On the 10th day of the nationwide lockdown owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked the countrymen to demonstrate a collective will to fight coronavirus, a token demonstration of which, he said, would be to light candles, lamps and hold mobile phone torches for nine minutes from 9 p.m. on April 5.
In an address to the nation, he noted, “There is no bigger force than our conviction and resolve. There is nothing we cannot achieve with these forces.”
Mr. Modi made it very clear that the coronavirus threat could only be combated with the full cooperation of people, and that the collective strength was what would take the country out of what he termed “darkness that engulfs us” in the form of coronavirus.
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The plight of the poor, with the grinding halt of all economic activity, was also foremost in the Prime Minister’s speech. “We have to take our poor bretheren towards the light and certainty. To defeat this darkness, we have to shine the light in every direction,” he said.
Mr. Modi acknowledged that being under lockdown could be a lonely experience full of anxiety and assured people that “we, none of us, are alone” and that the “collective will of 1.3 billion people of India was with us in this time of crisis.”
As his earlier exhortation to applaud essential services workers during the Janata Curfew of March 22 saw instances of mass gatherings in some parts of the country, Mr. Modi made it a point to say that nobody should repeat it. “Either stay at your doors, on your balcony etc, but please do not cross the ‘Laxman Rekha’ of your home,” he said. “Social distancing is the only Ram Baan [weapon] we have to combat coronavirus,” he pointed out.
