as a joint global
fraternity, our species have never been so divided during a global health
crisis.
-----
Sumaiya Shaikh PhD is an Australian-Swedish
neuroscientist, researching the neuroscience of political violence, in Sweden.
She is a consultant on security, terrorism and misinformation. She is the
founding editor of the fact-checking portal Alt News Science, India. Views are
personal.
https://theprint.in/opinion/3-chinese-scientists-just-said-covid-came-from-india-bangladesh-its-politics-not-science/554384/
-----
URL: https://newageislam.com/indian-press/indian-press-guru-nanak’s-philosophy,/d/123610
New Age Islam, Islam Online, Islamic Website, African Muslim News, Arab World News, South Asia News, Indian Muslim News, World Muslim News, Women in Islam, Islamic Feminism, Arab Women, Women In Arab, Islamophobia in America, Muslim Women in West, Islam Women and Feminism