Is India at War with Covid-19?
How Language Shapes Public Imagination
The Covid-19 outbreak on December 31, 2019, is the ongoing global nightmare of the 21st century. From affecting only one city in China to being declared a pandemic by March 2020, the virus has impacted millions of people around the world. Hence, this pandemic led to global leaders taking stern measures to protect their nations and citizens from facing large-scale death and misery. A real challenge in such a once in a century occurrence — for both governments and the media — is to first perceive the state of affairs before communicating it to the common citizens. This communication not only needs to explain the gravity of the situation but also eliminate any scope of spreading hate or violence. One of the best ways to achieve this is through a metaphor as it “is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action” (Lakoff and Johnson 3).
Initially, the global media had begun to slow cook the metaphor of war since historically it has been a prominent crisis time metaphor. However, it gained immense traction in March 2020 when American President, Donald Trump, declared himself “a wartime President” (Oprysko and Luthi). On March 24, 2020, Indian Prime Minister Modi declared in his address that, “in order to protect the country, and…its citizens, from midnight…, a full ban is being imposed on people from stepping out of their homes…This is a necessary step in the decisive fight against Corona Pandemic” (Modi). The following day, while addressing his parliamentary constituency of Varanasi, he said, “remember, the war of Mahabharata was won in 18 days. Our effort is to win it (Covid-19 war) in 21 days…Lord Shri Krishna was a maharathi, a charioteer. Today, on the strength of 130 crore (1.3 billion) nobles, we have to win this battle against corona” (Modi). The metaphor of war was now set in stone to frame the Covid-19 pandemic in India, creating a need to emerge victorious against a common enemy — including but not limited to the virus. Through this article, I will explore how the choice of metaphor shapes the collective public imagination of a unique healthcare crisis and impacts the humanitarian and economic spheres of life. I also intend to develop an alternative metaphor that could successfully deliver the message sans hate.
According to linguists George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, conceptual metaphors help us in “understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another” (Lakoff and Johnson 5). That is what the war metaphor does. The ‘war’ against ‘corona,’ an invisible ‘enemy’, is being ‘fought’ by ‘frontline workers’ and ‘corona warriors.’ Its survivors are the ‘corona heroes’ who have emerged ‘victorious’ in their ‘battle.’ The ‘warriors’ are ‘risking their lives’ every day and performing their ‘duty’ on the ‘frontlines’ to ensure our ‘safety’ at home. However, like in every war, there will be ‘collateral damage’ (read migrant labourers), difficulty and uncertainty, but together we need to emerge ‘victorious’ as a nation. While this metaphor adds requisite seriousness to minimize the contagion of this deadly virus, it also adds fuel to the ideology of war — one in which you battle against an enemy (Nair).
First, India has witnessed a growing sense of widespread communal disharmony in recent times. The police atrocities against students in minority-run universities during the Anti-CAA protests (Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019) and the Delhi riots in February 2020, are mere examples of its culmination. Thus, the framing of a pandemic, within the metaphor of war, leads to a search for an enemy beyond the virus in the human mind. For instance, the Tablighi Jamaat in Delhi became the enemy in India’s early stages of the outbreak. While it was happenstance that an Islamic event was India’s initial super spreader, it was reason enough, like everything else, to shift the focus from a healthcare crisis to communal tensions. India’s corona story now became about #coronajihad as against the lack of testing and medical resources to treat the virus. The hate towards the virus was back to being against a certain community. The religious minorities were not the only victims. Our ‘frontline workers’ too faced widespread discrimination in housing societies, as they were feared to infect the rest (Nair). While India’s “balconied class” (The Print) cheered for the frontline workers on two occasions, yet, the treatment meted out to them was inhuman.
Furthermore, the other casualty of the corona war has been the livelihood of the citizens of “Bharat” (The Print), who toil hard to live on daily wages. When the nation decided to stay home to win the war, nearly 40% of Bharat found themselves unemployed on the streets without any means to survive. When they were requested to stay home in their place of halted work in India, they could only think of going back to their hometowns and villages in Bharat. However, India did not seem to value the lives of her neighbours from Bharat. There were flights and quarantine facilities made available on a paid basis for Non-Resident Indians, who were stranded abroad in similar situations. But the citizens of Bharat — walking without food and water for hundreds of kilometres — were considered collateral damage in this war (The Print). The metaphor of war normalizes such apathy. However, humanity is not lost. There are some Indians who acknowledge their privilege and have come forward to help their neighbours from Bharat. But the sheer numbers make it an impossible task to take care of one and all.
Finally, this leads me to my quest for an alternative metaphor that can serve the purpose of framing the intensity of the pandemic in the minds of the citizenry and yet not take an ideological shift to something more disturbing than the virus itself. In India, Cricket and Movies are a common thread tying us all. Movies especially are backed with compelling narratives. Thus, we could frame the Covid-19 outbreak in India in the metaphor of a family movie. The Central and State governments could be the producers and directors while the citizens would be the writers and editors. Their actions would be critical in India’s Covid-19 narrative, aiming to protect the human race as one, overlooking all man-made social differences, just like the virus. The essential workers — medical personnel, bankers, grocers, cleaners, police, journalists, airline staff, delivery workers — would be the musicians making the lives of others comfortable and soothing. The migrant labourers would be the protagonists who need all the attention of the producers, directors and writers for the film to be successful. The quintessential villain would be Covid-19. This metaphor would not only engage the citizens in building a narrative together but also put the neediest in the centre-stage instead of side-lining them as collateral damage. As the director, the government would have the power to call some critical shots.
The innate human desire for happy endings would steer the storytellers towards doing right for all at stake. In conclusion, there are hardly any perfect metaphors to equate such a unique situation. However, this (or any such) alternative could serve the purpose of being all-pervasive and not incite hate and violence — something that humanity can do without in this moment of crisis.
Works Cited
George Lakoff, Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live By. University of Chicago Press, 2008.Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live By. University of Chicago Press, 2008.
Nair, Nandini. “Mind Your Pandemic Language.” Open 24 April 2020. Online.
About the Author
Sampurna is a Young India Fellow 2020, Writer, Photographer, Traveler and a Marketing & Sales Professional. She oscillates between the corporate world and liberal studies, voicing her opinions everywhere!
