Pop issues for poll times

The issue of cow-slaughter was settled once for all during the drafting of the Constitution in 1948-49. On November 24 1948, on a motion moved by Seth Govind Dass and Pandit Thakur Das Bhargava, and after a Mus

lim representative from Uttar Pradesh, S.H. Lari, had spoken pleading for clarity in the matter to obviate communal clashes over cow slaughter, Ambedkar agreed to incorporate a reference to cow protection in the Directive Principles of State Policy.

Later, T.T. Krishnamachari, speaking for the Congress in the Constituent Assembly on September 2 1949, said the relevant entry in the state list of legislative powers ensures that state governments ‘‘by means of preservation and protection and improvement should have ample powers to ban cattle slaughter’’ but the entry could not refer to cow slaughter as such because that is a ‘‘statement of policy’’ which is for the state government concerned, not the central government, to take, nor for the Constituent Assembly to impose.

The cow is protected in all states not under communist or Christian sway. Fascinatingly, the state with the oldest record of a ban on cow slaughter is Muslim-majority Jammu & Kashmir. Among the two most prominent states where such legislation is still to be passed are Goa, where the BJP is in office, and Nagaland, where Chief Minister Nephiu Rio is in office as a partner of the BJP.

The main point of his first press conference in New Delhi after becoming CM last month was not about the NSCN (IM) but an adamant refusal to change the beef-eating habits of the Nagas. Before getting Bharat-mata to protect gau-mata, the BJP would be better advised to see if this is feasible or desirable in tourism-dependent Goa (where beef is on the menu of almost every restaurant and beach-shack) and Nagaland (where beef is the local equivalent of daal-chawal).

If, in fact, the BJP at the Centre were sincere in their intent, it would begin by defying the WTO prohibition on quantitative restrictions on the import of beef and come down on five-star hotels in its New Delhi jurisdiction where beef-steak is on every bill of fare.

The fact is the resolution was not about poor gau-mata at all but about electioneering in a year that four cow-belt states (Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Delhi) go to the polls, of a piece with the determined efforts made in the past over Ganga jal or Ram Janmabhoomi or gau-mata to harness Hindu sentiment to the Hindutva rath.

In the run-up to Independence, Ramkrishna Dalmia, uncle (tau) to the present president of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Vishnu Hari Dalmia, launched himself and the newspaper he then owned, The Times of India, on a fierce campaign to secure a ban on cow-slaughter as his priority for the incoming first post-freedom national government.

He roped into his cause the president of the Constituent Assembly, Rajendra Prasad, leading to Rajendra babu bringing it to Jawaharlal Nehru’s attention that he had been receiving a large number of telegrams and other representations urging an outright ban on cow slaughter.

Nehru’s reply of August 7 1947 deserves to be retrieved from the archives and given a fresh airing (Selected Works, pages 189-192). First, Nehru dismissed the campaign as ‘‘slightly spurious’’: ‘‘Dalmia’s money is flowing and Dalmia is not exactly a desirable person.’’ The same charge needs to be brought against the BJP for massing its members on benches that are normally near empty when the House takes up private members’ business. (Nor, of course, is Vishnu Hari Dalmia ‘‘exactly a desirable person’’!)

Nevertheless, said Nehru, ‘‘nobody can doubt the widespread Hindu sentiment in favour of cow protection’’; ‘‘there is very strong Hindu feeling in this matter’’ and it is ‘‘inevitable that Hindu sentiment will affect our country in a hundred ways.’’ He also conceded that there might be an economic argument to preventing the slaughter of cows although he felt this aspect required deeper study. What he objected to was a ban on cow slaughter ‘‘purely on the grounds of Hindu sentiment’’.

For, he said, ‘‘India, in spite of its overwhelming Hindu population, is a composite country’’. Therefore, ‘‘it is a vital problem for us to solve as to whether we are to function fundamentally in regard to our general policy as such a composite country or to function as a Hindu country ignoring the viewpoint of other groups.’’

He also made the telling point that even Mahatma Gandhi was opposed to any compulsory stoppage of cow slaughter: ‘‘You know,’’ he wrote to Rajen babu (and remember Gandhiji was alive and available for consultation at the time), ‘‘how strong an advocate of cow protection Bapu is. Nevertheless, so far as I am aware, he is opposed to any compulsory stoppage of cow slaughter. His chief reason, I believe, is that we must not function as a Hindu state but as a composite state in which Hindus, no doubt, predominate.’’

The BJP argument is the diametric opposite of the Gandhi-Nehru line. They say that precisely because ‘‘Hindus, no doubt, predominate,’’ therefore we must function as ‘‘a Hindu state.’’ What secularists need to recognise is that the argument is not about gau-mata at all, but about whether we are to function as a secular state or a Hindu rashtra.