COW PROTECTION

The violence of the cow protection vigilantes, and government responsibility

                                                                                                                                  

For some months now, there have been reportd

and videos of cow vigilatism coming in from the Hindi heartland, on the borders of Delhi and Haryana, and other places in Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. It was quite clear that these vigilantes were not an insignificant number, and it was equally clear that what they were doing was outside the scope of the law. No law gives the right to intercept vehicles or other people unless you are a law enforcer (police or similar agency). The police should be the first one to object to any private citizens taking the law into their own hands, but in this case, the police did not take any action. Now, it is not an unfair proposition that this was because of political influences, and it is only the BJP (and the parent organization, the RSS) which is encouraging this tactic, of promoting the cow as a symbol of Hindu and national pride, the mother animal for the entire country. This came dramatically to the forefront during the attack in Dadri, where mere suspicion of the consumption of cow meat caused the death of a Muslim man. This attack horrified large sections of the country, but the local BJP leaders were not at all defensive. They rose to the defense of those people charged with the death, and there were politicians from to place who claimed that the cow was the holy mother, and anybody taking action against the cow would be threatened.
Now, when somebody threatens something, and sees that there is really no action being taken by the police against others taking such action, there is a lot of confidence that there is no responsibility behind such an action. The plus point was that typically the meat business at the local level (or the local butchers) is handled by Muslims (even if ownership of larger such operations would be with Hindus). However, at some point or the other, such action will have consequences that are adverse, and so it happened in this case.