More than just beef

Beef, oddly enough, has taken centre stage in India’s fight for secularism. Last week, a charged mob in Maharashtra burnt down a van suspected of carrying beef and just a few days ago an elderly Muslim man in a village of Uttar Pardesh was lynched by a similarly enraged group of Hindutva zealots on mere suspicion of having consumed beef.

Nowhere has the beef controversy stirred more distrust and debate than in Indian-occupied Kashmir. Arguably, a ban on the slaughter of cattle existed in Jammu and Kashmir since the time of the Dogras, but since Partition Muslim-majority areas of Kashmir valley enjoyed relaxation in the laws. However, the recent high court ruling to strictly enforce the ban on beef has stirred communal sentiments to such an extent that India’s Supreme Court enforced a two-month suspension of the beef ban in the state, citing law and order concerns.

Mohammad Akhlaq’s killing in Uttar Pardesh was a pre-meditated attack that has thrown spotlight on the hardline, polarising agenda of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The prime minister has halfheartedly called for religious harmony but has expressed no disapproval of the vigilantes or those within his Bharatiya Janata Party who are methodically dividing India along religious lines.

Despite the controversy in Jammu and Kashmir, the beef ban has taken an ever more sinister political turn across India. With state elections scheduled in Bihar, the ruling BJP is running its campaign on the promise of banning beef in the state, one of the few where the law does not exist, and is going to the extent of lambasting Lalu Prasad Yadav for his comment about Hindus eating beef as well. As expected from any Indian controversy, Pakistan too has made its way into the venomous debate with Minority Affairs Minister Mukhtar Naqvi saying that those dying to eat beef should go to Pakistan.

Slaughtering cows and consuming beef is considered a sacrilege by the majority of Hindus in India, yet for a country that supposedly espouses secularism and never tires of recounting its secular nature, the present controversy is but a reflection of the change India is undergoing. Led by Narendra Modi, India’s saffronisation is no longer a myth, but a reality and the beef ban a reflection of the Hindutva narrative seeping through the reclamation of Indian customs, traditions and history.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 11^th, 2015.