The Hindutva fallacy: Sorry RSS, the beef ban has nothing to do with religion

The ban on cattle slaughter, regardless of their age or use, and the imposition of stringent punishment for violating it has spawned a fiery discourse which has been hypocritically, and erroneously, framed as an incendiary issue between Hindus and Muslims. This discourse justifies the ban on the ground that the slaughter of cattle, whether the cow or the bull or the ox, hurts the religious sentiments of Hindus, besides offering a slew of economic arguments in support. It also accuses Muslims of completely disregarding Hindu sentiments, consuming beef even though the cow doesn’t necessarily have to be the animal which has to be sacrificed for religious purposes. This hypocritical discourse isn’t of recent vintage but dates back to the months in which the Constituent Assembly was debating and framing the Indian Constitution. But before reprising that debate, it is pertinent to recall the beef festival that lower caste students of Hyderabad’s Osmania University organised in April 2012, triggering a controversy which dominated headlines for days. [caption id=“attachment_2161749” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Reuters image[/caption] At the time some 2000 students partook of beef biryani even as a singer parodied a popular jingle to croon, “Beef is the secret of my energy.” This wasn’t merely a display of irreverence, but an assertion of what lower caste students believed was an unassailable logic – beef is a taboo for high caste Hindus, not the Dalits, sections of OBCs, Muslims and Christians. These students, therefore, argued that in not serving beef in hostels, the university authorities were showing an unjustifiable predilection for the religious sensitivity of high caste Hindus. The 2012 episode belies the claims of those who insist beef is the staple of only Muslims and Christians. Indeed, the argument of hurt religious sentiments to ban cattle slaughter is yet another technique of the Hindu Right to create a homogeneous religious community through the imposition of high caste dietary practices on those lower to them in the social hierarchy. The Hindu Right has sought to achieve its goal of banning cow slaughter through two methods. One, it has sought to create the myth of cow being the symbol of religious veneration in all times, citing this as the reason why beef is a taboo food item for Hindus. This myth has been punctured through several scholarly studies, which have marshalled an impressive range of evidence to establish that beef was prohibited for only high caste Hindus – that too, perhaps, in the last millennium. Two, the Hindu Right has invoked economic arguments to justify the ban on cow slaughter. Essentially, this harps on the pivotal role the cattle play in the agrarian economy, from providing milk to pulling the plough to being a source of cheap fuel, to being a symbol of wealth. The sheer usefulness of the cow was cited as the underlying reason why it acquired an exalted status in the Hindu religious consciousness. Both these arguments – religious and economic – were cited to demand a ban on cow slaughter in the Constituent Assembly. Believe it or not, Muslim members in the Constituent Assembly said they could comprehend the decision to ban cow slaughter to show respect to Hindu religious sentiments. But this reason should be cited unambiguously, they demanded, not incorporated into the Constitution on flimsy economic grounds. The ferocious debate over the cow is brought out in a fascinating essay, Negotiating the ‘Sacred’ Cow: Cow Slaughter and the Regulations of Difference in India, which academician Shraddha Chigateri has authored. Incredible though it may sound, a few members in the Assembly wanted an Article prohibiting cow slaughter to be incorporated in the Fundamental Rights of the Constitution. Chigateri notes tongue-in-cheek, “This unique constitutional protection would have meant that the protection of the cow would have been treated on par with other human fundamental rights such as right to life, right to equality, etc…” It was on Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar’s insistence that cow protection was included in the chapter on the Directive Principle of State Policy, and not as a Fundamental Right. This found expression in Art 48, which states, “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 the breeds, and prohibiting the slaughter of cows and other milch and draught cattle.” It is this provision which became the basis for several states to enact laws prohibiting or restricting the slaughter of cattle. In the Constituent Assembly debate, two members, Pandit Thakur Dass Bhargava and Seth Govind Das, cited economic reasons to demand ban on cow slaughter. However, there were subtle differences between their arguments – Bhargava, in contrast to Das, stated explicitly that he wasn’t demanding the ban for religious reasons. Bhargava’s intervention in the debate bears this out. He said, “To grow more food and to improve agriculture and the cattle breed are all inter-dependent and are two sides of the same coin. [ …] The best way of increasing the production is to improve the health of human beings and breed of cattle, whose milk and manure and labour are most essential for growing food. […] From both points of view, of agriculture and food, protection of the cow becomes necessary.” Das, on the other hand, also invoked religion in his argument saying, “… Cow protection is not only a matter of religion with us; it is also a cultural and economic question.” The debate took another turn as a Muslim member from the United Provinces, Z.A. Lari, weighed in, “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.” He then went on to argue, “If the House is of the opinion that slaughter of cows should be prohibited, let it be prohibited in clear, definite and unambiguous words.” What could those definite and unambiguous words be? The answer was provided by Syed Muhammad Sa’adulla, a Muslim member from Assam. He said, “I do not want to obstruct the framers of our Constitution … if they come out in the open and say directly: ‘This is part of our religion. The cow should be protected from slaughter and therefore we want its provision either in the Fundamental Rights or in the Directive Principles … But, those who put it on the economic front … do create a suspicion in the minds of many that the ingrained Hindu feeling against cow slaughter is being satisfied by the backdoor.” The word backdoor here implied citing economic reasons to justify what was a religious demand voiced by the Hindu Right. Tearing into Bhargava’s contention, Sa’adulla said that organising of agriculture on scientific lines presupposes culling “useless cattle” and introducing better breeds. He rebutted the arguments that the Muslims were the principal opponents to the contemplated ban on cow slaughter, claiming that there were thousands and thousands of Muslims who did not eat beef, and that for Muslims engaged in agriculture cattle were as useful economically as they were to their Hindu counterparts. To quote Chigateri, “Syed Sa’adulla questioned the argument that Hindu reverence for the cow was always reflected through a taboo on slaughter, arguing that in Assam, when there was a shortage of cattle and a prohibition on the slaughter of milch or draught cattle, it was Hindus who resorted to slaughtering cows with the argument that the cattle were unserviceable and ‘dead weight’.” Nevertheless, Article 48 was included in the Constitution, its words providing an economic gloss to what was essentially a religious demand. This provision a clutch of Muslim butchers challenged in the courts in the 1950s. The Supreme Court upheld the notion that the cow was held in reverence by the Hindus, but many legal luminaries, such as Prof Upendra Baxi, thought the judges perhaps hadn’t been as rigorous in examining evidence to reach such a sweeping conclusion. The economic arguments, however, were difficult to sustain. Ultimately, the Supreme Court through a clutch of judgements held that a total ban on bullocks and bulls, despite being of old age and no longer economically useful, amounted to imposing unreasonable restrictions on the butchers – and was, therefore, ultra vires of the Constitution. However, the Supreme accepted the total ban on cattle slaughter in 2005, through a judgement upholding the Gujarat government’s legislation on the issue. It declared bullocks and bulls are useful, as Chigateri notes, “past a certain age, in terms of added benefits of urine, dung – manure and biogas, especially in this age of alternate sources of energy.” The court also cited Section g of Article 51 A to support its verdict. This provision enjoins citizens “to protect and improve the natural environment including forests, lakes, rivers and wild life, and to have compassion for living creations.” For a country debating euthanasia it might seem touching, in very ironical ways, to demonstrate compassion for the ageing and sick bull. Violation of the ban on cattle slaughter could lead to the guilty being banished for five years in Maharashtra and 10 years in Haryana. Might not marginalized social groups– Dalits, sections of OBCs, and religious minorities –think that cattle in India enjoy greater privileges than them? When hypocrisy trumps reason, the consequences can only be bathetic. (Ajaz Ashraf is a journalist from Delhi. His novel, The Hour Before Dawn, published by HarperCollins, is available in bookstores. Email: ashrafajaz3@gmail.com)