HIGHLIGHTS:
PM Modi pitches for 9-minute show of solidarity
Asks public to light diyas, candles, use mobile flashlights
Light to ‘illuminate common purpose’ in virus fight
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has asked Indians under lockdown to switch off all lights at home at 9 pm Sunday (April 5 2020) and light candles or diyas — or use the flashlights on their mobile phones — to mark the national fight against the coronavirus outbreak.
India: We are about halfway through the 21-day national lockdown, Prime Minister Narendra Modi called for a nine-minute blackout at 9pm on Sunday and urged people to use candles, diyas and mobile torchlights to demonstrate solidarity and reiterate a collective resolve to beat back the challenge posed by the Covid-19 pandemic.
PM Modi asked his compatriots to do this for nine minutes.
To assure people, particularly the poor, that their travails will end. “Amidst the darkness spread by the corona pandemic, we must continuously progress towards light and hope. We must continuously strive to take those of us most affected, our poor brothers and sisters, from despair to hope and from uncertainty to certainty. We must defeat the deep darkness of the crisis,” Modi said.
“At that time, if you have turned off all the lights of your homes, and each one of us in all directions has lit a diya, we will experience the superpower of light, clearly illuminating the common purpose we are all fighting for,” he said.
“In that light, in that lustre, in that radiance, let us resolve in our minds that we are not alone, that no one is alone.”
– Prime Minister Narendra Modi
