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Sunday 9 pm 5 April, India – the great nation of 1.3 billion people – will rise, awake and respond to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call to demonstrate their collective will to “challenge the darkness spread by the corona crisis” by switching off all lights and illuminating the common purpose of fighting COVID 19 by lighting diyas, candles, and by flashing their torch and mobile lights.

The authorities in the Department of Space would be serving the national cause if they make arrangements by positioning and operating the satellites especially to obtain satellite images of the Indian Subcontinent before the lights are switched off at 9 pm on Sunday and during the 9 minute phase when people of India will be illuminating their world with diyas, candles, torches and mobile flash lights.

In that light, in that luster, in that radiance, let us resolve in our minds that we are not alone, that no one is alone!130 crore Indians are committed,through a common resolve – Prime Minister Narendra Modi

Prime Minister Modi, who addressed the nation on Friday 3 March, invoked the collective strength of 130 crore Indians and said “it is required for our countrymen, to experience the greatness, majesty and divinity of this collective strength from time to time”.

The PM also told the citizens, “The manner in which you had expressed gratitude to all those fighting against the Coronavirus on Sunday 22 March, has today become an example for all countries. Many are replicating it now.”

Congress on a Tangent Course

Congress leaders lost no time and were on a Modi bashing spree. Immediately after the PM’s address, which was widely televised, Congress leader P Chidambaram observed that Modi was expected to roll out a generous livelihood package for the poor. Not to be left behind in the Opposition camp was another Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, who chose to quiz the government regarding efforts to contain the virus.

Warped Mindset

Shehla Rashid, a JNU activist, who was booked last year for sedition over her tweets on Kashmir, said in a tweet directly addressing the Prime Minister on Friday that she neither has a torch not a candle and will probably be cooking food at 9 pm on Sunday. This tweet, along with what’s in sharp contrast, a 2016 facebook post she had used to invite her friends and followers to “join a candle light vigil in solidarity with the victims of Dhaka Attacks” in the JNU campus, have been put in a single frame that’s gone viral on social media. Shehla has again given the people of India the reason to talk of the warped mindset of such people, who claim to serve the larger public interest.