Opinion New India?

The pattern is made up not just of the rampaging “gau rakshaks” who target Muslims in the guise of cow-protection.

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi met chief ministers of several states at the Niti Aayog’s governing council meet in the capital on Sunday, the conversation ranged from the GST, which the PM called “a great illustration of cooperative federalism”, to a 15-year vision document, a seven-year National Development Agenda and a three-year Action Plan to transform India. At another meeting of the PM with chief ministers of BJP-ruled states the same day, presentations were made of the best-functioning state-level schemes. Going by the tweets of Rajasthan CM Vasundhara Raje and UP CM Yogi Adityanath after the latter event, there was talk of “antyodaya” as well. By all accounts, including theirs, neither Raje, nor Adityanath brought up an important and troubling issue on their watch — of growing cow vigilantism in UP and Rajasthan respectively. In UP, the new CM’s fast-tracking of the election promise to shut down “illegal slaughter houses” has emboldened minority-baiting lumpenism. In Rajasthan, dairy farmer Pehlu Khan died after an assault by self-styled “gau rakshaks” at Behror in Alwar district on April 1. Reports of the Niti Aayog meeting earlier point to a similar silence across the high table on the chilling pattern forming after attacks in other states like the one that killed Pehlu Khan — three nomadic families were assaulted on the suspicion they were cattle smugglers in Reasi district of J&K and three men transporting buffalos were beaten up in South Delhi over the last week.

The pattern is made up not just of the rampaging “gau rakshaks” who target Muslims in the guise of cow-protection. It also, and crucially, features the policemen who then file FIRs against the attackers as well as the victims. This — the taking of the law into its own hands by the mob, and the inaction or effeteness or complicity of the law enforcer — must worry the chief ministers in whose states such events have already taken place. It must also concern CMs of other states to which, in a climate of impunity, this contagion of bigotry and lawlessness could spread. Chief ministers of all states, ruled by the BJP or by non-BJP parties, must be apprehensive that such incidents, captured on video, are stoking fears and insecurities among ordinary, law-abiding citizens of the minority community.

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Today, there is an elephant in the room at any gathering of chief ministers, or forum of exchange of good governance ideas between the Centre and states. “Development” is a meaningless catchword unless it is seen to be indivisible from the acknowledgement of the state’s primary assurance to its citizens — all of them — that their right to safety, security and dignity will be protected. In a country where the “gau rakshak” enjoys, or is seen to enjoy, immunity from the law, amid a political silence maintained by ruling parties but also unbroken by parties of the opposition, the vision document or three- or seven-year plan isn’t worth the paper on which it’s written.