India’s war on COVID-19: how the government is turning marginalised citizens into suspected enemies and criminals

In many of Narendra Modi’s speeches on tackling the spread of COVID-19, the Indian Prime Minister has employed a set of war-time metaphors to direct the nation’s response. Here Shreshtha Das (Independent Researcher, New Delhi) argues how this linguistic approach has turned citizens from some of the country’s marginalised groups into suspected enemies and criminals, against whom the wrath of the state and the society has been unleashed.