The Karnataka Dalit Welfare Trust in Mysuru held a beef eating fest inspite of denied permissions, to purportedly protest against the so called Una beating incident that gained momentum after certain media channels blew up the pre-conceptualized narrative like in the Dadri or the Rohith Vemula case.
The police made arrests in order to contain the deliberate attempts at provoking a communal stir. The Mysuru police quoted that the organizers had only sought permissions to hold a protest and not for any beef fest.
Cow and caste politics is not new to India as congregations of communal bigots have often masqueraded as secular stalwarts since decades and still continue to milk that very holy cow cashing and couching on its religious symbolism to cast a divide amongst communities and create rifts within communities.
Although the ban on cow slaughter remains intact in our constitutional papers, the Congress party has always cowed the cow into a corner castigating all else as communal even when they deliberately choose beef over pork for a feisty fest.
The issue at the moment is certainly not one’s food choices but as to why there is constantly a cow or a Dalit issue being played out?
Some interesting political patterns noticed in the past few days ever since the Modi Government took over is that the vested interests of the vestiges in the power corridors who have been rejected by the nation, have been sequencing a studied and streamlined spillover of communal stirring across the nation with their traditional tools of divisive politics to keep the national narrative limited to cow and caste as they have never risen beyond that!
Countries across the globe make laws as per the needs of their economy and culture. In the US, horse slaughtering is banned because it is considered a majestic animal, in countries like Hong Kong and Taiwan, there is an ordinance that bans slaughter of dogs and cats for food. In many other Muslim nations, pork is a strict no-no!
But strangely enough it is only in India that there is a big ruckus about our revered animal so much that even the US sticks its nose to tell us to be tolerant!
India is largely an agrarian economy with a large populace directly dependent on its cattle and livestock for its diary and agricultural produce hence our constitution as per article 48 upholds a total ban on cow slaughter as a reasonable restriction on fundamental rights of all Indians.
Apart from its milk, the cow dung is known for its anti-septic value, it also used to make fuel (bio gas) and used in composting manure and production of electricity, cow urine has medicinal properties and works as a pest repellent in farms. Cow is the only animal that renders every bit of its life for our benefits without expecting anything in return, it is for this nature of the cow that we regard it as Gaumata.
Our ancestors were basically animistic in their beliefs as they revered and worshiped everything that beneficially supplemented their lives. They had realized the need to preserve and protect them. We worship the Peepal and Tulasi plants as they release oxygen even at night. Infact the Tulasi plant that we worship gives oxygen for 20 hours and ozone for 4hours in a day absorbing harmful gases like carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and Sulphur dioxide, it is for this reason that we worship nature in many forms.
A spoon of cow ghee poured into a ritualistic fire (Homa) releases tons of oxygen into the atmosphere. The human body is designed to digest a vegetarian diet and also raising animals for food generates more greenhouse gases than all the vehicle emissions put together. It is for this reason that Hinduism or Sanathana Dharma propounds the reverence of the cow.
Also the onset of many developmental policies of the Modi government like Anthyodaya that has taken various initiatives to address the disparity between the haves and the have nots towards achieving a social and economic equality in India. The renewed focus on social justice and empowerment schemes like disbursing soft loans to SCs under the National Scheduled Caste Finance and Development Corporation, National Safai Karamcharis Finance and Development Corporation that also provides skill training, creation of venture capital fund for scheduled castes, Credit Enhancement Guarantee Scheme for Scheduled Castes where a 200 crore rupee budget was allocated and launched for young and start up entrepreneurs belonging to Scheduled castes, providing educational loans and scholarships to students of deprived sections like OBCs National Fellowship through UGC to pursue degrees of M Phil and PhD, under Post metric scholarship for OBCs, number of students eligible to avail Dr.Ambedkar Scheme of Interest Subsidy on Educational loans For Overseas studies for OBCs/EBCs was increased. Expenditure parameters for construction of various OBC hostels are increased.
National Backward Class Finance and Development Corporation(NBCFDC) have distributed more than Rs.297 crores among Rs.1.67lakh beneficiaries in 2014-15.
NBCFDC has trained 13510 OBC youth in skill development and approval has been given to train 15,346 OBC youth in 2015-16.
In the Education sector the Union Human Resource Development Ministry has decided to waive the fee for all SC/ST, Dalit and physically challenged students in all the 23 branches of Indian Institute of Technology(IIT). Besides a fee waiver, those with family income below Rs.5 lakh will be given a 66%concession. Students whose annual income is less than Rs.1 lakh will be able to avail a 100% fee waiver.
The MUDRA scheme is giving financial support to small business SC/ST/OBC/Dalit entrepreneurs via priority loans with an aim to promote entrepreneurship and thereby increasing employment opportunities for all.
The various schemes for Tribal welfare and contemporaneous welfare that is heading towards bridging the infrastructural gap and the gap in human development indices between ST and other social groups, all these plethora of pluralistic developmental schemes have shaken the opposition parties who until yesterday were safely playing the poverty erasing card when in reality they had nurtured and sustained poverty.
They can no more play the Dalit card or the pro poor card! Their various Dalit welfare associations are caught only instigating communal violence with absolutely no regard for any welfare of the oppressed sections!
The leftists and liberals and the minority appeasing folks are running out election agendas and strategies! So the liberals will peevishly pitch the Beef bogey!
They will cry foul about the hypocrisy of cow reverence when India has grown as a top exporter of beef in their own regimes! The increase in the beef exports that trebled during 2009 to 2014 was attributed as an exploding Agri-export item even when it was mostly carabeef (buffalo meat), not that buffaloes are less worthy.
But the thick skinned will continue their sinister agenda of ridiculing the science behind our traditions and cultures while the west has been substantially reaping the benefits of our ancient practices.
Two US patents have been granted for cow urine distillate (US Pat. No. 6410059 & 6896907) for anti-microbial, anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, anti-cancer properties, also it has lots of antioxidants.
People who argue that Mahatma Gandhi said that he wanted Indians to benefit from the rich proteins in beef forget that he after much research had reformed himself and come to the conclusion that cow protection was more important than Swaraj!
Even during the reign of kings like Bahadur Shah Zafar and Ranjit Singh, the slaughter of a cow was a capital offense.
And that some groups today blatantly kill, instigate, thrash and cash on the cow politics where the victim and their oppressors have a common agenda to checkmate the ruling right with their time tested divisive card against the development card.
It is this issue that the prime minister addressed recently in his talk that a new coalition of cowboys is veiling themselves as cow vigilantes and crying a communal catcall when their very agenda is to deliberately rake up and ridicule revered symbolism and audaciously pit one community against the other. It was this breed of pseudo vigilantes that he condemned but the media cleverly ignored the pseudo vigilantes in the Una case and chose to pick on RSS ignoring the intelligentsia of the masses who are amusedly watching this carefully crafted communal drama that has been the vicious tool of the communists and the Congress!
The beef fests may echo across the nation just like the striking of university students, until many elections are done with and Mysuru episode is just one of them. But will the media ever seriously investigate the matter and crop these cowboys into size? The Modi government should take this opportunity to create a social narrative on his promise about taking on the pink revolution and ask other countries like the US to mind its business.
Meanwhile they can also focus on its economic growth by increasing steeply the prices of the otherwise cheap protein supplement called Beef within India until they streamline the stringent adherence of the constitutional laws.