INDIA’s cow has found a “savior” in Prime Minister Narendra Modi. But, his task places him in conflict with the very people who elected him two years ago.
Last week, he vented his “anger” at “self-styled” vigilantes who, in the name of “protecting the mother”, have been targeting cowherds and farmers selling off old animals, tanners, transporters and Muslims suspected of consuming beef.
Cow protection (gau raksha) has become “a business” of “anti-socials with criminal records”, he charged.
“If you want to attack, attack me, not dalits. If you want to shoot, shoot me,” he told those behind recent atrocities on dalits, the low-caste Hindus. His rhetoric excluded the Muslims, though.
“India is a country full of diversities, different values and traditions, and protecting its unity and integrity is our prime responsibility,” he said, decrying “a handful of people destroying the social fabric and creating conflict in our society”.
If at all, cows needed protection from dying from “eating plastic”, he said, referring to the abandoned hungry animals scouring for food in garbage. A common site, this has troubled conservationists and animal lovers.
While welcoming his belated breaking of silence, what he should have said, but did not (or cannot), needs noting. Decrying vigilantism, Modi did not dissociate himself, his government and the party from the “cause” of cow protection.
He referred to historical battles between rajas and badshahs, a clear Hindu-versus-Muslim metaphor. The latter, he said, would use cows as shields in a battle. The former would not hit cows, and eventually, lost.
He contrasted “real cow-protectors” from “fake” ones and asked the former to “expose” the latter. By terming perpetrators as “anti-socials”, Modi sought to insulate his party and its numerous affiliate bodies that come under the umbrella of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS). These affiliates have, by their own admission, been engaging in violence across the country.
It is a given, anywhere, that anti-socials become part of mob campaigns. The “cannot” caveat inserted above is because Modi, despite his high-profile, even personalised, governance style, heading a government with massive parliamentary majority and his party ruling in most major states, is increasingly seen as being isolated.
This isolation comes from opposition to his attempts to carry diverse forces along and push economic development and reforms. It is from within and “above” — the RSS to which he, most of his ministers and a majority of his party’s lawmakers at the federal and state levels belong. The organisation has supported Modi’s new stance, but its cadres are reportedly furious.
Modi avoided directly naming any person or organisation. Why? A prime minister “only sends a message”, explains a party official, which may be so. That message earned a repost from a prominent cow-protection body that reminded him of the support it had lent during the 2014 electoral campaign.
Modi himself dismissed his widely perceived failure to speak up earlier as the political opposition’s gambit to win “TRPs on TV”.
The action ought to come not from him but from administrations, especially at the state level. Now that he has spoken, bureaucracy may act vigilantes, going by past experience, may pipe down for a while.
The issue has long history and numerous paradoxes. The biggest paradox, perhaps, is that the “Hindu” India, widely perceived as a vegetarian’s paradise, is the world’s fifth biggest beef consumer.
During his 2014 campaign, Modi had accused the Congress-led regimes of promoting a “pink revolution”, an euphemism for beef exports. But, the law prohibiting cow slaughter, upheld by the Supreme Court many times, was also enacted during the Congress era.
India has the world’s largest cattle population that is crucial to its economy. It is the fourth largest producer of beef after Brazil, the European Union and China.
Beef constitutes the second biggest chunk of meat production in Asia’s third largest economy. Most of it comes from water buffaloes and the rest, from other cattle, as per data from the department of animal husbandry, dairying and fisheries.
Beef exports give India more foreign revenue than even the aromatic basmati rice, CNN Money reported in August last year. Vietnam, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and Egypt are top importers of Indian beef.
The legal trade has even gone online. At the “informal” level, millions of cattle are smuggled out to neighbouring Pakistan and Bangladesh with connivance on both sides.
Analysts see cow protection campaign, meant to rally the Hindus, as more divisive than an earlier one over building of Lord Rama’s temple in the holy Ayodhya city, during which the 16th century Babri Mosque was demolished in 1992. That was, and remains, a legal dispute. The Hindustan Times newspaper asked: “Is cow protection the new Ram Mandir?”
The cow protection campaign targets large sections of low-caste Hindus, besides minority Muslims and Christians, who are estimated to consume beef as a cheap protein source. With forensic laboratories pressed into service to investigate if a said piece of meat was beef or not, the cow protection programme is implicating all meat-eaters.
With his disclaimers, Modi has sought to control the damage being caused by the political fallout, of which could be serious in key states where assembly elections are due.
His expression of “anger” came amidst replacing the chief minister of Gujarat that Modi ruled before becoming prime minister. It seemed a direct consequence of the vigilante-led violence. Hindu youths traditionally engaged in skinning and tanning of slaughtered animals were publicly thrashed. Vigilantes themselves posted video clips on the social media “to set an example”.
Otherwise friendly United States lawmakers and groups elsewhere monitoring religious oppression have expressed concern afresh. Frequent vigilantism is sullying India’s image abroad that Modi has assiduously sought to build.
Reverence for cow, whether genuine or whipped up, cannot override the basic reality that a debt-ridden farmer, struggling to raise crop and a family amidst daunting uncertainties, cannot afford to feed cattle that can’t be milked or tied to the yoke. It’s piety-versus-productivity.
The writer, NST’s New Delhi correspondent, is the president of the Commonwealth Journalists Association and a consultant with ‘Power Politics’ monthly magazine