Mumbai Police uses their social media profiles for Public Service Announcements more than influencers use these platforms to sell products. Especially ever since the coronavirus pandemic began, their social media platforms have been flooded with memes, jokes, and anything that can help the public not only be informed, but entertained.
However, the latest post from Mumbai Police is not a meme from Mirzapur or a joke from a popular internet trend. The new message is simple, sombre, and elegant.
In a picture posted on Instagram earlier today, the department drew light towards the importance of sanitizing and keeping one’s hands germs free. It is a picture with a blurry background (possibly a corridor of a temple) and two hands in the foreground. One hand holds a hand sanitizer bottle, ready to pour it onto the other open palm. On the picture, it’s written in block letters, “DARSHAN WITH DILIGENCE.”
They suggest in the caption that worshipping God should be no excuse to fall lax on safety measures. Here’s the full caption:
"God helps those who safeguard themselves. Follow all Covid-19 related safety guidelines while visiting places of worship, which are now open."
They repeated the message in Marathi adding ‘pray for safety.’
The post has nearly 3,000 likes already. People left comments like ‘Darshan with Precautions,’ echoing the Mumbai Police’s post’s sentiments.
After nearly eight months of shut doors, the Maharashtra government announced the reopening of religious places on November 16. For the first time since the Phase 1 lockdown of March, people all across the state can visit temples, churches, mosques, gurudwaras and so on and offer their prayers to the Gods. Though the doors have been reopened, the government has imposed some guidelines for safe worshipping in the post-COVID world.
Crowding has to be avoided at all costs. The queues outside the place of worship will have to be socially distant, as well as the people/priests inside will have to follow safe distancing protocols. Masks and sanitizers have been made mandatory.
Maharashtra government kept the places of worship closed even after Unlock Phase 1 started and received a lot of criticism for this decision.