Pandemic Politics in South Asia: Muslims and Democracy

Abstract

In South Asia, entrenched social and political cleavages involving Muslims or particular groups of Muslims have shaped state efforts to address the global Covid-19 pandemic: Hindu nationalists blamed Muslims for introducing the virus to India; anti-Covid lockdowns extended severe constraints on civil liberties in Muslim-majority Kashmir; anti-state mullahs protested public-health restrictions in Pakistan; Taliban insurgents used the virus as a pretext to delegitimize Afghanistan’s elected government. If one pattern has prevailed across South Asia, however, it is a pattern pushing away from democratic forms of legitimacy: persistent and uneven applications of emergency power, in particular, h..