From Exceptionalism to Non-conformity: Pandemic Disobedience, Collective Irrationality, and Distributive Justice in India

This paper deploys the containment principle by Della Croce and Nicole-Berva (2021) to adjudicate COVID-19 non-conformity in India. The paper argues that the containment principle offers a guide to evaluating pandemic legislation and outlines the duties of the state. It then evaluates the Indian Pandemic response and legislation against the containment principles and finds it arbitrary, arguing that the discretionary power vested in the state enables it to treat two instances of COVID-19 non-conformities, the Tablighi Jamaat and the Kumbh, differently. The non-conformity of the devotees and the deviance of the state can be read within a framework of exceptionalism, collective irrationality, and conspiracy theories that firstly enables the devotees to maintain a sense of invulnerability, and secondly, allows the state to blame the minority community for threatening its exceptional status. These acts of non-conformities constitute disobedience against containment principles that are unjustifiable and demonstrate a moral failure to not harm others and a failure of the state to equally distribute benefits and burdens of pandemic policies.