Covid Crisis: Questions You Should Have Answers To | Faye D'Souza

Will the Modi Government learn a lesson?

 

India’s second wave has surpassed all the past surges seen in other countries. The rise of the Corona storm is unlikely to slow down soon. Compared to other countries, its Indian ferocity is beyond measure. We need to think and act differently right from now on.

 The vertical climb of the COVID curve is proving that the states are hiding the real numbers of fatalities and infections. It is doubling by every two days. The “mismatch” in the official death-toll and the actual victims cremated on ground, show the latter overlaps the former by few times. The world media are looking closely to the causes of this abysmal situation in India with extreme concern, and are directly blaming the Modi government for its complacency.

 The mutation that has afflicted India may spread now across the oceans, and beyond Africa.

For the Government the priorities over the last 6 years were Ram Mandir, Jai Sree Ram, CAA, NRC, winning elections, buying MLAs, and not Oxygen, Hospital beds and Doctors. Recently, it had to do with winning over five states including Bengal. The Right Wing government ‘shall’ not learn lesson even when hit by a 3rd wave. It is pure incompetence and the negligence on the part of the dispensation not to heed to the advice of the experts. The Modi government is busy in bluffing the public to believe in myth than facts, in Ram Temple than in Remdesevir.  It is more desperate in winning Election than saving people’s lives.

 The world media in its criticism is blatantly blaming the Indian government – the cause of a systemic collapse. We have collectively failed to fight the Covid! There are wrong people in the governance.  The nature is reacting to the ‘Modi Yogi Amit alliance’, and it abhors their ideas.  We are facing the fury of the tughlak-ideology of the trio.

 The ideal cooperative federalism has failed, with the suppressing of the Covid cases both by the centre and the states. The centre does not believe in numbers, statistics and true figures. It believes in faking information and in suppressing the truth-being-told over the social media.

The holy waters of the Ganga or the cow-urine, will not protect the Covid victims.  But these irresponsible people will go on causing problems to mankind, through mismanagement mixed with vendetta politics.

 Nobody is supposed to know how the PM Care funds, national emergency relief funds are being used. There is no transparency whatsoever. The godhra-tainted image of Modi cannot be washed with his Covid-ridden blood-stained hands. We are enamoured by his cheap sensationalist brand of politics, pleated with “arrogance of power” and pride. Indians, kindly wake up to the reality of Modi now, before it is too late.

 Volunteers, like the Khalsa Help International and other NGOs are doing what government should be doing, i.e. buying oxygen and making them available to those in urgent need. The human suffering will multiply. In this scenario, to restore social trust and to rebuild the economy based on the experience on ground, is of utmost importance, than placing too much hope on Modi hubris. He desires only to build his personal brand further. Modi’s photograph on every vaccination certificate exposed the extent of his vanity. Additionally, the confrontational approach of Amit Shah and the rest of the Cabinet towards the Opposition has all the more divided the communities.

 Modi thinks it fit to defer to the core beliefs of Hindus. The BJP’s position on the Kumbh Mela this year is consistent with, its position on the Ram Mandir. They have turned ‘beliefs’ into facts. According to them, objective truth must bow before belief. Modi uses Hindu majoritarianism as means to an end.  The long hair and bearded ‘sage’ look puts Modi along with the saffroned Yogi in comparison and contrast, but with the common agenda – use religion as instrument to win the game that is being played so shrewdly. Authoritarian and totalitarian rule is arrived at through gradual, unsuspected steps of misrule. Then it reaches at the cross-road of decisive moment for change – an asal (true) paribartan that the people want. In the midst of economy’s downfall and a Covid’s surge, the BJP leaders are further getting back to Hindu basics. This poison of communalism is corroding the state, diving one faith-community against another, one ethnic group against the other.

They should have prepared for the worse than address mass election rallies and allow Hindus to gather at the Maha Kumbh. Complacency set in and we are now paying for it. The migrant and daily workers and small businesses, once again, will be hit the hardest.  The “vaccine hesitancy” has added to this dismal situation. It is in such crisis the ordinary people hold up the mirror to the rulers. The acts of charity of many, the groans of the bereaved, the angst of sons and daughters waiting to find a hospital bed for their dear dad, the oxygen-deprived death, the mourning for the dead and the consoling acts for those bereaved, they all become saving acts of love.

Nation is at war with a virus. Now is the time to put aside the partisan prejudices and jointly  work with ‘all’ politicians to win this ‘war’.  It make it all the more imperative for the Central government to be collaborative in its approach. Putting faith in federalism and through a conciliatory approach, we urgently need to promote trust and solidarity between citizens and across party lines.

This second wave of the pandemic had already begun to hit us hard. The hospitals are filling up and so are the cremation grounds. Hope, Modi and his alliance “learn to listen, and listen to learn”, and bring themselves to act in the interests not of one party or one religion, but for each citizen of India.

 

 

BANDEL BASILICA: A PILGRIMAGE CENTRE FORCED TO REINVENT ITSELF

 

The second phase pandemic since April 2021, once again, prevents pilgrims from visiting this Marian shrine of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary and that of the miraculous statue of Our Lady of Happy Voyage at Bandel. Though Bandel Church remains closed to the pilgrims and visitors, it had opened its door allowing Christian families from parishes and other dioceses to visit the Church since January 2021. Due to the present Covid-19 pandemic situation, it has been closed once again for all outsiders.

Following the lockdown (March 2020), after the outbreak of COVID-19, pilgrims have not yet begun to return en masse to this great shrines. Many parish pilgrimage initiatives have come to a sudden halt. Some groups have cancelled or postponed their pilgrimage schedule.  The ongoing pandemic makes it difficult to organize even family pilgrimage. And this is not likely to change for a while.  With some exceptions, 2020 has been a blank year, and 2021 also seems to be so.  While many pilgrims are disappointed, there is also the loss of revenue for the shrine.

Many letters from the faithful informed the shrine that this uncertain situation have augmented their disappointment.  There has been terrible loss of income for the shrine as well. Unfortunately, unlike the government aided Madrasas, the Christian pilgrimage centres are not helped out with government subsidies. While paying the salaries to the 50 staff members, it will be difficult to recover the money spent on the shrine’s maintenance. The services that employed staff are forced to resort to, due to the lockdown, cannot be reduced to part-time either.

The shrine’s management team is trying to continue some sort of activity, for the Christian folk, especially through live-streaming of religious services. While the proposed prayer settings and free virtual pilgrimages can be had, one cannot call them in-presence prayers or pilgrimages. Virtual pilgrimages (e-pilgrimage), are not the same as pilgrimage in real time and space.

Besides, the pilgrims don't have a good grasp of digital tools and videoconferencing.  The priests responsible, use Whatsapp to send pic-text messages as a spiritual aid. Besides such digital initiatives, local pilgrimages (local churches, grottos, religious sites) can be organized. People can walk to isolated places of prayer, following the Covid-19 protocols. Certainly, necessary temporary changes are needed in the coming future, at the expense of the deprivation of major pilgrimages. While desire to visit Bandel for a pilgrimage be as strong as ever, we need to invent a new look at the way we perform pilgrimage and prayers. Now is the time to expand and improve family prayers, prayed together at home in order to ‘rediscover the original freshness of the joy of loving.’

 

The inseparable Josef and Miriam

 

Sometimes one meets a husband and wife whose love for each other is so real that other people do not see them so much as two individuals, but, rather, as one unit.  It’s almost as if they have been fused together by their years of sharing with and caring for each other.  To imagine one without the other is impossible.

Mr. Josef David and Mrs. Miriam David were a couple just like that.  They were of medium height, good looking and inseparable. Every day they would come to the village synagogue to pray, and would stand chatting to their friends.  They would go back home and Mr. Josef would work in his carpentry.  He would also look after the garden of the widow who lived next door.  I think he was actually older than Mrs. Miriam, but Mr. Josef was determined that she wasn’t going to tire herself out. A perfect gentleman, he hated the thought of a woman doing hard labour!

Mr. and Mrs. Davids loved each other so much that sometimes I wondered how they even managed to be apart when he had had to go to work in various distant villages and towns.  At least now that he had retired, they could be together all the time.

Then came the day when Mr. Josef died.  His wife still came to village synagogue every day.  She tried to help the widow, next door,  did the gardening for her as Mr. Josef once did.  She spoke about her late husband as though he had been the most loveable man who had ever lived.  Mr. Josef had been perfect in every way, according to his wife. 

When once the widow’s son, would come home to visit his mother, Mrs. Miriam would use his arrival as an excuse to visit him along with her son Jeshua.  One evening she came to the house with a big plastic bag that she put on the floor beside the boy.  One by one she pulled out photographs of his husband and showed them to him.  Some of the pictures had been treasured for years.  After the photos came the fret works that Mr. Josef had done during the many years of their married life.  As she showed off his husband’s handiwork, it was clear that Mrs. Miriam was finding comfort in being able to talk about the man she had loved so much.  There were moments when she was finding it hard not to cry.  It was a very sacred evening as far as this widow’s son was concerned.  For a short time he had been allowed to enter into a marriage that had truly been made in Heaven.

When two people love each other very much and one dies, it can feel as though the surviving partner has lost everything.  Mrs. Miriam’s whole world was centred in her husband.  He was his sun and his stars.  When he died, life could never again be the same.  If she hadn’t had her strong faith Mrs. Miriam’s world would have come to an end.

As Christians we are very blessed in knowing that death is not the end of everything.  The only thing that makes sense of death is our belief in the Resurrection, our belief that death is only a transition.  We believe that, beyond the grave is life.  Death is not the end.  When someone dies, that person is only a thought away, can never move further away from us than deep inside our hearts. Today, 19 March, as we remember St. Joseph we pray for all those whom we love and who have died.  We pray that God will give them the fullness of life and peace with him.  Today let us also pray for those husbands and wives who have been separated by death, that God will give comfort and strength to the one left behind.

 

 

Incarnating Christmas

 

Unlike other years, we are forced to face this Christmas differently, without much of feasting with family and friends. There is going to be less visiting, gifting, and even less churchgoing. On the other hand, the pandemic has helped us rediscover the presence of Christ in the insecurity of our world through the fragility and through a ‘surrendering’ faith. The fear of Covid-19, the consequences of the crisis, and the awaited vaccines, are forcing us to rethink the meaning of Christmas. We have been forced to scale-down Christmas. In fact, the pandemic stands as an opportunity to incarnate God's love for others.

 In the heart of Christmas, there is the ‘fragile baby’ in each of us, especially those who are suffering either physically, economically, spiritually, emotionally or socially. Many mourn family and friends lost to the disease. Many are out of jobs and are in financial problems. Schools are closed. In all these, once the main motive of Christmas is understood, we begin to ‘incarnate’ Christmas to its basics. It is not the people flocking for the midnight Christmas Mass. It is not the cake and cookies, neither the clothes nor the cash.

 The Christmas miracle will happen when we are connected with the least in society, when we are stuck together with compassion and care, beyond the regulated ‘structures of Church walls’. The ritualistic prayer-markets need to be replaced with ‘selling’ of empathy-filled-hearts for the Covid-victims. Our Christmas bells and chants will welcome their presence. Equipped with sincere efforts, we will have to decide to spend this Christmas season, staying with the poor, and basically, go to the peripheries, to those who have nowhere to go except the ‘poor stable’. Only then, the visible act of kindness will manifest the invisible God, in Christ.

 We may fast from the Eucharistic Holy Communion, but never deprived of the Good News – the Word becoming flesh for saving the suffering children of God.  This is the heart of Christmas faith that is renewed in the midst of our shattered security and the fragility of our lives. Jesus who consistently suffered from birth to death, helps us ‘incarnate’ our faith-mystery into concrete actions, by listening, interiorizing, and acting on the Good News of salvation. The deeper we incarnate the Word, the more God's infinite love goes beyond reason, and we radiate with joy in alleviating the sufferings of others through a spirit of solidarity and fraternity. We show solidarity with all those who live through a painful experience of COVID-19, and been hit by the economic crisis, all those doctors and nurses who are over-burdened, attending to the affected sick. We need to be responsible for our brothers and sisters who suffer. Let this Christmas be an opportunity to truly incarnate God's love for others.

 How can the parish prepare itself for a more low-key Christmas? Seeing the present as an opportunity each parish will do well to cut cost of celebration and, as some Bishops in their circulars have suggested, to make collections in cash and kinds, to distribute among the poor. The parish priests need to contact the poor people and share the ‘Christmas gift’ in collaboration with the rest. We are called to do something with Christmas.   We need to pair together in synodality to do so, and never say ‘we could do nothing.’ Otherwise, it will be ‘a hell kind of Christmas’ without the Bethlehem Baby. Such concrete actions in context, will help us grasp the profound meaning of this feast. Serving the ‘destabilized destitute’, at this time, can help us incarnate God in flesh. Sure, this year we will celebrate a more attentive sober Christmas. Let the liturgies with its choirs keep a sober festive atmosphere too, whether online or in person. Let the family gatherings be to the minimal. Instead, make this an opportunity to draw on our interiority to serve others in need. This would be a true celebration of God-Incarnate, for everything that is good for others is a celebration of Christmas. Our actions become signs of God's love for humanity, for God come to manifest his concrete love for the whole creation. This God-Incarnate sides with the suffering brothers and sisters. The “Eucharistic centre” of Christmas is the suffering humanity. Christ is with us as God with us, Emmanuel, in people’s poverty and pains. God shares from the ‘house of bread’ (Bethlehem), our own disruption and death. Let us go beyond the religious rules, structures and rituals, and unlock our parish communities to visit the poor, the sick, the migrants, the unemployed and those neglected in society. Let this be a Covid-Christmas  with all those differently disabled by the pandemic.

 

Prophetic Vocational Identity for freedom

 S.A. Aiyar titles his Swaminomics Column in the Times of India as - Right to offend is an inalienable part of right to religious freedom, free speech (TOI, November 1, 2020).  He stands by free speech which includes the right to offend. Those offended can protest peacefully, but not kill the offenders. Free speech does not extend to offensive speech. All freedoms are subject to reasonable curbs. If you deliberately incite violence, that should certainly be stopped. Satirical humour or cartoons, on social life, politics and religion are not for ‘hating’ and are not racist in themselves. They are thinkable humour. Cartoons don’t kill, they provoke thoughts and imaginations.

According to Aiyar, the fact is: every religion suffers from its obsession with its own superiority, and thus offends other religions. Freedom of religion implicitly implies freedom to offend others. Others must practise tolerance and not feel offended – for no one offends anyone, one feels offended. For Christians the “heathens” are barred from entering heaven. Non-Christians can be offended to this belief system. But one cannot burn the Bible or kill Christians. The Muslims led by Quran and Hadith, like the Christians, did convert by the sword and kill many. That offence does not justify banning the Quran and Hadith. Hindu’s scriptural belief in re-incarnation (bad guys being reborn as dogs and pigs) may offend non-Hindus.  But others will have to cope with it and not kill. Inter-faith co-existence can happen only through tolerance, not revenge or punishment. I condemn all kinds of fundamentalism that divide through violence.

Religious justification for killing and violence has no place in today’s world. Apostasy and blasphemy have no place in human communion. The basic truth, therefore, is: every religious faith system, Scriptural texts and traditions are offensive, blasphemous and heretical to other sects and religions. All must respect all beliefs including that of an atheist. I hold to my belief and convictions. Others may feel offended. But I damn care about it.  It is my right to religious freedom and practice with respect and honour.

Jesus of the Gospel cleanses the temple - the political, economic, cultural, and religious centre of the world of the Jews; a sacred institutional embodiment of the Jewish tradition. His prophetic vocation gets manifested in all his speeches, gestures, and actions. Jesus confronts the fallen powers and dysfunctional traditions.  He turns over the tables of the money-changers, drives out the merchants, shouts out against the religious fraud of the time, and upsets the establishment.  Jesus showed himself as a critic and he had the right to be prophetic and have the freedom of speech, where others were offended, and he had to bear the consequence for it – death on the Cross.

AT THE CROSSROADS OF LIFE

 

Is God a tyrant, that he punishes people for not adhering to his invitation at his prepared banquet (Mt 22, 1-14)? Does he violently cast out those who do not wear the proper clothes? One word answer: Never. It is a question of carefully listening at depth to what Jesus is telling us: to discern and decipher his hidden message, to find him from the ‘hiding’ and see what actually he is revealing.

 The "point" in a parable is more importantly applied to each individual, than mere moral lesson we gather from it. If we fail to understand this simple truth, it means we are “not clothed in Jesus, in his seamless garment” – the garment of charity. We ARE clandestine at God’s banquet of love and mercy. We cannot remain mute before God, when it is a question of justice and truth. We do not remain silent at the decisive question in life.

 God’ initiative never fails, even if things do not go as planned. It is we who fail God at the "crossroads" where he awaits us (each single moment of life). A non-location, an emotional place, are the main crossroads where God and us meet, we encounter. It is open to all. God stops at the crossroads of our life and loves to stay there placing himself at our mercy. Difficult human roads under duress meet at the crossroads with diverse directions that are difficult to take. There, we confront crooked, curved and confused paths. Yet, we are not lost. We cross God's paths, where he waits at the crossroads of our lives.