A journalist declared Wednesday’s #NotInMyName protest at Jantar Mantar a “flop show” for low turnout without even attending it. It was like a film critic giving half a star to a movie without watching it!

I prefer not to indulge in the binaries of success or failure when it comes to protests. To hope for the success of a protest is human, but to go ahead with it despite defeat being certain takes a large-hearted citizen.

Every one of us, who went to Jantar Mantar or any other venue in more than 11 cities across the country on June 28, is a citizen. And if we were able to compel right-wingers to bitterly criticise the protest and force our Prime Minister to break his long-studied silence and condemn mob lynchings in the name of the cow, I guess we have achieved reasonable success.

But can we stop here? The short answer is no. We have to build on it and I am too naïve to preach to anyone how to do that. An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching, said Gandhi. Therefore, in the following paragraphs, I would not suggest anything which I haven’t already done.

On the Legal Front

The first thing we should do is file petitions or public interest litigations (PILs) in the high court of every state which imposes a complete ban on cow slaughter and consumption of beef. Barring three to four states, such bizarre laws exist across all Indian states. If such a law exists in your state, please file a petition in your state’s high court. Just imagine the kind of impact that multiple writ petitions, filed at the same time at various high courts, have the potential to create.

Apart from the threats of assault or social boycott, another side effect of this petition would be: the real character of your state government would be revealed.

Spoiler alert: the likelihood of it stinking of hypocrisy is extremely high.

For example, Manish Sisodia eagerly joined Wednesday’s protest and said, “What society eats or wears is as per the needs of society” to gain some political mileage. Inside the Delhi High Court, however, his government has been dodging the court’s order to clarify their official stand on beef ban laws in Delhi for the past 10 months. This has been their level of evasiveness when my writ petition challenges the constitutional validity of only the ban on possession and consumption of beef and not of the ban on cow slaughter.

I am not saying that by getting beef ban laws repealed, we would be cured of these malignant cow terrorists. It would, nevertheless, send a clear signal to these fanatics that their sentiments or ideology has no legal backing. Martin Luther King Jr. said on December 18, 1963, at Western Michigan University, “It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me but it can keep him from lynching me.”

If I am permitted to suggest a logical extension to this strategy, what holds good for the states must also hold good for the Centre. We simply cannot let the Modi government to impose a de-facto ban on cattle slaughter all over India by cunningly regulating access to cattle markets. We must file a petition in the Supreme Court of India against the blatantly unconstitutional changes brought in the rules under Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (PCA) Act, 1960 – the most prominent one being that cattle can’t be sold or bought for slaughter via cattle markets now.

On the Social Front

One of the messages we conveyed by coming together to say #NotInMyMame is that our identity, ideology, orientation, religion, caste, class or profession doesn’t muzzle our voice. I may be a practising Hindu but that doesn’t prohibit me from raising my voice in support of Muslims, who are being targeted by Hindu extremists. I may be a Jain by birth, but that doesn’t stop me from raising my voice against the beef-based divisive politics of another Jain (Amit Shah).

This message needs more assertion by our consistent actions. The way we came out on the roads against the targeted mob lynching of Muslims and Dalits, we should also come out against the state-abetted suicides of poor farmers, or state-sponsored atrocities against tribals in the name of Maoism or state-induced unemployment and economic devastation in the name of demonetisation or GST.

We should also come out on the roads when Aadhaar is shoved down our throats when political funding is made opaque, when rampant land grabbing is legalised as well as other instances where no direct human tragedy is involved.

Of course, one can’t possibly have a well-informed opinion about everything, neither do we have an infinite supply of time and energy. With due regard to these limitations, we have to widen the spectrum of our voice so that it tunes in with not just one of the two familiar frequencies but with newer frequencies as well which would otherwise die out, if not amplified.

You can contact the author at @gauravjain26.