[Over the last three years, governments in different States, most of them ruled by the BJP, have tightened existing laws against cow slaughter. It is no accident that the period has been attended by an aggressive vigilantism. From the killing of a man in Dadri in Uttar Pradesh in 2015 on suspicion that he had beef in his possession, to the flogging of a group of Dalit men who were skinning a dead cow in Una in Gujarat last year, cow vigilantes, in the guise of being gau rakshaks, have created an atmosphere of fear. It is disturbing that legislative initiatives and mob violence have been moving in step.]
I/IV. http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/barbarism-unlimited/article17854670.ece EDITORIAL Barbarism unlimited: On 'cow protection' and Alwar attack APRIL 07, 2017 00:15 IST UPDATED: APRIL 07, 2017 08:20 IST *A man has been murdered by cow vigilantes. The murderers must be brought to book* The death of a man from injuries at the hands of “cow protection” vigilantes in Rajasthan’s Alwar district rightly animated Parliament. The details of the violence inflicted by a mob on Saturday are chilling and vividly caught on mobile phone video, and demand an assurance from the government that justice will be done. It is unfortunate that as the opposition raised the issue, the response from the treasury benches was anything but satisfactory. In fact, coupled with comments from spokespersons of the BJP and even the Rajasthan Home Minister, the message from the authorities indicates that an outrageous equivalence is being sought to be made between the lynch mob’s actions and the victims’ alleged — simply “alleged” — actions. The facts are these. Pehlu Khan, the deceased, and four others were on their way back to Haryana after buying cattle in Jaipur. A mob set itself upon them in Behror on the Jaipur-Delhi National Highway. The violence was explained as an attempt to prevent the “illegal” transportation of cattle. Instead of condemning the violence and stating that nobody has the right to attack individuals no matter what they may and may not have been doing, all that has emanated from ministers at the Centre and in Rajasthan is evasive prevarication. State Home Minister Gulab Chand Kataria said no one had the right to take the law into his own hands, but added it was “all right” that those illegally moving cattle were nabbed. In the Rajya Sabha, Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi implied that no incident of such cow vigilantism had occurred. ***Over the last three years, governments in different States, most of them ruled by the BJP, have tightened existing laws against cow slaughter. It is no accident that the period has been attended by an aggressive vigilantism. From the killing of a man in Dadri in Uttar Pradesh in 2015 on suspicion that he had beef in his possession, to the flogging of a group of Dalit men who were skinning a dead cow in Una in Gujarat last year, cow vigilantes, in the guise of being gau rakshaks, have created an atmosphere of fear. It is disturbing that legislative initiatives and mob violence have been moving in step.*** [Emphasis added] It is also true that while distancing organisations of the Sangh Parivar from the incidents, individuals affiliated to these organisations, including the BJP, have played down the instances of violence by focussing on how the alleged crimes had offended believers. And in this constant din of pledging support to the larger effort to protect the cow, there is little official deliberation on the actual implementation of anti-cow slaughter laws, let alone a recognition of the incentives these laws create for the illegal movement of animals across jurisdictions. By failing to condemn lynch mobs for murder and bring vigilantes to book, the government only diminishes Indian democracy. II/IV. http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/toi-editorials/murder-in-alwar-dairy-farmer-pehlu-khan-becomes-the-latest-casualty-of-cow-vigilantism/ Murder in Alwar: Dairy farmer Pehlu Khan becomes the latest casualty of cow vigilantism April 7, 2017, 2:00 AM IST TOI Edit in TOI Editorials | Edit Page, India | TOI When an elderly dairy farmer, returning home with a cow purchased in Jaipur, is beaten up so brutally by an Alwar mob that he can’t survive the injuries, there can be no justification for his murder. Yet, the death of Pehlu Khan was followed by Rajasthan home minister Gulab Chand Kataria intoning, “The problem is from both the sides. People know cow trafficking is illegal but they do it. Gau bhakts try to stop those who indulge in such crimes.” This is dangerously false equivalence. Identifying and punishing crimes is the job of police. In any case there isn’t much evidence that Khan was a cow trafficker. Rajasthan government should severely punish his murderers instead of valorising them as gau bhakts. During the discussion on the incident in Rajya Sabha yesterday, parliamentary affairs minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi spoke about being “sensitive” to the “emotions” of crores of people. But after a murder, facts have to take priority over emotions and hysteria if India is to have a semblance of good governance. India is the largest producer of milk in the world, with around 85% of its dairy workforce being small farm holders. This necessarily involves buying, selling, transporting milch animals. If this transporting is endangered it hurts the dairy, leather and allied businesses which employ millions of people – alongside social harmony. If in one place an administration is seen to be either passive or supportive of cow vigilantism, it will stoke similar fires elsewhere in the country. Signs are already ominous from Dadri and Una to Alwar. Union minister Nirmala Sitharaman speaks of gau raksha being part of the Indian freedom struggle. But what about the bigger legacy of ahimsa and justice? It’s these inheritances that Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje must champion. III/IV. http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/editorials/cow-vigilantism-gau-rakshaks-pm-narendra-modi-akhlaq-murder-beef-row-una-dalit-flogging-dadri-lynching-alwar-attack-4602703/ Man slaughter The lynch mob can get away with it, in the name of the cow. That’s the message from Vasundhara Raje’s Rajasthan By: Editorial | Published:April 7, 2017 12:04 am A year earlier, in September 2015, Mohammad Akhlaq was lynched at Dadri on the suspicion of storing beef. (Representational photo) Speaking at a public event in August 2016, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had condemned cow vigilantism. They were anti-social elements, he said, who had set up shop in the name of the cow. At that time, it had seemed that the PM’s rebuke, entirely welcome, had come a little late. In July, the flogging of Dalits in Una by a group of gau rakshaks had sparked anger and outrage across the country. A year earlier, in September 2015, Mohammad Akhlaq was lynched at Dadri on the suspicion of storing beef. The incidents at Dadri and Una had deepened fears that the BJP’s large electoral victory in 2014 had emboldened those lumpens who would use gau raksha as a cover for taking the law into their own hands, against Muslims or Dalits. Even though belated, the PM’s reprimand last year held out the assurance that such violence and vigilantism would not go unchecked. Now, the attack by gau rakshaks on a group of men on National Highway 8 in the Behror area of Alwar last week is a reminder that his message is not being heeded and respected by a government led by his own party. By all accounts, the Vasundhara Raje-led government in Rajasthan has much to answer for in the incident at Alwar, in which a group of Muslim men was accosted and assaulted by a band of gau rakshaks — one of them, Pehlu Khan, a dairy farmer, died later — for allegedly smuggling cows for slaughter. The police arrived late at the scene of the crime. As this paper has reported, even though the victims had receipts to show they had purchased the cows, it was quick to register FIRs against them for illegally transporting cattle for slaughter under the Rajasthan Bovine Animal Act 1995. It is yet to show similar alacrity or efficiency in nabbing all the accused and moving against them under the IPC. On Wednesday, Rajasthan Home Minister Gulab Chand Kataria claimed that “both sides are at fault” — in effect, and in a grotesque parody of his own responsibility as a minister, blaming the victims. The Rajasthan government must be held answerable for the incident at Alwar, for the apparent climate of impunity in which such an attack became possible. But there is a wider accountability, too. It is bizarre that Union minister of state for parliamentary affairs and minorities Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi all but denied the incident in Rajya Sabha on Thursday. It does not behove the governments, at the Centre and in the state, to do anything less than accept the enormity of the outrage and commit that the guilty would be brought to book. Tragically, this basic assurance of a constitutional democracy — that action would be taken in accordance with the law against vigilantism of any kind — seems imperilled in a climate in which BJP chief ministers, in UP, Chhattisgarh and Gujarat, compete with each other to sound more muscular and to bring in the more draconian legislation on the cow. IV. http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/cattle-protection-campaign-a-milch-cow-for-hindu-nationalists/story-42DBbTbm1LznfOy3OapoZN.html Cattle protection campaign a milch cow for Hindu nationalists INDIA Updated: Apr 06, 2017 16:03 IST Rakesh Goswami Hindustan Times, Jaipur Gau Raksha Dal volunteers stand guard on a highway in Taranagar in Rajasthan. (AFP file photo) The killing of a Haryana Muslim dairy farmer who was attacked along with four others in Alwar on April 1 by an alleged right-wing Hindu group while transporting cattle purchased in Jaipur has put the spotlight on gau rakshaks (cow protection vigilantes). In Rajasthan, they operate under different names – Gau Raksha Dal, which claims to be a national body with presence in 22 states; the Rashtriya Mahila Gau Raksha Dal that operates in Haryana and Uttar Pradesh as well and the Bajrang Dal, the extremist youth wing of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. Gau Raksha Dal vice president Babulal Jangid says the body has the biggest network of “cow protectors”, down to the tehsil level. “But we never indulge in violence. Our men call police when they receive information about bovines being transported. Our focus is on saving the cattle; for the smugglers, there is police,” he says. Jangid claims the Dal has 15,000 workers but they are not an organised group. “There’s no registration, no record on papers, we know each other and operate through contacts,” says the 43-year-old. Read more Alwar: Men beaten by gau rakshaks had valid permits for transport of cows Naqvi says version of events on killing of Muslim man by cow vigilantes not true The Rashtriya Mahila Gau Raksha Dal, a body of 2,200 women vigilante, is headed by Sadhvi Kamal, called Didi by her supporters. The saffron-robed 39-year-old was thrust into the spotlight recently after she forced the Jaipur administration to seal a hotel for allegedly serving beef. The hotel is owned by a Muslim businessman. Forehead streaked with vermillion, Kamal also claims credit for a road jam in Chhoti Sadri in Pratapgarh district in June 2016 after a mob thrashed three alleged cow transporters and stripped one of them. And then there is Bajrang Dal and its parent body, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. It is alleged that the people who waylaid two vehicles carrying cows and calves near Behror in Alwar on the Jaipur-Delhi national highway belonged to these saffron outfits. VHP state president Narpat Singh Shekhawat denies the charge. “I am going to sue papers which are calling these lumpen members of our group,” he says. These fringe groups became active after the BJP-led government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi took over at the Centre. They claim to protect cows from being taken to slaughterhouses. Critics, however, accuse these vigilante groups of targeting people, mostly from the Muslim community. Read more Rajasthan: Cops arrest 3 for lynching of Muslim man by cow protection group Cow protectionism was spirit behind freedom movement: Minister “It’s a business,” says Noor Mohammad, a social activist who works with Meo-Muslims in Rajasthan’s Mewat region, a hotbed of cow smuggling and slaughter. “The gau rakshaks want money. If you pay them, they let you go. Otherwise they snatch it from you and lodge police complaint against you for cow smuggling,” he says. Rajasthan’s crime statistics appear to buttress Mohammad’s claim. In 2015, police closed 73 cases registered under the Rajasthan Bovine Animal (Prohibition of Slaughter and Regulation of Temporary Migration or Export) Act, 1995, after they were found to be fake. In 2016, 85 such cases were closed and until February this year, five have been dropped. On an average, more than one case of cow smuggling is registered daily in the state, Rajasthan Police data show. In 2015, 543 cases were registered. The number dropped to 474 the next year. This year until February, 95 cases have been lodged under the bovine act. The Alwar Police registered a case of illegal transport of bovine against the five men assaulted on April 1. “For export of bovine from Rajasthan for agricultural or dairy farming purposes or for participation in a cattle fair, a special permit needs to be issued by the district collector or an officer authorised by him for the purpose. These men from Haryana didn’t have the permit,” superintendent of police Rahul Prakash says. Kavita Srivastava of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) counters the SP. “They were illiterate dairy farmers. They didn’t know the legalese. Police have no moral authority to book them for smuggling when they had transport permits from a municipal body,” she says. HT, too, wrote on April 6 that the men had permits from civic bodies to transport the animals. PUCL has demanded Rs 1 crore compensation to the family of Pehlu Khan, who died in a hospital on April 3, and Rs 10 lakh each for the four who suffered injuries. The organisation has also demanded suspension of Behror police station in-charge and transfer of Alwar SP. Cattle protection campaign is a milch cow for Hindu nationalist groups, adds Mohammad. “Cows seized during such actions are often found at houses of members of the management committees of gaushala (cow shelters). They happily milk them instead of keeping them at the shelter. The seized cattle are sometimes handed over to the gau rakshaks for paltry sums,” he alleges. -- Peace Is Doable -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth. 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