The state the nation is not healthy, for the nation’s states have contracted an unnamed viral fever going strong. Symptom: cold-shouldering sing-song voices of reason/freedom, spasms of cough but no syrup against the strong arms of the radical/fanatic, and mind-numbing lethargy to act.

This could well be the diagnosis if the nation was a human specimen and went to a doctor for a health check-up.

And the viral sure is spreading. While it never was off air, it just seems to fell more and more states in its net. So if West Bengal does nothing to stop arrest of people for some good-humour lampooning the chief minister, Maharashtra stops and stares as hoodlums swearing allegiance to a zealous political leader threaten some girls for daring to question the shutdown of Mumbai following the leader’s death; if Andhra Pradesh sits like Swami Vivekananda, arms locked against the chest, as a legislator spews venom in the name of a religion, then Tamil Nadu does even little as over-enthusiastic people, again in the name of religion, force an about-to-be-released film to be shelved for a fortnight.

Jammu and Kashmir appears to be the latest victim to fall prey that viral, as a band formed by three class ten girls is forced to call it quits — threatened and scared by the fringe radicals, their musical dreams mashed to pulp and free spirit pulverised by the foot soldiers of unreason. Amid all this, the state’s chief minister, Omar Abdullah, plays the modern-day Nero, fiddling with his phone to flirt with and flare on Twitter as home burnt.

Well, almost. As of Tuesday, the band Pragaash (meaning — at your service, Irony — ‘light’) is safe and sound following Abdullah’s voice of support. An FIR was filed against “unnamed people” who threatened vocalist-guitarist Noma Nazir, drummer Farah Deeba and guitarist Aneeka Khalid on their Facebook page. Threatened with social boycott, their families would much rather have nothing to do with music or the media, lest the notes of disconnect go off-key and fly off the handle.

The girls are safe not because Omar Abdullah, among many other political leaders who rush to extend “unflinching support” to victims at such times, urged them not to quit singing because of a “bunch of morons”. They are purportedly safe because they have done the exact opposite: they have disbanded the band.

They are safe because they have followed the diktats of Bashiruddin Ahmad, the state’s grand mufti, who on Sunday issued a fatwa against the band. “I have said that singing is not in accordance with Islamic teachings,” he told PTI.

They are also safe because they went underground soon after receiving threats of ‘social boycott’ from Dukhataarn-e-Millat (meaning ‘daughters of the nation’; in effect, daughters of the nation against many other daughters of the nation who deviates from their thought mafia decrees).

They are equally safe because Asiya Andrabi, the leader of the radical women’s outfit, on Tuesday backed the grand mufti’s fatwa, thereby making the teens doubly safe. “There is no place for music in Islam. Women can't be seen singing and dancing. The fatwa issued is right,” she said.

The girls are safe because the FIR (ironically lodged under the same Section 66A of IT Act that lulled West Bengal and Maharashtra into feverish inaction) filed by the police does not name anyone — neither those who ordered them to stop singing nor those who threatened them to fall in line — and would thus become a non-issue faster than Noma, Farah and Aneeka check their notes and change tune. Because that — changing the tune, and eventually ‘falling in line’ — they would surely do soon. For their own safety, because they have no one else to fall back on.

As a relative of the girls were quoted in a report in The Hindu on Tuesday, “We have seized their cellphones and laptops. Their band has been shut….. Nobody is safe here. The chief minister’s tweets and the police can’t protect us. We don’t want to get caught in politics.”

That’s called talking about the daze of the nation in hushed tones — in hash-tag days.