The Cow Question in Modern India: Part II

In part one of the piece, the author traced the history of cow protection from the late 19th century up until the 1940s. You can read the piece here.

. Accounts of constituent assembly proceedings on Article 48, say that Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar insisted on restricting cow protection to Directive Principles of State Policy (DPSP). Unlike fundamental rights, DPSP isn’t legally enforceable. Eventually, cow protection was incorporated as just a part of DPSP. 1

. The non-religious wording of the Article 48 is attributed by some to Dr Ambedkar, while others attribute it to Jawaharlal Nehru. Article 48 says: “The State shall endeavour to organise agriculture and animal husbandry on modern and scientific lines and shall, in particular, take steps for preserving and improving breeds, and prohibiting the slaughter of cows and calves and other milch and draught cattle”.

. Article 48 was actually brought as an amendment to Article 38A by Pandit Thakur Das Bhargava, a member from East Punjab. Along with him, Seth Govind Das, a member from Central Provinces and Berar, was an active voice in getting the provision incorporated.

. The article was debated in the constituent assembly on November 24, 1948. Accounts of the debate noted that Pandit Bhargava saw Article 48 as “a sacrifice” done by the Hindu community. The fact that it wasn’t enshrined as a fundamental right and was made part of DPSP was interpreted by him as an expression of non-coercion towards non-Hindus.

. Both Pandit Bhargava and Seth Govind Das justified the inclusion of the provision for cow protection on the premise of the significance of cows to the agricultural economy of the country as well as a scientific demand for proper animal husbandry practices.

. Between the two, however, Seth Govind Das also articulated the religious value of cow protection for Hindus and argued that cow slaughter wasn’t an integral part of Islam. In presenting the religious aspects of the legislation, he countered the contempt for “religious-minded people”. The religious part of Seth Das’ argument found support from Shibban Lal Saksena, a member from the United Provinces. Saksena argued that the religious imperative of cow protection couldn’t be ignored in its promulgation as a constitutional provision. He wondered why the religious need for such a provision couldn’t be clearly stated.

. Two key Muslim voices who participated in the debate were Zahir-ul- Hasan Lari, a member from United Provinces, and Syed Muhammad Saadulla, a member from Assam. Interestingly, Zahir Lari argued that when it provisions for cow protection, he would prefer the certainty of a fundamental right to the vagueness of DPSP. His point was that in absence of a settled and certain law on it, the latter would make it open for state governments to act the way they like. They could legislate a law on cow slaughter, or different state governments could have different versions of it, or not legislate at all.

. He said, “Mussalmans of India have been, and are, under the impression that they can, without violence to the principles which govern the State, sacriﬁce cows and other animals on the occasion of ‘Bakrid’ … If the House is of the opinion that slaughter of cows should be prohibited, let it be prohibited in clear, deﬁnite and unambiguous words.” 2

. On whether cow slaughter was integral to Islam, he argued that though Islam “does not necessarily say that you must sacrifice cow, it permits it”.

. While Zahid Lari seemed more inclined to concede a ban on cow slaughter as an act of respecting Hindu sentiments, Syed Muhammad Saadulla was clear in opposing it. He said the economic logic of the ban shouldn’t be articulated because it’s a provision rooted in religious sentiment and should be clearly stated as such. He attacked the economic reasoning behind the ban on cow slaughter and even cited the case of different religious communities in his state, Assam, slaughtering the cow.

. That was not in consonance with what members of the constituent assembly, who supported the ban on cow slaughter, had considered as mainstream Hinduism. With all these arguments, Article 48 was made part of the DPSP when the Constitution of India was enacted on January 26, 1950.

. In the first two decades after Independence, the issue of a national ban on cow slaughter became important for the right-of-centre stream of Indian politics. This stream had a new but important entrant—Jana Sangh, founded by Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee, was formed in October 1951. The other political parties occupying this space were the Hindu Mahasabha, which was in decline, and the Ram Rajya Parishad, a small outfit founded by Pratapgarh-based Swami Karpatri.

. At the same time, there was a demand that the Jawaharlal Nehru-led Congress government at the Centre frame a central law to honour the spirit of Article 48. In essence, the demand was for a national ban on cow slaughter. The Nehru government wasn’t in favour of this but made it clear that the Centre wouldn’t come in the way of state governments framing separate laws to ban cow slaughter.

. In their recently published work 3 on the RSS, Professor Walter K Andersen and SD Damle say in 1952, the RSS had collected about 17 million signatures on a petition demanding a national ban on cow slaughter. In the absence of definite evidence linking it to violence, the ban was lifted on the RSS in July 1949. In the 1950s, the RSS had found in cow protection an issue to announce its comeback in the country’s cultural politics.

. The Jana Sangh, which broadly shared the RSS ideology and cadre, supported the campaign for a national ban on cow slaughter. In its 1952 All India session, the Jana Sangh passed a resolution that stated: “In spite of five years of Independence, the present government has taken no steps to ban cow slaughter. The RSS has collected record signatures in favour of such a ban and has organised public opinion. Jana Sangh is grieved to see Prime Minister Nehru insisting that he would not permit a central law for a ban on cow slaughter, though he has given up his objection to states passing laws … This is a regrettable symbol of his fascist tendencies. It is but proper to fulfil this national demand on a national level by a central law instead of 20-25 different laws.”

. In the next six years, campaigns and agitations by Hindu groups, as well as stock-taking within the Congress, led to some changes. While state governments of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab and Mysore (now Karnataka) banned cow slaughter, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh and Bombay (now Maharashtra and Gujarat) began considering it.

. In 1958, for the first time in independent India, the Supreme Court adjudicated on the constitutionality of the state laws banning cow slaughter. In Mohd Hanif Quareshi & Others v State of Bihar and a connected petition, Muslim butchers, cattle dealers and meat vendors from three different states questioned the constitutional validity of state laws banning cow slaughter. The petitioners had challenged laws enacted in three states: Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.

. Passing its verdict in June 1958, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutional validity of the state laws and rejected the argument on right to equality being infringed by discrimination between those who butchered sheep and goats, and those who butchered bovine cattle.

. The court said the classification between the two groups was valid. The court also rejected the petitioners’ argument on violation of the right to freedom of religion. In essence, the court was of the opinion that cow sacrifice wasn’t an integral part of Islam.

. However, the Court did consider the economic factor in qualifying its judgement and allowed the slaughter of old, unproductive and disabled cows and bulls. But 47 years later, on October 26, 2005, the Supreme Court overruled this part of the 1958 verdict, rejecting the loss of usefulness as an argument for cow slaughter.

. In State Of Gujarat v Mirzapur Moti Kureshi Kassab, the court said an effective total ban on the slaughter of cow and its progeny is valid. The court relied on agricultural and economic reasoning and argued that the cow and its progeny never become useless, even after the cattle cease to breed, work, or give milk.

. Back in 1958, however, the judicial verdict was only a partial victory for the campaign against cow slaughter. In fact, the Jana Sangh wasn’t satisfied at all. The party’s central working committee passed a resolution which said, “With the court order, the values and objectives which prompted the states to ban cow slaughter had been rendered ineffective in practice.”

. The party followed this with its demand, made at its All India session (Lucknow, 1961), that a constitutional amendment should completely ban the slaughter of the cow and its progeny.

. The Jana Sangh and other groups also started working on the ground to campaign for the cause of cow protection. It was also the Jana Sangh’s way of looking for and consolidating its political space. In his work on the Hindu nationalist movement in India, Christophe Jaffrelot referred to his case study on how the Jana Sangh of this period used cow protection for mobilising support in Madhya Pradesh. 4 Jana Sangh stalwarts like Deen Dayal Upadhyay were part of these campaigns.

. What added vigour to the cow protection movement of the 1960s was the formation of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) in August 1964. Supported by the RSS, the VHP was a member of the broader Sangh Parivar, and its role was a more focused and aggressive pursuit of Hindu interests. It gave new momentum to the cow protection campaign.

. In 1966, however, the campaign, however, took an unintended violent turn during an agitation.

. The Jana Sangh, along with all major Hindu organisations, had joined hands under the banner of the All India Cow Protection Committee to start a stir for a national and complete ban on cow slaughter. The stir involved a mix of dharnas, satyagrahas, courting arrests, and hunger strikes, and included a large number of sadhus too. Things went out of control on November 7, 1966, during a massive demonstration held outside Parliament in Delhi. The agitationists tried to storm into the Parliament building. The police resorted to firing to disperse the crowd. Eight people, including two sadhus, were killed.

. The Jana Sangh distanced itself from any role in the violence. The blame for violence, obviously, shifted to the unruly crowd and the police. The then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi asked for the resignation of Home Minister Gulzarilal Nanda, a rival of hers within the Congress party, for his failure to control law and order.

. Though fixing accountability for the violent turn of the agitation wasn’t easy, the Jana Sangh grew wary of being seen with unruly elements and so became more careful in choosing co-agitationists. The violence also meant that the cow protection campaign now had to wait longer to regain a sense of urgency. The Jana Sangh was now focused on mainstreaming itself while keeping its distinct voice intact.

. A decade later, when Jana Sangh leaders like Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani were part of the Morarji Desai-led Janata Party government, a smaller goal was achieved quietly.

. The leaders succeeded in persuading then Prime Minister Morarji Desai—believed to be sympathetic to Hindu interests—to pass a constitutional amendment in the Lok Sabha in May 1979. The amendment put cow protection, previously part of the state list, in the concurrent list. This implied that the Centre could now legislate on the matter.

. ***

. The politics on issues of cow protection and alternatively on cow slaughter over the last 30 years has been part of recent memory. This period has seen two Prime Ministers from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the successor to the Jana Sangh, heading governments at the Centre.

. In their study of the RSS, Walter K Andersen and SD Damle observed, “No serious effort has been made either by the national BJP governments of Vajpayee or Modi to change the Indian constitution to shift this matter from the states to the federal government, a constitutional action that would be needed to legislate a national ban.”

. In this context, Andersen and Damle also cited how the Modi government’s move in May 2017 to control transportation of cattle, and prohibit the sale of cattle for the purpose of slaughter, ran into judicial trouble in the Supreme Court in July 2017. That’s also part of a very recent chain of events.

. What’s grabbing headlines today are reports of the lynching of suspected cow smugglers, traders, thieves or those believed to be consuming beef by mobs of self-styled gau-rakshaks. Incidents in Dadri (Uttar Pradesh) and more recently in Alwar (Rajasthan) show the violent face of what has come to be known as cow vigilantism. With incidents like a Union Cabinet minister garlanding convicted cow vigilantes, there is also the issue of political patronage. At the same time, there have been reports of people protecting cows or opposing cow smuggling or slaughter, becoming targets of attacks as seen in border areas like Sipahijala (Tripura) and more recently in West Jaintia Hills district (Meghalaya). This is not limited to border areas, there have been attacks on the police force in Uttar Pradesh by cow smugglers, as seen in Mathura and Jaunpur. T here has also been a recent case of an alleged mob attack on an India Today journalist for reporting on an illegal cow slaughterhouse in Karnataka.

. There has been some excellent and regular reporting in Indian media on the violent crimes of self-styled gau-rakshak groups given the recent incidents of violence. However, there has been little effort to understand the anxieties, insecurities and motivations of cow protection groups that do not take the law in their hands. Recently a Right-leaning publication did a detailed report on such groups of gau-rakshaks in Alwar, located in Mewat region that is notorious for cattle smuggling. The piece sheds light on how they are motivated by a struggle to save their livelihood and a way of life.

. The reasons for such violent attacks range from stark communal hatred to anger about the loss of cattle resources, from instigation by vested interests to the dangerous appeal of retributive, instant justice.

. Andersen and Damle argue that the RSS and BJP, which hasn’t been very vocal about cow protection since the late 1990s, now confront two sets of dilemmas on the issue: “While the cow has a special spiritual or emotional significance for many Hindus, a number of potential supporters in India’s north-eastern and southern states and among lower caste Hindus nationally do eat beef, as do of course many Christians and Muslims as well as some urban middle-class Hindus”.

. Thus, “Hindu nationalism is faced with the challenge of accommodating itself to diverse regional cultures on a range of core Hindu nationalist issues, like the veneration of the cow.” A look at the comparative analysis of data released by National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) for three different rounds (51, 55 and 68) over 12 years (the last one from 2011-12) may be interesting to note here. NSSO survey is conducted by Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation and <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/%25E2%2580%2598More-Indians-eating-beef-buffalo-meat%25E2%2580%2599/article16085248.ece&source=gmail&ust=1537077940114000&usg=AFQjCNG7ZkRclTInnBjGYbDo_XKa7af_zw" href="https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/%E2%80%98More-Indians-eating-beef-buffalo-meat%E2%80%99/article16085248.ece" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">this comparative analysis was done by The Hindu in collaboration with India Datalabs, based at the Observer Research Foundation. While the study showed a rise in the number of Indians eating beef and buffalo meat, ”it also revealed that the number of Hindus eating beef or buffalo meat has been declining—1.89 crore Hindus in 1999-2000 to 1.25 crore in 2011-12.” The regional distribution showed that ”in all the States belonging to the Hindi heartland, less than one per cent of Hindus eat beef/buffalo meat.” Expectedly, Southern States have the maximum number of Hindus eating beef/buffalo meat — the highest in Andhra Pradesh (32.8 lakh) followed by Tamil Nadu (31.4 lakh), Kerala (15.5 lakh) and Karnataka (9 lakh). Based on the same set of data, another report did a caste analysis of Hindus eating beef and buffalo meat.

. It showed, “Among Hindus, more than 70% of the beef-eating population is SC/ST, 21% is other backward castes and only 7% is upper caste (others category). In analysing NSSO data, what’s also important to note is “NSSO data is self-reported and due to religious stigma, people might be under-reporting consumption details.”

. The second dilemma arises from the question of how to “handle vigilante outbursts from the right without appearing to take side of those who engage in violence”. The RSS and the BJP have responded to these challenges by adopting a policy of cultural accommodation in regions like the north-east, where beef is part of local dietary practices. It’s an approach that is evident in the BJP’s governance in the region too after it made electoral inroads there.

. On the second dilemma, the approach of the Sangh Parivar is to step back a bit, and do what Andersen and Dalme call “accepting [the] VHP’s activism on behalf of the cow”. While cow protection isn’t one among its priorities now, the RSS is careful not to neglect the issue and let it drift, like the Ayodhya movement. As they point out, the VHP’s continuous engagement with the cow protection issue helps the RSS ensure that projects of cultural Hindutva don’t suffer political marginalisation. The only danger is that such activism shouldn’t outgrow the BJP’s political ability to restrain them, whenever required.

. We live in times when the religious veneration and economic utility of cow constitutes one side of the status of cow in Indian society. The other side is made of people who make political claims on it and also a sizeable number of people for whom cow has been part of food consumption. In many ways, the cow has become an embodiment of a delicate social contract for the coexistence of various communities in the country.

. 1) Chiagateri, S, Negotiating the ‘Sacred’ Cow: Cow Slaughter and the Regulation of Difference in India

. 2) Constituent Assembly Debates (Proceedings) – Vol. VII, Wednesday, the 24th November 1948

. 3) Andersen W and Damle D, 2018, The RSS: A View to the Inside, Penguin Random House

. 4) Jaffrelot, C, 1998, The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India, Columbia University Press

The Cow Question in Modern India: Part II

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