On Friday, the government decided that it was going to reinstate an age-old Tamil Nadu tradition – and maybe earn some political points in the poll-bound state – by allowing the practice of jallikattu. One of many bull-baiting sports that have developed worldwide, jallikattu was banned in India in 2014 after the Supreme Court upheld a central notification prohibiting the use of bulls as performing animals, angering many Tamilians who believe it to be an important, sometimes religious, tradition.
This article then noted the hypocrisy of the Bharatiya Janata Party permitting jallikattu months after it made news for banning (or enforcing previous bans) on the sale of beef in a number of states.
The contradictions seem easy to point out in both directions: The BJP and the Hindu right are, in the same breath, calling for a ban on beef while also expressly permitting a practice that the Supreme Court has concluded amounts to cruelty to animals.
Meanwhile, "liberals" (with the air-quotes added) are calling for a stop to a grand old tradition involving torture of bulls for just one day in a year, while at the same time protesting against the ban on slaughter of cows and bulls that can be turned into beef.
And indeed, that's exactly what happened online:
The same conversation was being had everywhere, on Twitter, Facebook and Reddit. People on either side of the debate lined up to point out the hypocrisy of either side, firm in their belief that their own positions were not similarly compromised.
Actually both sides have defensible positions, within the countours of their principles.
Case: Most of those who oppose the beef ban aren't doing so because they want to see more animal throats slit, it's because they are militating against a majoritarian intervention in the food habits of a beef-eating minority – which includes Hindus in many parts of the country. The principle being defended there is freedom, not being pro-cruelty or slaughter per se.
Hypocrisy: If there is any case of hypocrisy to be made out against them, it won't be about whether they are for or against cruelty to animals. It would be about the government intervening in a private practice. By wanting jallikattu to be banned, they happen to be advocating government intervention, the same sort that they railed against when the beef ban was enforced.
Case: Meanwhile, those who defend the beef ban are for the most part promoting a reverence of the cow, not the bull, primarily because of Hindu tradition. Cruelty to all animals isn't the bedrock of their argument, instead, the principle being defended is that of Hindu tradition. This allows them to defend jallikattu in the same breath: Not only is it also an age-old tradition – though some Hindus would rather identify it with Tamil culture than Hinduism – it's often pointed out that the same bulls that are tortured for jallikattu are worshiped at Mattu Pongal. The practice of jallikattu is also specifically defended as a way of maintaining "highly cherished" native Indian cattle breeds.
Hypocrisy: The reason this becomes hypocritical is because the Indian state is supposed to be secular. This means that the BJP government (as did the Congress and the Constituent Assembly before it and even the Supreme Court) had to contort itself into finding a reason to uphold a beef ban that didn't admit the essentially Hindu majoritarian impulse behind it. The Maharashtra government's affidavit in the Bombay High Court defending the beef ban spelled this out, saying "cattle which has served human beings is entitled to compassion."
If compassion for cattle were the real reason for the beef ban, and not Hindu tradition, then the approval of jallikattu, a sport that can be truly bloody and cruel, becomes hypocritical.
The fact that both sides manage to hold defensible positions that are also hypocritical is a reminder of something else we rarely see online: An admission of plurality. The internet, and the Twitter in particular, tends to turn everything into a binary you're-either-with-us-or-against-us argument while also homogenising the country.
Hence,
Anti-beef ban = liberal = sickular = anti-Jallikattu
Pro-beef ban = Hindu = bhakt = pro-Jallikattu
In reality, Hindu conservatives in many parts of the country outside Tamil Nadu have no connection with jallikattu and would probably oppose it if it happened to be the tradition of another religion, such as Islam. Yet because of the broad narrative, pushed by the BJP and its parent organisations, that Hindu tradition is under attack by the secular crowd, Hindus everywhere are being encouraged to defend the sport.
Similarly, liberals who might not approve of the government intervening in individual traditions are still happily advocating a jallikattu ban. If, to use an example, the government also wanted to ban, say, the Qurbani during Eid ul Adha, would the same people also approve of such a ban?
Recognising someone who might be against the beef ban and against a Jallikattu ban is getting harder and harder to do, and it seems even less likely that you will find a pro-beef ban person who wants a temple tradition like this to be prohibited. Yet those people exist – even online, as this Reddit thread proves – and it is within these margins that genuine debate can take place, without people having staked out binary positions.
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