Stealing In The Name of ‘Holy Cow’! Do Gau Rakshaks Know, Hindus also involved in Cattle Theft?

By
Alfie Dsouza, Team Mangalorean.
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Stealing In The Name of ‘Holy Cow’! Do Gau Rakshaks Know, Hindus also involved in Cattle Theft?

Stealing In The Name of ‘Holy Cow’! Do Gau Rakshaks Know, Hindus also involved in Cattle Theft? On July 27, 2018 that too after the group and Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) staged a protest against illegal transportation of cows on Thursday, 26 July in Mangluru, and also forming ‘Gau Rakshak Dal’ {Cow Protectors}, police had arrested 48-year-old Shashi Kumar, a Bajrang Dal activist in cattle theft. And six days later, on 2 Aug when police had arrested four persons in illegal cattle trafficking, out of the persons, three were Hindus, identified as-Radhakrishnan, Subhash Shetty and Sathish Kumar; and fourth person, a Muslim by the name of Naeemuddin. How about that? Seems like “We Don’t Practice What We Preach”!

Mangaluru: Addressing a gathering at a protest held by Bajrang Dal, Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Durga Vahini to condemn illegal slaughter houses, cattle trafficking and cow theft at Vamanjoor on July 26, 2018, VHP leader Muralidhar Hamsathadka had said, ““There will be need of a second freedom fight and this time it is not against any outsiders. The fight is to protect cows and their owners. Without counter attacks, we cannot find a permanent solution to save cows which are holy for us. It is time to store weapons at homes for the safety of cows and their owners. Cattle thieves have started entering compounds and without any mercy are taking cows away. These thieves are a threat to the lives of women and elderly people. The thieves are protected by politicians and officials. There is absolutely no point in asking the government for a solution. Now it is our responsibility to guard our cows. We will form our own battalions to protect this society from cow thieves.”

Okay, well said by the VHP leader- but 24 hours later, in an embarrassing episode for Bajrang Dal, their own member was found smuggling cows on Friday, July 27, that too after the group and Vishwa Hindu Paishad (VHP) staged a protest against illegal transportation of cows on Thursday, 26 July in Mangluru. How about that? In a release, Ravikanthe Gowda, Superintendent of Police of Dakshina Kannada, said that 48-year-old Shashi Kumar, son of Krishna Bhat of Padaru village near Vitla in Bantwal taluk, was the arrested. He is a Bajrang Dal activist. Along with him, the police also arrested Abdul Harris, aged 21. Vitla police stopped a mini-truck and they found in the vehicle four cows and a calf, all tied together, in an inhuman manner”. What’s more, according to the police, a Bajrang Dal activist tipped them off on the matter. The value of the cattle and vehicle is estimated at Rs. 5 lakh.

And now once again, six days later, on 2 August the city Kavoor police had intercepted a lorry plying from Udupi to mangaluru, illegally transporting 13 cattle and arrested four men identified as Naeemuddin, Radhakrishnan, Subhash Shetty and Sathish Kumar who were travelling in two vehicles. Police said that seven are cows and six are calves out of the 13 cattle. Naeemuddin was driving the Kerala registered lorry along with Radhakrishnan. Subhash Shetty and Sathish Kumar were behind the lorry in a car. Three Hindus in illegal cattle trafficking-how about that? Seems like “We Don’t Practice What we Preach”!

Another thing is that even though Cow is considered to be Holy, sources reveal that many of the restaurants in Mangaluru who sell beef are also patronized by Hindus, among others, who consume beef items. How about that? Also at the beef meat stalls in City, it is learnt that many migrants from North Karnataka, most of them Hindus, who can’t afford buying Mutton or Chicken, are buying beef. How about that? And what has the saffron activists done against such people, other than targeting non-Hindus, especially Muslims, when they commit a mistake. That’s not fair- action should be taken on those who abuse Hindu culture, irrespective of religion. And these controversial issues have also led to mob murderers, also known as lynching.

So it looks like this is not a Hindu-Muslim problem — even Hindus are into the smuggling of cows. Like one Muslim cleric had said that the hatred has reached a level that you can even make an announcement from a temple and a crowd will go and attack. Mohammad Sartaj, 32, the son of Akhlaq Sartaj, the man lynched in Dadri last year, said: “It looks like cow slaughter is more criminalized than human slaughter.” He added that his younger brother sustained severe head injuries in the attack.

According to Indian Ministry of Home Affairs, between 2014 and March, 2018, 45 people were killed in mob lynchings across nine states in India. In the latest example, a group of villagers beat to death 28-year-old Akbar Khan in Rajasthan’s Alwar district, an incident that came to light just five days after the Supreme Court urged the Center to frame a law to curb lynchings. In response to Akbar Khan’s lynching by a mob, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor tweeted (July 22): “It seems safer in many places to be a cow than a Muslim.”

All in the name of the holy cow, there is a large list of lynchings — not a new trend in India, but one that has seen a spike in the four years since the Narendra Modi government came to power. Most such hate crimes have been concentrated in states governed by the Bharatiya Janata Party, and an accused has been convicted in only one case, so far. In several of these incidents, FIRs were lodged against the victims, many of whom were cattle traders or dairy farmers from the minority community, and the perpetrators let off. At a time when policymakers should be up in arms against those spreading fake news or participating in mob lynching incidents, some lawmakers are indulging in the opposite—going even to the extent of felicitating them, even garlanding the mob murderers. How about that?

In one grim reckoning, more than 389 individuals have been killed in anti-minority acts of violence since mid-2014, and hundreds of others injured, stripped, beaten and humiliated. Particularly haunting is the story of 15-year-old Junaid Khan, returning home on a crowded train after buying new clothes for Eid, who was stabbed repeatedly because he was Muslim and thrown off the train to bleed to death on the tracks. Sources reveal that seventy cases of cow-related violence have been reported in the last eight years, of which 97 per cent (68 out of 70) have occurred during the four years of BJP rule and a majority of these have occurred in BJP-ruled states.

In conclusion, it is a good initiative that Bajrang Dal and VHP have taken in forming “Gau Rakshak Dal’ in order to control cattle theft by non-Hindus, but they should also prevent Hindus from stealing cows, and take action against them. “Isn’t it a human right to decide what you want to eat?” Then why someone has to tell someone what to eat and what not to eat. Whereas on one hand, Hindus who worship cows as Holy God, and on the other hand, few minutes later go to a restaurant and consume beef. That’s not right-what do you have to say?

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