Wall Street Journal, 2 May 2012
In recent years, political pundits have been saying that voters are tiring of religious partisanship. Issues like the Babri Masjid verdict, in which both Hindu and Muslim groups laid religious claim to a particular spot, no longer appear to have the political weight they used to, judging by the muted reaction to the court decision to split the disputed land. But while the temple-versus-mosque quarrel at Ayodhya may be receding, the sectarian battle seems to be shifting to another ground: beef. In recent years, several Indian states have, well, beefed up their cow protection laws. The southern state of Karnataka, led by a government of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, passed a cow slaughter ban in 2010; it still has to tweak the law in order to get presidential assent. In January, meanwhile, the President gave her assent to a Madhya Pradesh amendment that increased jail time for those found guilty of cow slaughter. In Gujarat, which will hold state assembly elections by the end of this year, a law that increased jail time for killing a cow, or even transporting a cow to the slaughter, from six months to seven years went into effect in October.
Prakash Sharma, a spokesman for the right-wing Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council), says a sustained campaign around the cow, which is considered sacred in Hinduism, has been underway since 1996 and is now paying off. A key part of it involved setting up an institute to develop and promote health products from cow milk, dung and urine. "Slowly this issue is progressing," he said. "In the last 15 to 20 years people's awareness has been raised." A previous attempt to enact a nationwide ban on cow slaughter failed, but Mr. Sharma says he is hopeful that one will eventually be passed. Dalit activists and other groups aren't happy about the trend. Two weeks ago, students at Hyderabad's Osmania University organized a beef-eating festival on campus to stake their claim to steak. Or rather, beef biryani. (Taking it a step further - since most universities or state-run institutions serve neither beef nor pork, to avoid offending either Hindus or Muslims - students at the left-wing Jawaharlal Nehru University have set up a "beef-pork eating campaign.") The Hyderabad beef eaters met, predictably, with opposition from members of a Hindu student political outfit, leading to violent clashes between both sets of students. Dalit poet Meena Kandasamy, who participated in the event, criticized the Hindu protesters.
FULL TEXT AT: http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2012/05/02/indias-battle-over-beef/
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