3/19/2017 AshortaccountofIndia'slonghistoryofhypocrisyoncowslaughterlawsWorldDAWN.

COM

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. Reuters/File

Rumour has always been a weapon for the anti-cow slaughter

movement, as is evident from Akshaya Mukuls 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
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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.

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Looking back
The targeting of Muslims on the issue of beef is ironic also
because it was one 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 claimed were
dubious and difficult to sustain logically.

This plea arose from two types of arguments cited by the votaries
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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 shouldnt 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 Ambedkars 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 Di erence in
India, researcher Shraddha Chigateri notes, tongue-in-cheek,
This unique constitutional protection would have meant that
the protection 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
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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
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
Saadulla, 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
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suspicion in the minds of many that the ingrained Hindu feeling
against cow slaughter is being satis ed by the backdoor.

Saadulla 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 Saadulla questioned the argument that Hindu reverence for the
cow was always re ected 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 Indias 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
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.

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 Rights dismay, .
Kalyan (published by the Gita Press) asked, if this was the
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Kalyan (published by the Gita Press) asked, if this was the
treatment meted out to old cows, would the same be done to old
people who had ceased to be useful?

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 hadnt 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, therefore, ultra vires of the Constitution.
Attack on Parliament
Unwilling to dilute their position from a nationwide ban on cattle
slaughter, various cow-protection groups united to stage a
massive protest before Parliament on November 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.

The cow was back to grazing the political pasture in 2005,

courtesy the Supreme Courts 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 a certain age, in terms of added benefits of urine, dung
manure and biogas, especially in this age of alternate sources of
energy.

In other words, the hypocrisy displayed in the Constituent

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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 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 the cow-

protectionists will never 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 among Hindus.

Ajaz Ashraf is a journalist from Delhi. His novel, The Hour Before
Dawn, published by HarperCollins, is available in bookstores.

This article was originally published on Scroll.in and has been

reproduced with permission.

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