NOTHING could have so starkly laid bare the real face of cow politics of BJP than the horrific view of hundreds of cattle carcasses lying abandoned in open just a few kilometres away from the famous city of Jaisalmer in Rajasthan. The scary video footage highlighted by the media on May 26 has outraged the feelings of people regarding the safety of animals when the state BJP government had been making tall claims of making elaborate systems for service of the sacred ‘Gaumata’. The awful episode has raised several questions including what has led to such a high mortality of stray cows and who is responsible for abandoning the carcasses to stink in the open ground and not properly bury them in the designated Municipal yard? 

The system of disposing off the dead cattle carcasses being followed since many decades had been through the contracts given to professional contractors who got the skin flayed (skinning) by the skilled occupational workers (mainly Dalits) before being made available as raw material for domestic leather industry and even for export. Cattle bones were also used for making poultry feed and other stuff. This system of dead cattle disposal was providing livelihood to a large number of persons from socially marginalised sections and contributing to export earnings. The practice of skinning the cattle carcasses, however, was gradually abandoned in the backdrop of making the cow not only as a religious symbol but also an issue of communal mobilisation as an electoral strategy. Let it be noted that these developments have not only deprived lakhs of poor households of their critical livelihood in leather industry but it has also opened the Indian leather market for loot by foreign multinational companies. This shows the pseudo-nationalism of Hindutva project and how it serves the vital interests of its imperialist masters at the cost of Indian people.

LYNCHING BY COW VIGILANTES  

Relentlessly rousing of passions for communal polarisation by the BJP and its various outfits under the garb of perceived threat to cows from the minority community and spreading canards for the sake of extracting electoral dividends has always been a political strategy of majority consolidation. Number of gruesome incidents of broad day light lynching by cow vigilantes continue to be committed in various parts of the country with impunity.  Innocent persons of minority community, Dalits, poor cattle farmers and traders, even belonging to other communities, are threatened by alleging transportation for cattle for slaughter or consumption of beef.

The infamous Duleena killings of five Dalit youths in Haryana in 2002 when they were trying to load the carcass of a cow lying on the roadside and taken in the police post still haunts the memory. A mob returning from the Dussehra festivities had taken all the five youth one by one and lynched, as the Haryana police stood by as silent spectators. Since then, Mohammad Akhlaq of Dadri in UP, Pehlu Khan, Junaid, Nasir, Rakbar Khan and many more from Mewat; and a 20-year-old student Aryan Mishra of Faridabad have been killed with absolute impunity in various parts of the country at the hands of so called Gaurakshak gangs especially since 2014.  Cow vigilante patronised by the state are let loose to target anyone transporting cattle from one place to another and tortured to death. Extorting money in lieu of granting mercy has become a thriving business. The organic nexus of these vigilantes with the police is quite open as they work in tandem with the local police. So much so that such a ‘cow protection task force’ has been officially stipulated under the draconian rules of cow protection in certain BJP ruled states including Haryana. 

HYPOCRISY OF COW WORSHIP

The recent Jaisalmer episode highlighted in the disturbing video visuals of hundreds of carcasses of cows and bullocks has starkly exposed the sheer hypocrisy of ‘cow worship’. In this context, it must be especially noted how the issue of cow was made emotive and exploited in the recent West Bengal assembly elections. The dangerous plank of shamelessly branding the Muslims responsible for cow slaughter, with the intention of Hindu consolidation is an open secret. On the contrary, it is a fact that most of the beef traders belong to the majority community. The BJP’s bluff stands exposed when the new W. Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari himself performed a somersault in granting permission for the slaughter of cattle over the age of 14 years. His surreptitious change of stance has come in the wake of Muslims staying away from purchasing cattle at the customary cattle fairs from the Hindu cattle owners just before the Bakr-Id festival. According to media reports minority community organisations have suggested the ‘Holy Cow’ be declared as Rashtriya Pashu (National Animal) and thus putting the BJP and all its rabidly communal outfits in a very embarrassing situation as how a Mata (mother) can be declared as an animal or a Pashu.

The outrage over the Jaisalmer video of rotting carcasses evoked outrage among the people who rightly questioned the BJP government of Rajasthan and other states who have been invoking the cow as Gaumata and set up large number of Gaushalas (community cow shelters) with a provision of liberal government grants. Stringent laws putting impractical restrictions on sale and purchase of cattle including the milk cows were enacted as a result of which cattle trade has taken a beating for the livelihood of rural farmers and landless labourers. 

FATE OF STRAY CATTLE

According to veterinary doctors, the high mortality among cattle is due to the criminal negligence during the extremely hot weather conditions, scarcity of water and fodder; and consumption of toxic polythene waste. Hungry and thirsty stray cows and bullocks become prone to fatal diseases and ultimately meet untimely tragic death. The Municipal contractors failed to properly bury the carcasses and just left these in stinking condition and got away with it. Why did the conscience of the Gaubhakts not get outraged by the horrific scenes of so many corpses, which, according to an eyewitness, may even be more than a thousand? The answer to this question is obvious because there were no elections around this time. So clearly, the reverence for the Gaumata is a political tool to polarise the people on religious basis aiming at capturing power.

 The pathetic plight of the cows and bullocks across the country, especially in the Hindi belt, is almost the same since the mechanisation of agriculture has rendered bullocks redundant for ploughing purpose or as draught animal. Even the conventional Desi cow has been replaced by buffalos or by higher milk yield cross bred cows. Eventually the number of stray cattle in India is more than 5 million (50 lakh) roaming in rural areas causing threat to the standing crops or squatting on highways causing fatal accidents. Dry cows abandoned by owners and useless male calves continue to freely breed without castration drives and are not entertained even by the Gaushalas. Farmers movement has been striving hard, seeking effective permanent resolution of the stray cattle menace. However, no viable solution can be found in the prevailing scenario where corporate-communal ruling dispensation continues to thrive on the vested political interest instead of curbing the unproductive cattle population.

Farmers, animal lovers, secular and democratic organisations must realise the challenges of the dangerous communal politics, to see through the nefarious game of putting the people of one faith against the people of another faith. They should demand the social audit of public funds meant for Gaushala grants. The real face of politics of fake cow worshipers must be recognised and the ordinary people must be made aware of their divisive agenda in order to isolate them politically, socially and culturally.