20/03/2016
A short account of India's long history of hypocrisy on cow slaughter laws
BEEF LYNCHING
A short account of
India's long history of
hypocrisy on cow
slaughter laws
by Ajaz Ashraf
Published 5 months ago. Updated 5 months ago.
The cow protection movement has been a useful vehicle for
targetting Muslims.
Image credit: Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters
5 months ago
Updated 5 months ago
Ajaz Ashraf
45.6K Total views
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A short account of India's long history of hypocrisy on cow slaughter laws
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Rumour has always been a weapon for the anti-cow slaughter movement, as is
evident from Akshaya Mukul’s magisterial book, Gita Press and the Making of
Hindu India. After India gained Independence and Jawaharlal Nehru became
prime minister, Mukul writes, a delegation of Hindu leaders called on him to
demand a ban on cow slaughter. Nehru heard them patiently and then asked,
“Why do you people run a campaign that I eat beef?” The delegates denied
they had spread this information, but suggested that the best way for him to
silence his critics would be to ban cow slaughter.
In September 2015, as India undergoes a digital makeover under Prime
Minister Narendra Modi, the rumour that Mohammad Akhlaq and his family
had eaten beef and had stocked some in their refrigerator is said to have so
enraged the residents of a village in Dadri town, next door to Delhi, they
decided to lynch him. It is more evidence, if any was needed, of how rumours
about beef consumption have long been used to terrorise Muslims.
It is ironic that Muslims have been the sole target of the proponents of the
anti-cow slaughter movement from its inception in the late 19th century. As
such, a large number of communities in India consume beef in India –
Christians, Dalits, groups in the North East, among them.
Looking back
The targeting of Muslims on the issue of beef is ironic also because it was one
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A short account of India's long history of hypocrisy on cow slaughter laws
of their representatives in the Constituent Assembly who had declared their
approval for a ban on cow-slaughter in the 1940s. The only condition he
suggested was that the Constitution should specifically mention that the ban
had been imposed to uphold the religious sentiments of Hindus – and not
because of economic reasons, all
of which
they
Sunday,
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difficult
to sustain
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This plea arose from two types of arguments cited by the votaries of the cow
protection movement. There was the religious argument – that the cow
shouldn’t be slaughtered because it was an object of veneration among the
Hindus from time immemorial, which is why beef was a taboo food item for
them. This myth has been punctured through several scholarly studies over
the years, not least by BR Ambedkar’s 1948 work, The Untouchable and Why
They Became Untouchables? Ambedkar linked the status of Untouchables to
their eating the meat of the dead cow.
The economic argument spoke of the multifarious roles the cow plays in the
agrarian economy, from providing milk to pulling the plough, to being a
source of cheap fuel, to the therapeutic value of its urine, to being a symbol of
wealth. Thus, it was said, Hindus considered the cow holy because of the
many economic benefits accruing from it. Yet, in many senses, the economic
argument was merely an attempt to dress the religious sentiment in the garb
of rationality.
The more exuberant members of the Hindu Right not only wanted the
Constitution to explicitly ban cow-slaughter but also have such a provision to
be incorporated in its chapter on the Fundamental Rights. In a fascinating
essay, Negotiating the ‘Sacred’ Cow: Cow Slaughter and the Regulations of
Difference in India, researcher Shraddha Chigateri notes, tongue-in-cheek,
“This unique constitutional protection would have meant that the protection
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A short account of India's long history of hypocrisy on cow slaughter laws
of the cow would have been treated on par with other human fundamental
rights such as right to life, right to equality, etc…”
Economic rationale
In the debate in the Constituent Assembly, Pandit Thakur Dass Bhargava and
Seth Govind Das proffered economic reasons to demand the ban on cow
slaughter. Bhargava said,
“To grow more food and to improve agriculture and the cattle breed are all
inter-dependent and are two sides of the same coin. [ ...] The best way of
increasing the production is to improve the health of human beings and
breed of cattle, whose milk and manure and labour are most essential for
growing food. [...] From both points of view, of agriculture and food,
protection of the cow becomes necessary.”
However, Das referred to the religious argument in his submission to the
Assembly: “... Cow protection is not only a matter of religion with us; it is also
a cultural and economic question.” The cow had, by then, already become an
incendiary issue dividing Hindus and Muslims, largely because Gaurakshini
(cow protection) Sabhas had already mushroomed in large parts of North
India. The activism of the Sabha members triggered riots in several towns in
the last decade of 19th century. During the Khilafat movement of 1919, the
Hindu Right offered their support to Muslim leaders in return for them
supporting the ban on cow-slaughter, Mukul notes.
The hypocritical tendency to cloak the religious demand in economic
arguments inspired a Muslim member from the United Provinces, ZA Lari, to
say, “Mussalmans of India have been, and are, under the impression that they
can, without violence to the principles which govern the State, sacrifice cows
and other animals on the occasion of Bakrid.” He went on to suggest to the
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A short account of India's long history of hypocrisy on cow slaughter laws
Assembly, “If the House is of the opinion that slaughter of cows should be
prohibited, let it be prohibited in clear, definite and unambiguous words.”
Cutting thorugh the clutter
What could those unambiguous words be? Syed Muhammad Sa’adulla, a
Muslim member from Assam, was forthright in declaring,
“I do not want to obstruct the framers of our Constitution ... if they come out
in the open and say directly: ‘This is part of our religion. The cow should be
protected from slaughter and therefore we want its provision either in the
Fundamental Rights or in the Directive Principles ...’ But, those who put it on
the economic front ... do create a suspicion in the minds of many that the
ingrained Hindu feeling against cow slaughter is being satisfied by the
backdoor.”
Sa’adulla said there were thousands of Muslims who did not eat beef, and that
cattle for the agriculturists among them were as useful for them as they were
for their Hindu counterparts. To quote Chigateri,
“Syed Sa’adulla questioned the argument that Hindu reverence for the cow
was always reflected through a taboo on slaughter, arguing that in Assam,
when there was a shortage of cattle and a prohibition on the slaughter of
milch or draught cattle, it was Hindus who resorted to slaughtering cows with
the argument that the cattle were unserviceable and ‘dead weight’.”
But at the dawn of a new era, India wanted to hide from the world the
irrationality that had a pull on its citizens and their leaders. It chose the
language of rationality to introduce cow-protection in the chapter on the
Directive Principle of State Policy. Call it a classic example of India’s penchant
to find the middle path. Nevertheless, Ambedkar is mostly credited for saving
India the blushes of becoming the only country in the world to extend the
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A short account of India's long history of hypocrisy on cow slaughter laws
fundamental right to an animal.
Cloak of rationalism
Thus came into existence Article 48, which still reads, “The State shall
endeavour to organise agriculture and animal husbandry on modern and
scientific lines and shall, in particular, take steps for preserving and
improving the breeds, and prohibiting the slaughter of cows and other milch
and draught cattle.” But this compromise did not satisfy the Hindu Right,
which wanted a total ban on cattle-slaughter.
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It soon found a reason to feel aggrieved on account of the model bill on cow
slaughter that the Centre had circulated among the States. This was because
the model bill allowed the slaughter of cows above 14 years and those unable
to conceive. Mukul quotes an editorial of Kalyan to portray the Hindu Right’s
dismay, “…. Kalyan (published by the Gita Press) asked, if this was the
Meat unit equity: Company filings show why BJP's Sangeet Som should quit politics (like
treatment meted out to old cows, would the same be done to old people who
he promised)
had ceased to be useful?”
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Nevertheless, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh enacted
laws banning cow-slaughter. That the Congress was in power in these four
states suggests the Hindu Right did, even under Nehru, occupy substantial
space in the party. As expected, the cow became a matter of court dispute.
The Supreme Court has upheld the notion that the cow was held in reverence
by the Hindus, prompting legal luminaries, such as Upendra Baxi, to say the
judges perhaps hadn’t been rigorous in examining this sweeping proposition.
However, the Supreme Court has also ruled that a ban on the slaughter of
bullocks and bulls, despite being old age and no longer economically useful,
amounted to imposing unreasonable restrictions on the butchers – and was,
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A short account of India's long history of hypocrisy on cow slaughter laws
therefore,
ultra vires of the Constitution.
1.
Attack on Parliament
Unwilling to dilute their position from a nationwide ban on cattle slaughter,
various'Why
cow-protection
groups
to stage
a massive
before
are you bracketing
me asunited
a Muslim?:
Asaduddin
Owaisiprotest
on why he
won’t say
Parliament
'Bharaton
Mata
November
ki Jai'
7, 1966. Provocative speeches instigated the crowd
to attack Parliament, leading to lathi-charge by the police. In the ensuing
violence eight people died. It prompted Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to sack
Home Minister Gulzarilal Nanda, who subsequently became a member of the
anti-cow slaughter movement.
2.
The cow was back to grazing the political pasture in 2005, courtesy the
Supreme Court’s judgement upholding the decision of the Gujarat government
to impose a total ban on cattle slaughter, regardless of whether the bovine is
useless or not. The judgement said bullocks and bulls are useful, as Chigateri
notes, “past
certain
age,
in terms
added
benefits
of urine,
dungReally
– manure
ChetanaBhagat
gave
Partition
creditoffor
India beating
Pakistan
at cricket.
and biogas, especially in this age of alternate sources of energy”.
In other words, the hypocrisy displayed in the Constituent Assembly has
persisted nearly seven decades later. Both Maharashtra and Haryana have
followed suit, the latter imposing an incredible 10 years of imprisonment to
3.
anyone found guilty of slaughtering a cow, a bull or an oxen, or even caught
carrying or consuming beef. However, the ban has also stoked suspicions that
Muslims are slaughtering cattle clandestinely, leading to police cases being
filed against them.
The killing
of Akhlaq
near Delhi
testifies
that
cow-protectionists
will never
Meghnad
Desai explains
the fallacies
in the
ideathe
of Hindu
nationalism
forego the weapon of rumour about beef eating because it can be tellingly
used to foment hatred against Muslims and to paper over caste divisions
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A short account of India's long history of hypocrisy on cow slaughter laws
among Hindus.
4.
Ajaz Ashraf is a journalist from Delhi. His novel, The Hour Before Dawn,
published by HarperCollins, is available in bookstores.
We welcome your comments at letters@scroll.in.
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A short account of India's long history of hypocrisy on cow slaughter laws
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A short account of India's long history of hypocrisy on cow slaughter laws
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