CAA, Covid-19, SSR death: Everything that made 2020 a dark year for mankind

Last year this time, we all were making predictions about how 2020, the new decade is the year for all good things. Well, it truly was the year, just not the way we anticipated it to be. 2020 was anything but good and this year in specific will always be remembered by every surviving human being, for, it changed the way of life for the world. 

And while the pandemic Covid-19 was the major crisis we dealt with in 2020, there were many other losses also that we as a country faced. Other than this, there were other issues that ignited unrest, especially in India making 2020 a not so pleasant year. Take a look at all the bad that happened in 2020…

JNU Violence

At the beginning of January 2020, Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University saw a great deal of violence. An armed mob did not only terrorize the campus but also harmed many people - students were beaten up, stones were pelted making the incident an unpleasant one to begin the year with. 

CAA

While we were coming to terms with the January incident, the Citizenship Amendment Act also caused a lot of unrest in the country. In fact, violence erupted in Delhi causing some communal riots. Even at other places in Mumbai, lots of protests took place and the police had to lathi-charge on several occasions only making the country unpleasant. 

Covid-19

Even though the Coronavirus outbreak had happened in October 2019, the early cases of the viruses in India were detected in February 2020 and by March the disease was declared as a pandemic, resulting in a nationwide lockdown for months. While it caused a lot of harm to humankind it also changed the way of life to a great extent. And after the Spanish Flu, this has been the deadliest virus. In fact, even as 2020 ends were are dealing with some kind of curfew situation and there is no news of the vaccination coming. 

Death of Bollywood legends

Since April 2020, we also started losing some of the finest actors from Bollywood. While in April we lost actor Irrfan Khan after a prolonged illness, legendary actor Rishi Kapoor also died a day after Irrfan due to cancer. As we dealing with this loss, the talented actor Sushant Singh Rajput committed suicide at his Bandra apartment in Mumbai on June 14. After Sushant, we also lost legendary choreographer Saroj Khan and music composer Wajid Khan in the following months. 

Sushant Singh Rajput Death case, Media trials and Bollywood’s drug nexus

While the Sushant Singh Rajput death case put many well known Bollywood names under the scanner, the media trials accusing Sushant’s girlfriend Rhea Chakroborty as his murderer also made things quite unpleasant. Not just this, investigations also exposed Bollywood’s connection with the drug industry bringing up names of well-known actors consuming banned substances. The case is still under probe. 

Hathras gang rape

While in March, the accused of Nirbhaya gang-rape had their death sentence executed, in September something similar to the Delhi-gang rape happened in Hathras, Bihar. A 19-year-old Dalit girl was gang-raped by 4 upper-caste men. The victim died 2 weeks later, but no action was taken against the rapist exposing the bureaucracy of the system. 

India China tension

While as a country we dealt with so much, our soldiers at the Indo-China border of Galwan also fought their best to prevent invasion in the country. In June there were reports about a violent face-off between Indian and Chinese troops at the Galwan valley in Ladakh. This led to relations between the countries going bad and also the Indian government banning all trade relations with China. 

While these are a few highlights, there were many small issues also 2020 had in store for us. And if life had a delete button, all of us would surely want to do away with 2020. Now, we can only hope 2021 to be a little nice, if not better. 

Written by Nawaz Kochra