The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way in which its animals are treated” – Mahatma Gandhi.

Starting 2014, the ‘cow’ became the national issue, ‘gaurakshaks’ became the dreaded reality and ‘cow vigilantism’ saw the affairs of the nation take an unprecedented turn with the number of cow-related lynchings it brought with it.

The BharatiyaJanata Party (BJP) aka the protectors of the cows, maintained a stoic silence with regards to the death of 44 people, who died in cow-related violence between May 2015 and December 2018.

Nobody from the Hindutva preaching, fascist right-wing party condemned the lynchings at the hands of caste-supremacist, vile, inhuman men who ran amok on the streets of the country beating up minorities – Muslims and Dalits – in the name of illegal cattle trading and beef consumption.

Notwithstanding that the largest beef exporting companies in the country are owned by Hindus, the BJP has not only worked to instill fear among the cattle traders, it has also given the Border Security Force (BSF) the charge of ending the smuggling of India’s holy cows to Bangladesh that thrived along outposts near the Indo-Bangladesh border.

In August, the BSF had 2700 cattle that they didn’t know what to do about in their custody out of more than 19,000 seized by them this year itself.

The result?

The slow death of the livestock at the hands of the BSF.

A letter to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), Kirity Roy, Secretary of the Banglar Manabadhikar Suraksha Mancha (MASUM) and National Convenor (PACTI) Programme Against Custodial Torture & Impunity; mentioned that the “BSF personnel of Khandua BSF Border Outpost, had seized around 350 buffaloes before 9th October 2019, that were about to be smuggled across the border and kept them in custody for a prolonged period of time without food, water and other basic necessities. As a result several buffaloes are getting killed every day”.

Khandua, which is situated at the banks of the river Padma faces severe restrictions from the BSF for being close to the international border of the Lagola area in Murshidabad. With incidents of cattle smuggling being commonplace, it is good that the BSF has worked towards the riddance of this menace.

However, in a show of extreme animal cruelty, it is now treating the animals inhumanely by not providing them with any food or water and kept under direct sunlight with no shelter, leaving for them to die a slow death.

The letter further says, “Even after the death of the animals, the BSF personnel are not taking any proper action to disperse the corpse but rather paying the villagers to take away the dead animal and throw it into the river in an inhuman way. River and water-bodies are being polluted by the act of BSF. The locals are being paid rupees 500 for dispersing the dead animal. They tie the head of the dead animal to their tractor and drag them through the villages to the Padma River. These incidents inflict shock in the villagers, especially children. The dead animals are either thrown into the river or on the river banks. Keeping aside the inhumane act of the BSF towards the animals, it is also a fact that the perpetrators are severely contributing to the environmental pollution by randomly disposing off the dead animals into the river and river banks. It is also unsettling that why the BSF is keeping them in custody under such adverse conditions and not selling the cattle in auctions, which could on the one hand bring income for the government.”

Will the BSF be punished?

Will the government pull up the BSF for violating Section 11 (i) under Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960 that states acts of torture against animals causing unnecessary pain or suffering is punishable under law and the Sections 428 and 429 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), which states that anyone responsible for maiming or killing an animal will be punished under law. The random polluting of the river by the BSF also violates the Goal numbers 3, 15 and16 of Sustainable Development Goal earmarked by United Nations and the government of India is a party and have agreement in this international instruments.

What animal rights activists demand

Ms. JaleshaBawa, on the behalf of the villagers has lodged a written complaint against the cruel actions of the BSF to the Superintendent of Police, Murshidabad district on October 10, 2019, but in vain.

PLEASE PUT THE PHOTO OF THE LETTER TO THE POLICE AND THE RECIEPT HERE

In the letter addressed to the NHRC, Roy has demanded that apart from the gruesome murder of these animals being investigated, the guilty officials of the BSF and the Commandant of BSF battalion no. 78, Company Commander of Khandua BOP under 78 BN BSF should be prosecuted under  a) Water (Prevention & Control of Pollution) Act, 1974 (as amended in 1988), b) Air (Prevention & Control of Pollution) Act, 1981, c) Environmental (Protection) Act, 1986 and d) Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 must be booked and persecuted for their crime.

He has also asked they cease the disposal of the dead livestock into rivers and has implored the government to rescue these animals and auction them for sale as per the Supreme Court guidelines.

Given that the killing of cattle became a national controversy under the BJP government, will the nationalist party now pull up one of its own for the disrespect to these animals or will they be let go because it was buffaloes who were killed and not the ‘holy’ cows?

Related:

Cow smuggling case against Pehlu Khan quashed: Rajasthan HC

Hindu Vigilantes Push Rajasthan’s Cow Trade Into Decline

Rohtak: Cow vigilantes beat up Muslim dairy worker, police chain him instead of treating his wounds

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Export growth slowed to 9.37% in 2014-15 and declined more than 19 percentage points in 2015-16, the data show.
 

Source: Export archive of Council for Leather Export, ministry of commerce & industry; figures in $ billion
 
The leather industry employs 2.5 million people nationwide, most of them Muslim or Dalit. India’s leather industry accounts for 9% of the world’s footwear production and for 12.93% of the world’s leather production of hides/skins.
 
 

The ban on cattle sale for slaughter hit the once-flourishing leather industry and its poorest employees, especially Muslims and Dalits,  The Hindustan Times reported on June 25, 2017.
 
Leather exports shrank from $6.49 billion in 2014-15 to $5.66 billion in 2016-17, 12.78% lower than in financial year 2014-15. China, on the other hand, reported a 3% increase in exports of leather and footwear, from around 76 billion to $78 billion in 2017.
 
Cow-related violence hitting leather industry 
“There is a 5%-6% decline in domestic supply following the reduction in cattle slaughter in the country,” Council for Leather Exports chairman Rafeeque Ahmed was quoted as saying in this report by The Times of India on February 4, 2016.
 
The index of industrial production–which measures economic activity and has specified weightage for industries–for the leather products declined 2 points in 2015-16, after a growth of nearly 14 points in 2014-15, data show.

 
 
As production and leather exports declined, cow-related violence increased from one attack each in 2012 and 2013 to three in 2014, jumping to 37 in 2017, the worst year yet for such violence.
 
The rise in such violence is particularly apparent from 2015 when farm worker Mohammad Akhlaq Saifi was killed in Uttar Pradesh . After the Akhlaq murder, 10 more died in 2015 in 12 cow-related violent incidents, eight in 2016 in 24 incidents, 11 in 2017 and seven in 2018 till date, Factchecker.in data show.
 
The rise of cow-related incidents and fall in exports of leather goods appear to be interconnected outcomes of the government’s policies.
 
The impending failure of Make-in-India leather-industry targets
One of the aims of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Make In India programme was to increase leather exports to $9 billion by 2020, from $5.86 billion in 2015-16, and grow the domestic market to $18 billion from the present $12 billion.
 
After the first reported death in cow-related violence in India, the country waited for a response from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which came on October 8, 2015, in the form of this statement referring to communal harmony and poverty.
 
“Hindus should decide whether to fight Muslims or poverty. Muslims have to decide whether to fight Hindus or poverty. Both need to fight poverty together,” Modi said at an election rally in Bihar, The Hindu reported on October 8, 2017.
 
“The country has to stay united, only communal harmony and brotherhood will take the nation forward. People should ignore controversial statements made by politicians, as they are doing so for political gains.”
 
In most attacks using the holy cow as a pretext, the victims were either Muslim or Dalit. While 115 Muslims were attacked between 2014 and 2018, 23 Dalits were attacked between 2016 and 2017. The worst year for Dalits was 2016, as they made up 34% of the victims in cow-related violence that year.  
 

 

Source: Hate-Crime Database, Factchecker.in (data accessed on August 27, 2018
 
Of the incidents, 51% occurred in BJP-ruled states, while Congress-ruled states accounted for 11%.
 
Nearly all the victims of cow-related violence are from low-income families that depend on either agriculture or the cattle or meat trade, reports said.
 
Conflict between BJP manifesto and economics
 
In May 2017, the central government amended the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (Regulation of Livestock Market) Rules, 2017, banning the sale of cattle for slaughter in animal markets across India, a further blow to the leather-goods industry.

 
 
In its 2014 election manifesto, the BJP had promised the necessary legal framework to protect the “cow and its progeny”. The cow is a holy animal, called “mother” in Hindu scripture.   
 
The May 2017 notification was withdrawn in October 2017 and subsequently revised after a discussion by a group of ministers headed by transport minister Nitin Gadkari.
 
Cattle ownership among Muslim households is 18.6%, 40% among Sikhs, 32% among Hindus and 13% among Christians, Mint reported on July 24, 2018.
 
Around 63.4 million Muslims (or 40% of Muslims in the country) eat beef or buffalo meat. Overall, 80 million Indians eat beef or buffalo meat, including 12.5 million Hindus. Only 15% households own non-milch animals in India.
 
If India bans the slaughter of cattle completely, the outcome can be a “serious threat” to its economy, the Hindu Business Line reported on July 9, 2017.
 
“Each year, 34 million male calves are born in this country,” Vikas Rawal, an economist with the Jawaharlal Nehru University, was quoted as saying. “If we assume that they live for eight years, which is actually on the lower side, there would be nearly 270 million additional unproductive cattle by the end of eight years.”
 
“The additional outgo for looking after these cattle would be Rs. 5.4 lakh crore, 35 times the annual animal husbandry budgets of the Centre and all States put together”.
 
(Jain is a master’s student at the Faculty of Law, Delhi University. He is also a researcher at Swaraj Abhiyan, a socio-political organisation)

Courtesy: India Spend
 

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This killer cow juggernaut continues to roll despite our Prime Minister (PM), a senior leader of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), describing most of these lovers of the holy cow (‘gaumaataa’) in August 2016, as ‘anti-social elements’. He spoke only after the Una incident took place in his home state, Gujarat. According to him: “It makes me angry that people are running shops in the name of cow protection…Some people indulge in anti-social activities at night, and in the day masquerade as cow protectors.”[i]

If despite, this seeminglystrong rebuttal by the PM, almost a year back, violence in the name of cow has only increased, or spread, covering larger areas of India; the cries to kill and lynchhave grown evenmore strident and beyond control, the reasons could be only one of two. First, the PM was only playing to the gallery when he spoke those words in order to diffuse the social anger against such criminal activities. Or, second, the current brand of cow vigilantes (post 2016) are not those defined by the PM as ‘anti-social elements’ but fall into the category of persons who have the PM’s approval and sanction as ‘genuine holy cow saviours’. There is no doubt, these gangsters have the sanction of the RSS and section of India’s law and order machinery.

Unfortunately, the judiciary, too, has been by and large silent.  Mandated with the Constitutional authority to intervene when government’s or the executive govern outside the pale of the law, the judiciary which has often spoken on issues of public concern, has so far been dishearteningly silent. This silence has clearly emboldened the criminals. In fact, a judge of Rajasthan High Court instead of looking into the atrocities being committed by the so called saviours of the cow (Rajasthan tops in cow violence and recently witnessed the horrendous public lynching of Pelu Khan; the perpetrators uploading full video of the lynching) [ii]ordered that cow be made a national animal and anybody found killing it should be given death sentence.[iii]

Indian home minister, Rajnath Singh, a prominent ideologue in the RSS hierarchy, even invented a ‘scientific’ reason to justify the ‘holiness of cow’. While referring to a report of the US department of Agriculture he told a gathering of the RSS leaders that “80% of genes found in the cow are found in humans too”. He also called upon Indians to “save and worship the cow”.[iv]

Not surprisingly, as a product of RSS cadres Singh was selective in his attribution and wrong on fact. The findings of a leading English daily of India, based on a world acclaimed journal SCIENCE show that many other animals have a greater percentage of genes common to himans. Chimpanzees, cats, mouse and dogs, for instance, have 96%, 90%, 85% and 84% respectively genes common with human beings. These are not only animals but even fruits; bananas having 60% similar genes.[v] Will then, India’s home minister, on these similar grounds, also announce these species to be ‘Holy?!’ We also need to know from the Home Minister whether he considers India’s minorities and Dalits as human beings at all, and those who should be saved from lynching(s).

The latest victims have been the beef-eaters of IIT-M (this institute at Chennai continues with older nomenclature of the city Madras) who were victims of murderous attack by the ABVP (RSS student wing) activists on the campus.[vi] The continuing murderous attacks by the Hindutva cadres in the name of the cow make one thing very clear: these majoritarian and fascist elements are ignorant of India’s present day reality and its historical past.

If somebody is looking for a gurukul or university to graduate in deceit and lies, doubtlessly, the RSS will be his or her best choice. Its mastery over this trait is unparalleled and is proved once again by its criminal disregard of facts on the controversy over beef-eating in Indian history by Hindus of India. It aggressively claims that beef-eating in India came with the arrival of Muslims and Christians as rulers who initiated and was subsequently popularised in order to denigrate Hindus and their holy symbols. Golwalkar, an inveterate Goebelisian, is loose with the facts. Responding to a question, (1966) “How did cow slaughter begin in our country [India]?” replied, “It began with the coming of foreign invaders to our country. In order to reduce the population to slavery, they thought that the best method to be adapted was to stamp out every vestige of self-respect in Hindus…In that line cow slaughter also began”.[vii]

Such unsubstantiated propaganda helps the Hindutva gang in terrorising both the largest minority and Dalits of India who also consume beef and are involved in its trade. It is not insignificant that since the onset of the 20th century, (that coincided with the rise of Hindutva politics) the cow has been the single greatest cause behind triggering the maximum cases of violence against the Muslims and Dalits of the country. It is immaterial to the Indian heirs of Nazi propagandist Paul Joseph Goebbels that the claim that beef-eating started with the arrival of Muslims in India is not even in keeping with the Vedic version of history as narrated by ‘Hindu’ chroniclers.

Swami Vivekananda, regarded as a philosopher of Hindutva by the RSS, while addressing a meeting at the Shakespeare Club, Pasadena, California, USA (February 2, 1900) on the theme of ‘Buddhistic India’, declared:  
“You will be astonished if I tell you that, according to old ceremonials, he is not a good Hindu who does not eat beef. On certain occasions he must sacrifice a bull and eat it.”[viii]

This is corroborated by other research works sponsored by the Ramakrishna Mission established by Vivekananda. According to C. Kunhan Raja, a prominent authority on the history and culture of the Vedic period:
“The Vedic Aryans, including the Brahmanas, ate fish, meat and even beef. A distinguished guest was honoured with beef served at a meal. Although the Vedic Aryans ate beef, milch cows were not killed. One of the words that designated cow was aghnya (what shall not be killed). But a guest was a goghna (one for whom a cow is killed). It is only bulls, barren cows and calves that were killed.”[ix]

One of the greatest researchers who was also an authority on Indian politics, religions and culture produced a brilliant essay on the subject titled ‘Did the Hindus Never Eat Beef?’ All those who are really interested in understanding the Indian past and wish to challenge the supremacist myth making for cleansing and marginalizing minorities must read this monumental work of Dr. Ambedkar.[x]

Dr. Ambedkar after studying very large number of Vedic and Hindu scriptures arrived at the conclusion that, “when the learned Brahmins argue that the Hindus not only never ate beef but they always held the cow to be sacred and were always opposed to the killing of the cow, it is impossible to accept their view”.

Interestingly, the findings of Ambedkar were that cows were sacrificed and beef consumed because COWS were HOLY.

According to Ambedkar: "It was not that the cow was not sacred in Vedic times, it was because of her sacredness that it is ordained in the Vajasaneyi Samhita that beef should be eaten." (Dharma Shastra Vichar in Marathi, p. 180). That the Aryans of the Rig Veda did kill cows for purposes of food and ate beef is abundantly clear from the Rig Veda itself. In Rig Veda (X. 86.14) Indra says: ‘They cook for one 15 plus twenty oxen’. The Rig Veda (X.91.14) says that for Agni were sacrificed horses, bulls, oxen, barren cows and rams. From the Rig Veda (X.72.6) it appears that the cow was killed with a sword or axe.”

Ambedkar concluded his essay with the following words: “With this evidence no one can doubt that there was a time when Hindus, both Brahmins and non-Brahmins, ate not only flesh but also beef.”[xi]

The violence unleashed by Hindutva cadres on vulnerable sections of Indians also underscores the inate hypocrisy which is an integral trait of the RSS. In fact, to say that it indulged in double/triple speak would be an understatement. Those with allegiences directly or indirectly to the ideaology of the RSS are killing indiscreetly poor Indians, not only for slaughtering cows but for even transporting these animals. This is happening under RSS/BJP rule even in states like Goa, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Arunachal and Manipur where cow slaughter is legal and beef is staple diet. This obvious duplicity is a contraditction in RSS politics today.

There are studies available that demonstrate that the ban on cow trade and ban on beef is going to put Indian farmers under an even more severe economic burden; farmers who are already facing a crisis of basic existence. After the Modi government’s coming to power farmers suicides have increased by 30% and the recent ban on the trade of cattle for slaughter is going to further play economic havoc with the plight of farmers.

In fact, Sharad Pawar, a seasoned politician who learnt his politics as a leader of farmers has come out with an amazing proposal. According to him as Modi government is banning cow trade and slaughter under the diktats of RSS, the affected farmers who cannot afford to feed barren cows should leave them with RSS organizations to SERVE these HOLY COWS. It should not be a problem for RSS as it is one of the largest colonizers of land after government in India He has even demanded that RSS should turn its headquarter at Resham Bagh, Nagpur into a GAUSHALA (home for cows) so that individual farmers are not forced to feed such cows and RSS also has opportunity to earn puniya (good faith points) from Bhagwan (God) for serving gaumaataa (cow mother).

One not so hidden agenda of the holy war on cow seems to be to destroy the economy of Qureshis (who are in meat trade) among Muslims and Dalits who control skin processing. It is also to see the death of industry which at the retail level is almost in the unorganized sector. This will open Indian meat market to world meat processing cartels.

RSS trained in fascist culture practises multiple agendas with multiple tongues. Whenever one polarising agenda loses steam or becomes controversially hot the same is abandoned and a new polarising issue is taken out from the hat. Going around polarizing with Ram temple, ghar-wapsi (conversion of Muslims and Christians to Hinduism), love-jihaad, now it is the turn of cow to divide India.

The singular focus on the issue of the cow is also a clever attempt to divert attention from poverty, unemployment, riots, violence against Dalits minorities and women. The RSS/BJP rulers believe that they can fool all the people all the times. Though eventually thy will be proved wrong and a resistance will emerge, the costs will be high.

The post The Cow & Hindutva: Some Myths & Facts appeared first on SabrangIndia.

olks with infantile minds keep laying down laws for what is dharma and the true path and what is holy or unholy, says Matsyendranath (the guru of Gorakhnath who laid the foundations for the Nath sect in North India), in his seminal treatise Akulveer Tantra (78-87). One doesn’t know if his present-day follower, the newly incumbent chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, Adityanath, would agree, but according to Guru Matsyendranath, to gain true knowledge is to rise above various petty rules and definitions propagated in the name of dharma. Kaulopanishad, the shorter but even more intense treatise of the Kaul Siddhanta (yes, the Kashmiri surname derives from it), goes a step further and says the only thing that is forbidden is badmouthing others (lok ninda). Real self-knowledge, adhyatma, means observing no fasting, feasting or rules thereof, and no desire for founding a sect. All are created equal and one who realises this becomes truly free (mukt).The present-day political dispensation, blinded as it is by its politicised and reductive vision of things, including vegetarianism, would do well to look towards the true Indian culture foreign to its lunatic fringes, and one that they are unable to absorb. My mother’s teacher, the great scholar Hazari Prasad Dwivedi, once used a wonderful term from the Shakta Tantra for a true understanding of history. He called it shav sadhana, a term used by a tantrik sadhaka to explain to him that to gain true knowledge (siddhi), one needs to find and straddle a dead body at a masan (cremation ground, a spot where all lives have been reduced to ash) and then meditate, shutting out everything around him. It is a long and tedious process during which evil forces try their best to distract the seeker with half-truths, but if he can remain detached and focused, at some point the head of the corpse will turn completely around and as it faces the constant sadhaka, address and explain the quintessential wisdom, setting all his queries at rest. Picture this: pure knowledge being passed on through an inert form with the head at an angle of 360 degrees, offering no attachment either to the old or the new, the traditional or the practised forms of life. This, Hazari Prasad Dwivedi writes, is knowledge that sets one free.

It is only against this rather long philosophical context (the Sanskrit for philosophy is darshan, meaning to see) that the highly incendiary subject of the long history of meat eating in India can be understood properly.
 

History of meat-eating

There is enough historical evidence by now that Indians since the days of the Indus Valley have indulged in dishes made with meat and poultry: zebu cattle (humped cattle), gaur (Indian bison), sheep, goat, turtle, ghariyal (a crocodile-like reptile), fish fowl and game. The Vedas refer to more than 250 animals of whom about 50 were deemed fit to be sacrificed and, by inference, for eating. The marketplace had various stalls for vendors of different kinds of meat: gogataka (cattle), arabika (sheep), shookarika (swine), nagarika (deer) and shakuntika (fowl). There were even separate vends for selling alligator and tortoise meat (giddabuddaka). The Rigveda describes horses, buffaloes, rams and goats as sacrificial animals. The 162nd hymn of the Rigveda describes the elaborate horse sacrifice performed by emperors. Different Vedic gods are said to have different preferences for animal meat. Thus Agni likes bulls and barren cows, Rudra likes red cows, Vishnu prefers a dwarf ox, while Indra likes a bull with droopy horns with a mark on its head, and Pushan a black cow. The Brahmanas that were compiled later specify that for special guests, a fattened ox or goat must be sacrificed. The Taittireeya Upanishad praises the sacrifice of a hundred bulls by the sage Agasthya. And the grammarian Panini even coined a new adjective, goghna (killing of a cow), for the guests to be thus honoured.

The meat, we learn, was mostly roasted on spits or boiled in vats. The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad has reference to meat cooked with rice. Also the Ramayana, where during their sojourn in the Dandakaranya forest, Rama, Lakshmana and Sita are said to have relished such rice (with meat and vegetables). It is called mamsambhutdana. In the palace at Ayodhya, during the sacrifices performed by king Dashratha, the recipes described are far more exotic with acid fruit juices being added to mutton, pork, chicken and peacock meat and cloves, caraway seeds and masur dal also being added to various dishes. The Mahabharata has references to rice cooked with minced meat (pistaudana) and picnics where various kinds of roasted game and game birds were served. Buffalo meat was fried in ghee with rock salt, fruit juices, powdered black pepper, asafetida (hingu) and caraway seeds, and served garnished with radishes, pomegranate seeds and lemons.

Then come the Buddhist Jatakas and Brahtsamhita (6th Century CE) that maintain the list of non-vegetarian food items, adding some more species. All in all, meat till then appears to have been deemed a nourishing food. It is even recommended by the famed physician Charaka for the lean, the very hard working and those convalescing from a long illness. The Jains, of course, remained totally averse to devouring any form of life. But the Buddha did not forbid the eating of meat if offered as alms to Buddhist bhikkus, provided the killing should not have happened in the presence of the monks. It was the responsibility of the giver of the alms to ensure this.
 

No inhibitions down south

Down south, the inhibitions against eating meat and fish are rare. In the earliest writings on food dating back to 300 CE, pepper (kari) is described as the main spice for flavouring meat. Fried meat had three names and meat boiled with tamarind and pepper was called pulingari. It was occasionally ground to make a sort of pasty relish. Kapilar, the famous Brahmin priest of the Sangam age, speaks with a certain relish of consuming meat and liquor. Old Tamil has four terms for beef: valluram, shushiyam, shuttiraichi and padithiram. There were 15 names for pork, a special favourite, we learn, among the wives of traders in the coastal region. There are also references to wild boar, rabbits and deer being hunted with hunting dogs. Captured boars were fattened with rice flour and kept away from the female to make their flesh tastier. Among more exotic meats were porcupines (a favourite of the Kuruvars) and fried snails (favoured by the Mallars). Down south, there was also no taboo on eating domestic fowl (kozhi). Fish and prawns were greatly relished all along the coastal region, so much so that the word for fish, meen, also entered the lexicon of Sanskrit as the north learnt to relish this fruit of the seas.

Contrary to prevalent notions, the Ayurvedacharyas did not deem meat as avoidable. The Sushrut Samhita compiled by the physician sage Sushruta lists eight kinds of meats. The Manasollas, a treatise ascribed to the 13th century king Someshwara, similarly gives pride of place to the chapter on food entitled Annabhoga. It refers to nuggets of liver roasted or fried and then served with yogurt or a decoction of black mustard, to pigs roasted whole with rock salt and pepper with a dash of lemon and served carved in strips resembling palm leaves.

There are no fewer than three great artistic works in Hindi that, like the panels of a tryptich, portray the hellish vision of things for this century: Yashpal’s Jhootha Sach, Rahi Masoom Raza’s Adha Gaon and Bhisham Sahni’s Tamas. The Yogi’s Raj had only to make its entrance to mime what fiction had already imagined.

This Article was first published on Scroll.in
 

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इस रिपोर्ट में पूरे हरियाणा में गाय तस्करी और उससे जुड़े अन्य अपराधों को लेकर अपराधियों का रिकॉर्ड सामने रखा गया है। इस रिपोर्ट के मुताबिक पिछले 8 महीनों में 86 हिन्दुओं पर गौ तस्करी और उससे जुड़े अन्य अपराधों में शामिल होने का मामला दर्ज किया गया है। वहीं करीब 421 मुसलमानों पर इस तरह के अपराधिक मामले दर्ज किए गए हैं। करीब 15 सिखों पर भी इस तरह के मामले दर्ज हैं।

हरियाणा में बीजेपी की मनोहर लाल खट्टर सरकार ने प्रदेश में गौहत्या के खिलाफ कानून बनाया था। टाइम्स ऑफ इंडिया की रिपोर्ट के मुताबिक हरियाणा गोवंश संरक्षण एवं गोसंवर्धन अधिनियम 2015 के तहत 1 जनवरी 2016 से 31 अगस्त 2016 तक 513 मामले दर्ज किए गए हैं। इनमें सबसे ज्यादा मामले गाय की तस्करी से जुड़े हैं। वहीं कुछ मामले गोहत्या और बीफ बेचने के भी हैं। इन सभी मामलों में 170 लोगों को गिरफ्तार किया गया है।
 
इन आंकड़ों के सामने आने के बाद गोरक्षा से जुड़े लोगों ने आरोप लगाया कि तस्कर खुद को बचाने के लिए हिंदुओं का इस्तेमाल करते हैं। लेकिन कुछ लोगों का मानना है कि ये मामला कारोबारी है और इसे धर्म से जोड़ना उचित नहीं है।

Courtesy: National Dastak
 

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