Dalits are attacked by the gau-rakshaks dal. In Haryana, 3 lakh heads of cattle are in 400 cow shelters. In Sirsa, stray cattle caused more than 40 deaths in 2015.
Cows are domestic animals but in Indian cities, they stray all over and are a nuisance on the roads often causing accidents and great inconvenience.
Every morning I navigate through two cow intersections where the animals refuse to budge and they threaten me with dirty looks. They have four legs, two eyes, two ears, one nose and two horns. The horns bother me a lot. They look menacing and can even kill.
Only last Sunday, a resident of Noida was hit by a rampaging cow and is in critical condition. In Sirsa, stray cattle caused more than 40 deaths in 2015. According to official estimates, there are 1.17 lakh stray cattle in Haryana alone, and the number is going up every day. The Gauvansh Sanrakshan and Gau Samvardhan laws have not helped in containing these animals.
Due to these millions of roaming dangers, it is most likely that India has the largest traffic impediments and makes it a global leader in traffic related deaths. But that hasn’t cowed them down. They are in greater numbers on the roads and are grabbing public land every day (actually their owners are).
Cows give us milk from which butter curd ghee and other milk products are made. Cow dung is an important fuel and is used as fertiliser. The cow urine or gomutra has medicinal properties and is sprinkled for purity. Ten drops in your room every day will chase all negativity away claims gomutra lovers like the Congress politician Digvijay Singh. MGP or Maa Gau Products are supposed to be fast moving products that include face pack, balm, cleaner and tooth powder.
So you basically splash cow urine on your face to keep it glowing. 50 such units process cow urine only for the MGP brand. ISKCON also processes cow urine and they sell a litre of the distillate at three times more than the price of milk.
Drinking cow urine makes us younger (and can give us horns). The morning urine is more useful than the rest of the day. I am sticking to facts here. However, there is no scientific proof of its medicinal properties but there is a popular belief around it. Apparently, elephant, goat, and tiger urine are also good for your face and hair. Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali has a MoU signed with Uttarakhand government to buy some 5000 litres of cow urine every month.
A dead cow is as profitable if not more than a living cow. India is the world’s largest exporter of beef (though buffalo meat is also categorized as beef by the US government). In 2014 it earned India $4.8billion and though the government claims it is all buffalo, cow meat also makes it way out. In many states in India beef (as in cow meat) is allowed where there are no restrictions on cow slaughter (ancient Indians also ate beef and it is very tasty).
Besides export, India also smuggles out a record number of cows (not buffalos) to neighbouring Bangladesh where the cow enters through one of the 68 smuggling corridors and gets legalized as an animal of unknown origin. There the cow becomes beef, crockery, leather etc.
The consignment is so huge and the trade so popular that the force meant to protect the border is now known as Buffalo Shippers and Forwarders. It has been an open secret for decades that the smuggling of people, goods, and cattle across the Bangladesh border is organized through the BSF.
Cows are not just on roads they destroy the fields too. Under the law, the owners can’t even get rid of them. You can’t transport cattle to states where they can be slaughtered (except that they do get transported violating several IPC provisions). Who will buy ageing and non-milking cattle?
In Haryana alone, 3 lakh heads of cattle are in 400 cow shelters. Imagine how much methane they produce that contributes to global warming. Rajasthan the only state in India with a dedicated cow protection government department has recently reported the death of 500 cows in a cow shelter where workers were on strike.
Only if the cow-policy was more pragmatic India could have legalised the export of cows to Bangladesh. “The slaughter of cattle might be offensive to Hindu sentiments, but their blood would not be on Hindu hands, only the money from the sale,” said a former diplomat once.
The cow has also become a trigger for extreme violence. Cow lovers or gaurakshaks have been on an insane campaign, flogging, intimidating even killing people they suspect of having slaughtered cows. Since the lynching of Mohammas Akhlaq by cow vigilantes in North India in 2015, there have been multiple incidents of torture and humiliation on Dalits , Muslims and anyone they imagine are slaughtering cows or consuming beef. Three people have been killed this year related to cows and the recent flogging of Dalits in Gujarat has forced a chief minister to resign showing how cows have started impacting politics.
Cow vigilantism is ironic; Dalits who forever were relegated to handle dead animals are being attacked by the gau rakshaks for doing their job. But the government is not only protecting the vigilantes in the name of the ‘holy cow’ but encouraging the violence and prejudice.
In the name of the cow, holy spirit of India, Amen !
Kishalay Bhattacharjee is a senior journalist and author. His most recent book is Blood on my Hands: Confessions of Staged Encounters (Harper Collins 2015). The views expressed here are his own.
