f you are a resident of
Madhya Pradesh, Muslim and poor, nowhere close to the class of nawabs
who can pay for murgh musallam or mutton raan, watch your pot! The BJP
government, led by Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, has just armed
itself with a big danda ostensibly to protect the holy cow and
its progeny. But make no mistake: it is a stick to beat you with.
To save your skin, turn vegetarian or get out of the
state. Better still, go to court. Veganism, remember, is not an option
in the land of gau rakshaks (cow protectors): that might be
construed as turning your back on what the gau mata (mother cow)
has on offer – doodh (milk), dahi (curd), desi ghee and
more.
In case you missed the news, the Madhya Pradesh
government’s Gau-Vansh Vadh Pratishedh (Sanshodhan) Act has just
received the presidential nod. Under the more-Hindu-than-thou
legislation, punishment for slaughtering the cow or its progeny,
transporting them to slaughter and storing beef will be severe: up to
seven years in jail.
Eating beef has been a contentious issue in the country
for long. A few years ago, Professor DN Jha, an eminent historian,
argued in his book that in ancient India, Hindus loved their cow and ate
it too. For Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, the Hindu Mahasabha leader who
gave us the “Hindutva” concept, the cow was merely a “useful animal” but
by no means a sacred animal.
But for the Arya Samaj founder Swami Dayananda Saraswati,
it was indeed Holy Cow. The Arya Samaj endorsed cow worship even though
it rejected idol worship and polytheism. To Mahatma Gandhi, the cow was
“a poem of pity”. He too worshipped it.
India has certainly had a long history of agitation for
cow protection. Today laws prohibiting cow slaughter are in force in
several parts of the country. This article is not about their rationale
but the severe punishment stipulated in the new enactment in Madhya
Pradesh.
A comparison with other states shows that there is no
bar, or limited restriction, on beef consumption in Bihar, West Bengal,
the north-eastern states – Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland,
Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura – and Kerala. Where prohibitory laws are in
place, the punishment for offenders varies from six months in
Maharashtra to two years in Orissa. Some of the stringent provisions are
in states which are, or have been, under BJP rule: Gujarat, Karnataka,
Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand.
Look at it from another angle: check out the Indian
Penal Code (IPC). For example, Section 295 of the IPC says that for
“whoever destroys, damages or defiles any place of worship”, the
prescribed punishment is imprisonment for a term which may extend to two
years, or a fine, or both. Could this mean that the punishment for
destroying the Babri mosque is two years in jail while the punishment
for slaughtering a cow, or keeping beef at home or in a hotel (in Madhya
Pradesh) is up to seven years?
Cow protection laws may be justified on religious
grounds. But the provision of stringent punishments in BJP-ruled states
clearly points to the communal dimension. This is starkly evident in the
case of BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh. Under its new law, a humble head
constable upwards, “or any person authorised by a competent authority”,
has the power to enter, inspect and search any premises “where he has
reason to believe that an offence has been, is being, or is likely to be
committed and take necessary action”.
Is likely to be committed? You do not need a
particularly fertile imagination to recognise the numerous possibilities
in this draconian and insidious provision to harass, intimidate,
implicate, detain, arrest or prosecute a targeted section of citizens.
In a state where as often as not the police function as the private
militia of the Saffron Brotherhood, who is to determine, and on what
basis, whether a chunk of meat stored in the fridge or simmering on the
burner comes from a buffalo (not prohibited) or from a cow or its
progeny?
The low-profile chief minister of Madhya Pradesh is
wilier than we think. Having successfully sold the idea that here is a
man whose sole concern is aspirational politics – bijli, sadak,
pani (electricity, roads and water) – Chouhan has been cannily
pursuing the politics of Hindutva Plus. Because he chooses to operate
below the media radar, the country remains blissfully ignorant of his
relentless Hinduisation of Madhya Pradesh society.
Consider the deeds of the Madhya Pradesh government as
enumerated by the Bhopal-based journalist and secular activist LS
Herdenia in a report last year:
Chouhan publicly enjoins government employees to take an
active part in RSS activities; several government schemes are named
after Hindu rituals and ceremonies; the Bhopal police chief issued a
“secret” circular to all police stations in 2011, directing them to
collect all kinds of information from Christian institutions under their
jurisdiction.
In early 2007 surya namaskar was made mandatory
in government schools. In 2009 the government declared that students
would have to recite a Sanskrit hymn, the Bhojan Mantra, before
partaking of their government-funded midday meals. In April 2011 Chouhan
announced that Gita Saar (Essence of the Gita) would henceforth be
compulsorily taught to all students. And many land allotments have been
made to various saffron organisations; one of them was struck down by
the Supreme Court in 2011.
Add the latest draconian enactment on cow slaughter to
the above and you get a complete picture of the agenda at work in BJP-ruled
Madhya Pradesh: target Muslims with cow slaughter, Christians with
“forced conversions”.