On April 29, Amit Jaiswal, a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), passed away in Mathura, a small town in Uttar Pradesh state, just three hours from the national capital.
The 42-year old died of COVID-19 ten days after testing positive. His grieving family said that despite repeated SOS tweets to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who followed Jaiswal on Twitter, no assistance came.
The RSS, a far-right Hindu supremacist organisation founded in 1925, is the ideological fountainhead of Modi’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and counts the prime minister among millions of its members across India.
Jaiswal’s heartbroken family tore off Modi’s posters that he had pasted on his car, claiming they would “never forgive Modi for his indifference”.
“We are in a state of deep depression and can’t talk to anybody, nobody can help us,” his inconsolable sister Sonu Alagh told Al Jazeera two weeks later.
Grief-stricken and angry at the avoidable deaths of their loved ones due to the coronavirus, thousands of Indians have heaped scornful criticism on Modi and his BJP, with the bitterness transcending barriers of religion, class, caste and politics.
Over the last two months, social media platforms including Facebook and Twitter have seen anti-Modi hashtags such as #ResignModi, #ModiFailsIndia and #ModiAgainstNation go viral.
But BJP politician Sudhanshu Mittal claims the government “did whatever we could” to fight the pandemic.
“When you tread an uncharted path there are no benchmarks to follow and nobody knew that this would be the catastrophic extent of the second wave,” he told Al Jazeera, adding that health is a “state subject” and that “some states are playing politics”.
“This is not the time for politics or blame-game. That can happen later,” Mittal said.
‘Won’t vote for Modi again’
Chetan Kaushal, a restaurateur who was forced to shut down his business due to the coronavirus lockdown last year, says he is one of those who voted for Modi despite demonetisation and “other faults” in his first term (2014-19) as prime minister.
Demonetisation refers to Modi’s controversial overnight banning of banknotes of higher denomination and issuing fresh notes in 2016, leading to huge chaos as people crowded ATMs and banks to withdraw their money.
“I believed he deserved a second chance but I don’t think I will vote for him ever again,” Kaushal told Al Jazeera.
Achyut Trivedi, a New Delhi-based marketing professional and active member of the BJP for the last 12 years, said “people like me are determined that we will not make the mistake of voting for Modi for the third time”.
“At least I won’t do it after what my family has gone through,” he told Al Jazeera.
Modi, who has faced international criticism over a crumbling economy and a perceptible decline in civil and political liberties, faces his biggest threat domestically as a vicious second COVID-19 wave rages across India.
