IN the mid-1980s, Western media were full of stories about “mad cow disease”, a rare illness people can get from eating infected beef. Right now, India is facing a problem connected with cows. But the domestic animal is innocent. The real culprits are the people who have gone mad because of their love or reverence for cow.
Last week two Muslim women were thrashed in Madhya Pradesh, in the presence of police, following rumors that they were carrying cow meat. On July 6, four Dalits (low caste Hindus) were flogged in Gujarat on suspicion of slaughtering a cow. In January 2016, a Muslim couple, among others, was assaulted by seven members of Gau Raksha Dal (Cow Protection Group) at Khirkiya railway station of Madhya Pradesh over suspicion of carrying beef.
A trucker accused of carrying cattle carcasses was killed in October 2015 by a Molotov cocktail in Jammu and Kashmir. One month earlier, Mohammad Akhlaq, 50, was dragged out of his house in Dadri, Uttar Pradesh, and beaten to death by a mob in front of his wife and daughters.
Most states in India have laws banning slaughter of cows because Hindus consider cows holy. These laws, enacted mostly by Congress governments, were in place long before Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in 2014. Along with ban on cow slaughter and the consumption or possession of beef, various states have made it a crime to sell or transport cows out of their jurisdiction if they are destined for the butcher.
The laws may be old but there is a new vigor in implementing it because now India is ruled by a party, the BJP, which has always called for a total ban on cow slaughter in the country. At least two states have adopted or tightened bans on the slaughter and consumption of beef since Modi assumed office. Strict implementation of cow-related laws and a reverence for the animal is promoted in all the BJP-ruled states.
In Gujarat, cow slaughter can result in a seven-year jail term. Rajasthan has plans for India's first “Ministry for Cows” while Madhya Pradesh has set up a cow sanctuary. In short, anti-cow slaughter campaign has gathered a new momentum. This is what has emboldened cow protection vigilantes who feel it is their duty to punish those they think go against the sentiments of Hindus. They have stopped large numbers of trucks transporting cows, hides and carcasses. In this chaotic, but sustained atmosphere of violence, mere suspicion of beef consumption or the transportation of cows for slaughter is enough for vigilantes to spring into action and beat people, if not outrightly kill them. Specific communities — Muslims and Dalits — suffer the most at their hands. The zealots belonging to the sister organizations of BJP accuse Muslims of stealing cows at night, herding them into trucks and taking them to secret slaughterhouses.
If there is anything worse than the vigilantes' activism, it is the indifference of Prime Minister Modi to such open defiance of law. Many believe he is tacitly encouraging intolerance and mob violence by refusing or failing to speak out against it. The situation has reached such a stage that the US has asked the Indian government to do “everything in its power”
to protect citizens and to bring to justice those who indulge in violence in the name of cow. Nobody is calling for the repeal of laws that prohibit slaughter of cows or their ill-treatment. But if someone is violating the law relating to cow slaughter, it is the police and courts who should take action, not the self-appointed guardians of cow. To allow people to operate outside the legal frame work may win some votes for the BJP in the short-term. But in the long-run, it will lead to the collapse of the civil society adversely affecting all Indians irrespective of party or religious affiliations.
