Corona-logy: A Re-Configuration of Racial Dynamics in Contemporary India

The practice of racism is underpinned by various parameters: religion, geography, class, gender, and so forth. These underlying parameters have been faking their own insignificance and disappearance (Santos 2020) in such a systemic fashion that they successfully continue to operate in a naturalised and multiplicative manner in the contemporary era. For instance, let us look into the recent incidents of communal (stigmatisation of the Nizamuddin Markaz gathering), geographical (physical and verbal attacks on the local natives of Northeast India), class (chemical cleansing of the migrant workers), and gender (exclusion of the transgender community in relief packages) racism that India have been experiencing amidst the COVID-19 crisis. With respect to these aspects, this paper addresses the various ways through which COVID-19 is being used as a weapon to re-justify and re-configure the racial dynamics in contemporary India.