Sonu Jat’s phone had been buzzing throughout the day with calls from the camps of two electoral candidates in the Badshahpur assembly seat in Gurugram, Haryana.
“Don’t worry, sister,” he assured someone on the phone. “Ask any of the gau rakshaks in the constituency – they’ll all tell you that they will only vote for whoever Sonu tells them to vote for.”
After the call, he grinned. “We have been holding daily meetings to decide which candidate to support in the election,” he said, ahead of the Haryana assembly polls on Saturday.
Jat, 29, is the Gurgaon district head of the Akhil Bharatiya Bajrang Vahini, one of several cow vigilante groups or gau rakshaks – literally cow protectors – active in Haryana. The young men in these groups often use violence to enforce bans on cow slaughter as they chase down people they believe are “cow smugglers”.
Ever since the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power for the first time in Haryana in 2014, gau rakshaks in the state have been associated with incidents of harassment, assault and even murder. Most of their victims have been Muslim. The BJP state government even set up “cow task forces” of the police that works in tandem with these groups, providing state backing for their violence.
In spite of the free rein they have enjoyed under the state BJP government, however, cow vigilante groups are not unconditionally supporting the party in the assembly elections. Instead, they are functioning as a strategic pressure bloc, lobbying candidates across parties for greater support for their vigilantism.
Diminishing returns
Members of these groups told Scroll that they had stood with the BJP in the 2019 assembly elections. However, with time, their expectations with the government have also increased which the Hindutva party has not been able to fulfill.
“The BJP government has been good to us, but it has not supported us enough,” Jat said.
A key unfulfilled demand, said Pavan Kumar, a member of the Gau Raksha Dal Faridabad, is that indigenous cows be designated as rashtriya mata – literally national mother.
Anuj Ambawat, 31, agreed with Jat. He described himself as a part-time gau rakshak and a full-time gau sewak – a volunteer in cowsheds meant for abandoned cows. “If a criminal case is registered against us, the BJP does not support us,” he claimed.
Ambawat, a resident of the Ghata village in Gurugram district, complained that police were registering criminal cases against gau rakshaks for chasing down people they suspect of being cow smugglers and crashing into their vehicles.
The vigilantes cited what they described as “injustice” meted out by the state to Monu Manesar, the most notorious cow vigilante in Haryana. Manesar was arrested in September last year in a hate speech case. He got bail in that matter but he continues to remain in custody as an accused in the murder of two Muslim men in February by a group of alleged cow vigilantes.
“If they don’t support Monu, how can we trust this government?” asked Satyapal Thakran, 27, who heads the Gau Raksha Dal Gurugram vigilante group.
Ambawat recounted that a few years ago, one of his fellow vigilantes, while chasing some alleged smugglers, suffered an accident and had to get his arm amputated. “But the government didn’t provide him with any support,” Ambawat rued. Thakran said that vigilantes who lose their lives while on gau raksha duty should get the status of “martyrs” and that their families be given financial support by the government.
Another common refrain among gau rakhaks was that they had to finance their own vigilante operations. Thakran said that the Haryana government had failed on its assurances to gau raksha groups to provide more ambulances for injured cattle and vehicles for night patrols. Jat also added that the government should have taken care of stray cattle on roads and housed them in cow sheds.
The vigilantes also claimed that the BJP state government had failed to end cow slaughter in the state. Thakran said that since the days of the Indian National Congress government in the state between 2005 and 2014, “between 1,000 and 1,500 cows were slaughtered in Nuh everyday”. This continues till today, he said.
Nuh is the only Muslim-majority district in Haryana, with Muslims forming about 80% of its population. Situated right next to Gurugram, it is often targeted by cow vigilantes.
Ambawat said that these crimes continue because the police do not catch offenders. “We are forced to take matters into our own hands because the state is not helping us,” he said. Rohtash, 63, who volunteers at the Bani Mandir Gaushala in Gurugram, alleged that “illegal acts of cattle smuggling and slaughter happen with the knowledge and participation of some public officers”.
Jat agreed. “The government should have quickly convicted those breaking the law,” he said. Instead, he alleged, repeat offenders keep getting out on bail and continue to smuggle and slaughter cattle.
New electoral strategy
Because of their disappointment with the BJP government in the state, cow vigilante groups in the state have collectively decided to not automatically pledge their support to the BJP.
Jat explained their strategy: “We are doing a seat-by-seat analysis to determine which candidate to support,” he said. “Whoever stands with us will get our full support, irrespective of their party.”
Ambawat acknowledged that the BJP was the only party that, in his words, “provides us with even a modicum of attention. But if a Congress candidate supports us, we will vote for them.”
This break from the BJP came out most visibly in the Faridabad NIT constituency, where popular cow vigilante Bittu Bajrangi, founder and national president of the Gau Raksha Bajrang Force and an accused in the Nuh communal violence last year, had filed his nomination as an independent candidate last month and had begun campaigning in the constituency.
However, on September 28, at a BJP election rally in Faridabad attended by Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath, Bajrangi endorsed the BJP candidate for the seat, Satish Phagna. He subsequently withdrew his nomination.
The cow vigilantes that Scroll spoke with had various theories to explain Bajrangi’s actions.
“Bittu contested to make a point,” asserted Jat, smiling. “We had never asked the BJP for a ticket.”
On the other hand, Thakran claimed that Bajrangi was pressured into terminating his candidature through the threats of criminal cases being pressed against him.
Apart from Faridabad NIT, there are some other seats in which cow vigilantes have decided to collectively support candidates who have committed to their demands for medical aid for cow vigilantes and the provision of vehicles for their night patrols in the constituencies.
These candidates belong to both major national parties. Thakran said that the cow vigilante vote is with the BJP candidates in the Gurgaon, Sonepat and Palwal seats, with the Congress candidates in the Ballabgarh and Rohtak seats and with an independent candidate in the Badshahpur seat.
Scroll sent messages to these candidates asking about these claims. This report will be updated if they respond.
This strategy was developed in 2022 and has been successfully deployed in several panchayat elections, Thakran said. “We influence between 2,000-2,500 votes in nearly every seat,” he estimated.
The ultimate goal, Jat said, was that parties “should consult us before giving out tickets for elections”.
Split ticket
However, in the Lok Sabha elections that were held in Haryana in May, cow vigilante groups uniformly voted for the BJP. “We were much more enthused about the general election,” said Ambawat. “We all voted for the BJP and got as many people from our communities as possible to register to vote.”
This was mainly due to the popularity Prime Minister Narendra Modi enjoyed within these groups.
“I am a Modi bhakt,” admitted Rohtash. “I don’t care about the BJP.” He said that he was impressed by Modi’s supposed stature among other foreign leaders and the liberty he is believed to have given to the Indian Army to act against intruders in Kashmir.
Jat simply said that “Amit Shah and Modi are with us”.
Some of Jat’s fellow vigilantes in the Akhil Bharatiya Bajrang Vahini said that Haryana lacks a strong Hindutvavadi leader that looks after their interests. “There is no one like Modi ji, Amit Shah ji, Yogi [Adityanath] ji or Raja Singh ji in our state,” one of them said.
T Raja Singh is a BJP MLA from Telangana with a history of making communal and Islamophobic remarks. He has over a hundred criminal cases pending against him.
Rohtash also pointed at the distinction between general and assembly elections. “For assembly elections, we focus on more immediate issues,” he said. “If we have a problem, we want to be able to go to a local person we know.”
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