INDIA: Again, the Sacred Bovine Strays into Politics

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Apr 17 2003 (IPS) - Secular-minded politicians in India are discovering that keeping cows off busy roads in this majority-Hindu country is as impossible a task as keeping the sacred bovines from straying into politics at critical moments.

With provincial elections to three major states slated this year the pro-Hindu, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which rules India’s central government, has decided to rope in the cow by introducing in Parliament a bill aimed at completely banning its slaughter across the length and breadth of this vast and diverse country of more than billion people.

Laying out the ”guiding principles” to India’s 1950 Constitution, the founding fathers sought to protect the cow, its progeny and other cattle used in agriculture but, left the actual decision to individual state governments.

The uneasiness of the elders was apparent in their attempt to dilute the cow’s importance by pledging to ‘organise agriculture and animal husbandry on modern and scientific lines’ with ‘steps for preserving and improving the breeds and prohibiting the slaughter of cows and calves and other milch and draught cattle.’

But it is the attempt to pass central legislation on a federal subject that has got the goat of politicians from the political parties that are professedly secular, mainly the opposition Congress and the Left Front, which rules West Bengal and is powerful in southern Kerala – two major states which have large beef-eating populations.

When a BJP member’s resolution to introduce a bill to ban cow slaughter was voted into the Lower House of Parliament on Apr. 10, the opposition Congress party, members of Left Front and the Indian Muslim League (IML) walked out on the grounds that the House was incompetent to legislate on a state subject.

”We are not opposed to legislation to protect cows as such, but we want this to be left to the state governments,” said Priyaranjan Dasmunshi, spokesman for the Congress party and a well-known politician from West Bengal.

”People in different states have different dietary habits and certainly in the north-eastern states beef is regarded as an important source of protein,” Dasmunshi said.

But with many politicians from his own party keen to be seen as supporting a ban on cow slaughter rather than otherwise, Dasmunshi was careful to stick to the culinary rather than religious side of beef-eating.

In fact, one of the most vocal supporters of a national ban on cow slaughter is Chief Minister Digvijay Singh, who has headed a Congress party government in sprawling, central Madhya Pradesh state for two consecutive terms now, or almost 10 years.

Digivjay Singh is regarded one of the Congress party’s more progressive leaders and is credited with an overhaul of the state’s primary education system. But then, the incumbency factor weighs heavily on him and the BJP in the state is expected to give him a good fight in provincial elections due in November.

Two other important states that will go to polls along with Madhya Pradesh are the western desert state of Rajasthan and Delhi, which houses the national capital. Both states are currently run by Congress governments.

Rajasthan has moved to arrest fanatic Hindu leaders like Praveen Togadia and also ban public displays of the trident, another religious icon that is associated with Hindu fundamentalism.

In Madhya Pradesh, the BJP has moved to reclaim for Hindus the Bhojshala, a mediaeval structure whose ownership is disputed by Muslims and Hindus and now used by both communities for prayers. Digvijay has taken a suprisingly pro-Hindu approach to the dispute.

Reclamation of Hindu shrines lost to iconoclastic Muslim invaders over history is a popular and explosive enterprise in contemporary India and one which has paid huge political dividends to the BJP.

In fact, a violent campaign to demolish the 17th century Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in northern Uttar Pradesh state catapulted the BJP, an obscure party to until the early 80s, to national power under Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee five years ago.

The mosque was demolished in 1992, but the BJP has been prevented from rebuilding a temple on the site because of legal disputes over who owns the now vacant plot of land. Last month, the Supreme Court turned down a request from Vajpayee’s government to be allowed to conduct religious ceremonies at the site.

With the temple issue having to be shelved, the BJP has had to fall back on that other popular icon of the Hindu religion – the holy cow.

But the Congress party, the main loser in the BJP’s pro-Hindu movement has begun to hit back with what has been described by political watchers as ”soft Hindutva” which takes into account the sentiments of Hindus who form 70 percent of the population while hanging on to secular ideology.

Thus, during the last round state elections held in February, the Congress party, led by its Italian-born leader Sonia Gandhi released posters which accused Vajpayee of being secretly fond of beef burgers.

An official spokesman for the Congress party later distanced itself from the posters, but the party did oust the BJP from power in the important north Indian state of Himachal Pradesh.

Historians in India refer to the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny, which nearly brought the British Indian empire to an early end after it was rumoured that the bullet cartridges issued to soldiers was greased with beef tallow.

The British Raj was to last nearly another century – but only after the colonials let it be known that they would never interfere with the religious customs of the natives, especially those that had anything to do with the holy cow.