The headlines out of India in recent weeks have often made sickening
reading. Startlingly, the central protagonist in most of these stories
is that most peaceable and innocent of animals, the cow.
A Muslim man was beaten to death by a mob in a small town an hour
from New Delhi in response to rumours that he had slaughtered and eaten a
cow, sacred to Hindus. Another man died after being attacked by
villagers who believed he was involved in cattle smuggling. And a
trucker was killed in Udhampur, in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, over
rumours that he had been involved in cow killings. Three deaths in just
three weeks.
Public officials, too, are getting in on the action. After the chief
minister of Karnataka, a member of the opposition Congress party,
recently declared that he would eat beef, a politician from the ruling
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) threatened to behead him if he follows
through.
Likewise, 20 policemen stormed the canteen of the Kerala state
government's outpost in Delhi, because it advertised a “beef fry” on its
menu. Kashmiri legislator Engineer Abdul Rashid had his face smeared
with black paint for throwing a “beef party.” And the chief minister of
BJP-ruled Haryana, Manohar Lal Khattar, declared that Muslims living in
India would have to give up eating beef.
Indian protesters shout slogans during a demonstration to condemn the lynching and murder of Mohammad Akhlaq who was attacked by a Hindu mob over rumours that he had stored and eaten beef. PHOTO: AFP
To be sure, there have been plenty of other repellent stories of
intolerance that have nothing to do with cows. Two children from the
impoverished Dalit community recently burned to death in their own home,
in an arson attack by upper-caste goons. A prominent public
intellectual had his face blackened with ink for organising a book
release for a former Pakistani foreign minister in Mumbai. And Hindu
zealots stormed a Cricket Control Board meeting to disrupt discussion of
a possible India-Pakistan cricket series (which now seems unlikely to
take place).
But none of these incidents has acquired the toxicity of the assaults
on those deemed insufficiently respectful of the holy cow. Indeed, a
signal illiberal achievement of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's BJP
regime has been the revival of the cow as an instrument of political
warfare. And the recent spate of attacks reveals a serious problem with
the country's trajectory under Modi.
Of course, the cow has long had a place in Indian politics: the
country's constitution includes a provision explicitly urging a gradual
movement toward full prohibition of cow slaughter – a ban that has
already been implemented in most states.
For most of India's existence, however, the default approach has
essentially been “live and let live” – make your own choice about beef,
and let others do the same. I am a vegetarian myself, but I have never
considered it my business what others eat. Where beef was legally
available, it was consumed not just by Muslims and other minorities, but
also by many poorer Hindus, who could not afford other kinds of meat.
But that response was possible only so long as relatively liberal or
moderate officials (including an earlier BJP-led coalition government)
were in power. The Modi government does not fit that description.
Instead, it is full of leaders who seem more concerned with what goes
into other people's mouths than what comes out of their own.
Modi's government has given voice to a peculiar kind of Hindu
chauvinism, one that embraces activist assertion of a narrowly
constructed version of the faith. It cannot be described as
“fundamentalism,” for Hinduism is a religion singularly devoid of
fundamentals: it lacks a single sacred book, a single version of
divinity, and even the equivalent of a Sabbath day. In fact, Hindus who
eat beef can, like those who abjure it, find support for their beliefs
in the religion's ancient texts and scripture.
Rather, what Modi's government has fostered is a form of subjective
intolerance, with supporters, emboldened by the BJP's absolute majority,
imposing their particular view of what India should be, regardless of
whom it hurts. The state of Maharashtra's recent beef ban – which
threatens the livelihoods of a million Muslim butchers and truckers –
would not have been imposed by any previous state government or
supported by any previous administration in New Delhi.
Such bans are not really about beef, but about freedom. Indians have
generally felt free to be themselves, within their dynamic and diverse
society. It is that freedom that the BJP's representatives and followers
are challenging today.
The good news is that a backlash has already emerged. Nearly 40
distinguished authors and poets have returned their prestigious Sahitya
Akademi (Literary Academy) awards to protest the silence of the academy
and other government bodies following the killing of three intellectuals
by suspected Hindu hardliners. A top scientist has now followed suit,
returning his Padma Bhushan, the government's third-highest honor. As
these gestures highlight the explosion of Hindu chauvinism, support for
Modi has begun to erode.
When Modi came to power, foreign observers lauded him as just the
kind of decisive, business-minded economic reformer that India needed in
order to fulfill its massive potential. During the election campaign,
he seemed to recognise that achieving good economic results was more
important than the politics of religious identity for which his party
had been notorious.
To the dismay of many, Modi has underperformed economically, while
the zealots have run amok, hijacking his development agenda. And his
silence in the face of it all confirms what many in India had feared:
his economic sloganeering was merely a ploy to secure power. Now that
power is becoming a tool of the unsavoury agenda pursued by the Hindu
chauvinists who enabled his rise.
As a result, divisive politics is now overwhelming constructive
economic policymaking. Unfortunately for India, this is likely to
continue until the cows come home.
The writer, a former UN under-secretary-general and former
Indian Minister of State for External Affairs and Minister of State for
Human Resource Development, is currently Chairman of the Parliamentary
Standing Committee on External Affairs and an MP for the Indian National
Congress.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2015.
www.project-syndicate.org
(Exclusive to The Daily Star)
