Read on Twitter
Tweets like this have begun to make their rounds on Indian diaspora networks. Understand that this is a deeply manipulative narrative, claiming spectacle and religious debasement in order to divert attention from the realities in India. This will aid in a later govt cover up.
We have seen this occur time and again, and it has already begun as our authoritarian regime has mobilised to have tweets deleted by twitter, to arrest people, to claim that COVID response is supposedly under control. It is not. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Understand that those crematorium images serve to show the government claims of low COVID deaths as a lie. We barely have testing, with some states threatening labs to issue only "no COVID" results; doctors & hospitals told not to issue COVID death certificates. Understand this.
If you have been witness to Indian twitter these last weeks, you know the sheer scope of what is occurring. You've seen enough loss, horror, desperation, and aid to understand that our government would rather we die than admit they are wrong. Understand this too.
This regime thrives on violence & misinformation. The dead cannot speak for themselves now & any documentation has already been manipulated. So this is not about disrespect for the dead. It is about ensuring the dead are seen because our govt refuses to acknowledge them.
The claim that these images of a crematorium are like a horror movie without context -- at what point are we not living in horror right now? At what point are we not deeply traumatised by these losses? How DARE you claim context would make this less horrifying. HOW DARE YOU.
I am shaking with rage. Context does not take the horror away from these images; it makes them MORE horrifying because in so many cases these are lives lost that could have been saved. We are mired in horror because these are people: our communities, our families, our friends.
The disrespect would be to aid the government in pretending that these losses are not happening, that they weren't preventable. The disrespect is to pretend we are not terrifyingly deep in crisis because of the mobilisation of religious bigotry.
How fucking dare you.
How fucking dare you.
