The Big Story: Enabling vigilantism

The chorus of opposition to the Centre’s new cattle slaughter rules under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act is rising. Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan called the notification an “anti-federal, anti-democratic and anti-secular move”. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee demanded why the rules were introduced just before Ramzan. “Who are they to decide who will eat what, and who will wear what?” she asked. No matter how the Bharatiya Janata Party tries to cut it, the new rules will be seen as part of the troubling majoritarian politics on the rise over the past couple of years, a silent government imprimatur on the violence it has unleashed.

The rules are ostensibly aimed at preventing cruelty to cattle in animal markets. But they define animal markets broadly, ban all such markets within 50 kilometres of the border and stipulate who the purchaser should be. Most contentiously, they require both the buyer and the seller to give an undertaking that they are not trading cattle for slaughter. The Centre has pointed out that the rules do not ban cattle slaughter, merely introduce a thicket of red tape around how cattle is bought and sold at animal markets. But in a politically polarised atmosphere, these subtleties are lost. The rules are seen as an “effective ban” on cattle slaughter and another step in the BJP’s project of cow protection.

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In 2015, the lynching of a Muslim man in Dadri on the suspicion that he had beef in his fridge came on the heels of cattle slaughter bans across various states, enforced either by reviving long-forgotten laws or by enacting fresh legislation. It also came months after Home Minister Rajnath Singh advocated a nationwide ban on cow slaughter. It took weeks for the prime minsiter to break his silence on the Dadri mob murder. The Centre’s reticence, combined with the new rash of bans, gave the impression that vigilante violence had its tacit assent.

In 2017, too, lynchings that seem to stem from such majoritarian impulses have passed without remark from the government. But the killing of a man who stood up for “Swachh Bharat” has elicited prompt condolences and compensation. The worry now is that the government’s selective sympathy, and its contentious new legislation, will only embolden cow vigilantes.

The Big Scroll

Alok Prasanna Kumar points out that the Centre has not banned cattle slaughter but introduced a licence raj around it.

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Sruthisagar Yamunan asks if amounts to an unofficial slaughter ban and argues it could cripple farmers in distress.

Rohan Venkataramakrishnan calls out the argument that the rules are about animal cruelty.

Punditry

  1. In the Indian Express, Anup Surendranath says the new cattle slaughter rules violate fundamental rights to food and livelihood.
  2. In the Hindu, Shiv Visvanathan on how the use of a civilian as a human shield violates the singular integrity of the body.
  3. In the Telegraph, Ruchir Joshi looks forward to Prime Minister Narendra Modi meeting United States President Donald Trump.

Giggles

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Ella Datta on Kashmir, Partition and displacement in a new installation created by artist Nilima Sheikh:

“When Sheikh paints, instead of capturing images directly from her immediate reality, she dips into her memory to pick visuals and episodes from older narrative traditions. This transference helps her to express better the tragic reality of her times. ‘I am struggling to find space for the tragic,’ Sheikh said.

So in Terrain, there are images of which Sheikh has painted several versions over the decades. Some of these images are taken from other traditions and in repeating and modifying them, the artist has made them her own. These include Sohni swimming across Chenab at night to meet her lover Mahiwal in a daring act of defiance; an image of a man carrying his landscape on a boat, borrowed from a Nainsukh Pahari painting; and an image relating to a Partition story of a father beheading his daughter with a sword in order to save her from a likely assault by the enemy. Sheikh read of this last incident in Urvashi Butalia’s remarkable book The Other Side of Silence.”