In July 2013, in an interview to
Reuters, the then Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, was asked: “Do you
regret what happened in 2002 [during the riots in Gujarat]”? Modi replied “…any person if we are driving a car, we are
a driver, and someone else is driving a car and we’re sitting behind, even then
if a puppy comes under the wheel, will it be painful or not? Of course it is…If
something bad happens anywhere, it is natural to be sad” (sic).[1] We are all aware of the political
storm that broke out after this interview. I am afraid Prime Minister Modi has
had one more puppy moment when he commented on the Dadri lynching incident and labeled
it as merely “unfortunate”.[2]
Dadri and
its aftermath
Between
the time that Muhammad Aklakh was lynched in Dadri and Modi finally broke his
silence, politicians of all hues sought to extract much political mileage from the incident. However, the behavior of BJP members was exceptional in fanning
the already tense communal situation. Local BJP leader Srichand Sharma[3], Nawab Singh Nagar (a
former BJP MLA from Dadri)[4] and BJP Union Minister Mahesh Sharma[5]
had already made inflammatory statements before Asaduddin Owaisi (AIMM),[6]
Rahul Gandhi (Congress)[7]
and Arvind Kejriwal (AAP)[8]
visited Dadri. The worst of them all was, of course, Sangeet Som who spoke of a
“befitting reply”[9] and referred to Aklakh’s
family as “cow killers”.[10]
Minister of State in the BJP government, Sanjeev Balyan, threatened more
violence if cow slaughter were not stopped.[11]
The vitriol spewed by the BJP members was not matched by anyone, not even Azam
Khan who wished to approach the United Nations in connection with the Dadri
killing.[12]
The Dadri
incident took place on 28 September 2015,[13]
while Modi made his Dadri-specific statement as late as 15 October 2015. In
fact, in the ten days following Dadri, Modi, who is famously Twitter-happy,
found the time to tweet about many different issues but he uttered not a word
about the lynching. His tweets, during this time, included: birthday greetings to
Mahesh Sharma, governors of Bihar and Nagaland, David Cameron and Vladimir
Putin; congratulations to Pankaj Advani on winning the billiards world
championship, Sushama Swaraj on her UN speech (5 tweets); report of Angela Merkel’s visit (11 tweets);
rallies in Bihar (11 tweets); Swachh Bharat (5 tweets) among some others.[14]
In between the tweets, he also spoke on the radio programme Mann Ki Baat,[15]
but the silence on Dadri remained complete and deafening.
Was it too much to expect that the
Prime Minister should speak up on the Dadri incident? For a person who
communicates so regularly and frequently on Twitter and on the radio, the
silence was certainly shocking. The BJP brigade was quick to defend Modi’s silence. Modi cannot speak on every murder, said Sanjeev Balyan.[16] BJP secretary Siddharth
Nath Singh threw in the emotional angle, saying that the Prime Minister is a “sensitive person”
and should not be judged by “what he writes or doesn’t write on social media”.[17]
Modi himself, in his statement of October 14, threw in the towel when he said “Incidents like Dadri…are really sad but what is
the Centre's role in them”?[18] When
there was such a clamour for Modi to speak on the Dadri incident, no one
expected such a weak and pusillanimous statement from the Prime Minister of
this country. Here was the man who had boasted of a 56-inch chest[19] hiding
behind India’s federal set-up as an excuse for not taking a stand. Despite what
the lackeys might say, there is much that Modi could have said without damaging
India’s federal structure. He could have expressed outrage at the Dadri
incident. It is common knowledge that law and order is the responsibility of
the state but why should that stop the Prime Minister from commenting on it? In
a brilliantly argued piece, Srinivasan Jain is scathing in his critique of the
PM’s silence.[20] Having stridently spoken
of a fictitious “pink revolution” (apparent reference to the slaughter of cattle during the UPA regime) while campaigning for the 2014 general
elections,[21] could Modi still command
the moral authority to rein in the rabid elements in the BJP? Was that the
reason for his silence? He had sown the communal wind in 2014 and was now
reaping the whirlwind in the form of Sangeet Som and Sakshi Maharaj.
Writers protest
Had Modi been so
inclined, he could have taken the wind out of the sails of the protesting writers (who
returned their awards) by taking action against members of his party who had made
outrageous communal statements. That he did not do so is hardly surprising:
Sakshi Maharaj, Giriraj Kishore and Yogi Adityanath have made innumerable
offensive comments in the past and all that we have got is silence from the PM.
If Amit Shah had summoned the recalcitrant BJP members, apparently because Modi
was “very angry”, in early October instead of on 19 October[22] the
whole sorry spectacle of vicious attacks on some of India’s finest minds –
Nayantara Sahgal, Shashi Deshpande and other award winners – would have been
avoided. Of course, it is well-known that the authors were protesting not just
the Dadri killing but also the assassination of M.M. Kalburgi allegedly by a Hindutva
outfit that found his views unpalatable.
I am certain that it
does not matter to the unthinking and blinkered BJP supporters, but India’s
reputation as the world’s largest democracy has been besmirched.[23] As if
this were not bad enough, the reactions of the BJP towards the protesting authors
were particularly odious and designed to paint them as individuals who had
thrived under Congress rule and now found themselves left out in the cold. Arun
Jaitley called it a manufactured revolt and questioned how many of these
writers protested during the Emergency and the 1984 Sikh riots.[24] Is
Jaitley really ignorant of the fact that Nayantara Sahgal was a bitter opponent
of the Emergency?[25] Is he genuinely unaware
that a large number of other artists had protested against the Emergency?[26] Swapan
Dasgupta[27] – him
of the smug looks and triumphant smiles – and Tavleen Singh[28] alleged that the protest of authors was due to their hatred of Modi. Others made it a Congress
versus BJP issue, labeling the authors as pro-Congress,[29]
presumably, since they did not protest the 1984 Sikh riots. The charge of being
pro-Congress is quite easily dismissed and, surely, this must be apparent even to
those in the BJP. If the authors did not protest after the 1984 riots, many of
them did not do so after the Gujarat riots of 2002 either. So, if at all, the
authors are guilty of two acts of omission but, since they protested neither
riots, they cannot be accused of being pro-Congress and anti-BJP. In fact,
accusing the authors of partisanship or selective protests is to insult them
and devalue their contributions to arts and literature. I wholeheartedly agree
with Rana Ayyub when she calls on us to celebrate the dissenting writers.[30] The
works of these writers and their protests should inspire Indians to proudly
believe that liberal thought is alive and strong in the country.
It is important for
the BJP to label any protest, any dissent as a Congress bias. Given the disdain
in which Congress is held by a large number of Indians, anything that smacks of
being pro-Congress is automatically suspect. Calling the protesting authors
pro-Congress is a neat trick to deflect attention from the fact that the
authors are protesting against a very disturbing trend in India, namely, the
silencing of inconvenient voices like Kalburgi, Pansare and Dabholkar. The
blame for these killings is squarely on violent outfits – can they still be
called fringe parties? – which claim to represent a militant Hindutva. I don’t
think anyone has blamed the BJP for these murders but what is expected is an
unequivocal condemnation by the party without any attempt at pointing out extenuating
circumstance, such as hurting the feelings of the majority community. This is
what the authors were expecting from the Prime Minister which, alas, was not
forthcoming.
Cow politics
The reaction of the
BJP and other right-wing outfits like the RSS to the Dadri killing has been
disappointing in the extreme. The RSS calls it a natural reaction to cow
slaughter,[31] never mind the fact that there
was no real slaughter of any cow. The BJP’s Sangeet Som called Aklakh’s family
“cow killers” as if that was enough justification for the murder. The Prime
Minister gave encouragement to this by referring to “pseudo-secularism” in his
statement.[32] This reference to
pseudo-secularism is again a clever attempt to implicate the Congress in
the protests against Dadri since this has been BJP’s favourite jibe since
the elections of 2014. Once again, the BJP, by equating secularism with
Congress – hence, all the ghastly epithets such as ‘sickularism’ –, seeks to
discredit the hallowed, democratic idea of secularism, understood either as a
separation of the government and religion or as a non-discriminatory treatment
of all religions. The BJP tries to announce its “genuine” secularism by
espousing the noble notion of sabka
saath, sabka vikas (development for all) but does little to distance itself
from its fellow travelers from the Hindutva brigade that blatantly display
their communalism. Whether the BJP has the gumption and courage to dump its
ideological masters in the RSS as well its fringe elements and remain steadfast
to its secular election promise remains to be seen. The evidence so far does not
inspire much confidence especially when the so-called fringe elements, such as Sakshi
Maharaj and Yogi Adityanath, are among the elected MPs of the BJP.
Cow politics has
become the latest tool in the hands of the Hindutva brigade to vent their
animosity and hatred for minorities. In the process, they have destroyed the
core values of true Hinduism, namely, tolerance and diversity. The despairing
aspect of this development is that all political parties have caved in to this
assault on Hinduism. For instance, the Congress has promised to support an
all-India ban on cow slaughter.[33] Not
only is everyone falling in line, but any dissent from this “manufactured”
consensus is seen as anti-Hindu, nay, anti-Indian! Haryana’s Chief Minister
represents this position when he stated that “Muslims can continue to live in this country,
but they will have to give up eating beef”.[34] The
storm-troopers of the BJP, who believe that having a majority in the parliament
or in assemblies permits the party to ban cow slaughter and even ban
beef-eating, display a very poor understanding of democracy and Hinduism. The
possibility that such an aggressive position on cows leads to loss of innocent
lives is of little concern to this unthinking lot. It is beyond their comprehension that such
aggressive behavior will lead to the talibanisation of India. Aklakh
was killed on the basis of a rumour that he had killed a cow which is almost an
exact parallel of the killing of a 27-year-old
woman named Farkhunda in Kabul on the basis of rumours that she had burnt a
copy of the Koran.[35] It
should also be remembered that Aklakh’s killing was not an isolated
incident: 22 year old Noman was lynched to death in Himachal Pradesh,[36] two
youths lynched were in Uttar Pradesh[37] and
Zahid was burnt to death in Kashmir.[38] Mere
suspicion of cow smuggling/cow slaughter/beef eating seems to be enough to
warrant a death sentence, much like the death sentences carried out by the
Taliban.
Legality of cow
slaughter ban
The usual defense of
the ban on cow slaughter (and extended to eating beef as well) is that it is
mandated by Article 48 (see endnote [39] for a statement of
this Article) of the Indian constitution. State governments which have passed
such laws have presumably employed, what economists call, a Benthamite Social
Welfare Function (SWF)[40] by means of which
the positive change in the welfare of those who worship the cow more
than compensates for the negative change in the
welfare of those who might lose by the
ban. I don’t think anyone has denied that those occupied in the business
of slaughtering cattle will lose their livelihoods but their losses have been deemed
small enough to be ignored. Economists and social scientists have, for long, recognized
serious problems with a Benthamite SWF; the following quote illustrates this
unease: “…the complete loss of income of a single agent [any individual]…cannot
be counterbalanced by a finite income [or welfare] increase of all other agents
[individuals]”.[41] But there can be a stronger
objection to the imposition of such laws apart from the technical one of using
an inappropriate SWF.
A law passed by a government can be rejected in India if it
conflicts with the fundamental rights as enshrined in the constitution. My view
is that the law banning cow slaughter possibly violates Article 21 of the
constitution which protects the Fundamental Right to Life The full import of this Right to Life can be
gleaned by referring to the judgment of Justice Chandrachud in the case “Olga Tellis & Ors vs Bombay Municipal
Corporation” in 1985.[42] In brief, Justice Chandrachud extends the
Fundamental Right to Life to include the Right to Livelihood (see endnote[43] for an extract from this judgement).
I am
no expert in law, but my commonsense reading of the judgment suggests
that the right to livelihood of those who depended on cow slaughter has been
abrogated and this violates their Fundamental Right to Life. In the terminology of economics, Justice Chandrachud’s
judgment has the flavor of a Rawlsian SWF[44] which states social
welfare increases only if there is an increase in the welfare of the relatively
worse-off individual(s) in society.
Summing up
Any sensitive, thinking
Indian is bound to be disturbed by the sequence of events of the last few months, starting
from the murders of independent thinkers to the killing of an individual in the
privacy of his home. India has had a bloody history of communal violence but
rarely has a killing such as Aklakh’s happened before. Never before have temple
loud-speakers been used to incite a mob to murder an individual. However, there
is a sordid history of governments abdicating their responsibilities: Sikh
riots of 1984, demolition of Babri Masjid and its aftermath, Godhra attack and
the mayhem in the rest of Gujarat and, now, the supine response of the present
government to the violence of cow politics. I fear things will get worse before
one can hope for any improvement in Indian society. Malevolent genies, once
released, are notoriously difficult to stuff back into the bottle.
[1] http://blogs.reuters.com/india/2013/07/12/interview-with-bjp-leader-narendra-modi/
[2] http://www.livemint.com/Politics/RdJb5L8xp3iD5gc2GSWOjJ/Narendra-Modi-says-Dadri-beef-lynching-sad-and-unwelcome.html
[3] http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/dadri-lynching-one-bjp-leader-calls-for-a-mahapanchayat-another-blames-the-victim-family/
[4] http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/dadri-lynching-one-bjp-leader-calls-for-a-mahapanchayat-another-blames-the-victim-family/
[5] http://indianexpress.com/article/india/politics/dadri-lynching-an-accident-dont-give-it-a-communal-twist-says-union-minister-mahesh-sharma/
[6] http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/dadri-killing-linked-to-religion-aimim-leader-asaduddin-owaisi/
[7] http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/dadri-lynching-rahul-gandhi-visits-bisara-village-meets-family-of-akhlaq/
[8] http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/kejriwal-stopped-from-entering-dadri-village-asks-why-me/
[9] http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/in-dadri-sangeet-som-accuses-up-govt-of-framing-innocent-for-lynching-incident/
[10] http://www.ndtv.com/cheat-sheet/mob-killing-sangeet-som-visits-dadri-homeguards-constable-detained-1225905
[11] http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/dadri-lynching-incident-pm-cant-comment-on-each-and-every-incident-says-bjp-leader/1/490228.html
[12] http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/will-take-up-dadri-mob-killing-with-un-says-minister-azam-khan-1226291
[13] http://www.thehindu.com/specials/in-depth/the-dadri-lynching-how-events-unfolded/article7719414.ece
[14] https://twitter.com/narendramodi?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
[15] http://www.narendramodi.in/mann-ki-baat
[16] http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/dadri-lynching-incident-pm-cant-comment-on-each-and-every-incident-says-bjp-leader/1/490228.html
[17] http://www.hindustantimes.com/india/pm-sensitive-person-seized-of-dadri-lynching-incident-bjp/story-ZVeLMycs7eplzKxtFwpptO.html
[18] http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/pm-modi-says-dadri-mob-killing-controversy-over-ghulam-ali-concert-sad-1231924
[19] http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Will-take-a-56-inch-chest-to-turn-UP-into-Gujarat-Modi-to-Mulayam/articleshow/29269342.cms
[20] http://www.ndtv.com/opinion/gai-pe-charcha-bjp-and-cow-violence-1234237?pfrom=home-opinion
[21] http://www.ndtv.com/elections-news/governments-pink-revolution-destroying-cattle-says-narendra-modi-555981
[22] http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/pm-modi-upset-over-controversial-remarks-on-beef-amit-shah-summons-bjp-leaders-sources/article7776809.ece
[23] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/world/asia/india-writers-return-awards-to-protest-government-silence-on-violence.html?emc=edit_th_20151018&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=69322355&_r=0
[24] http://www.hindustantimes.com/india/it-s-a-manufactured-protest-says-jaitley-on-akademi-awards-issue/story-LuA2LrQOHqaa3UeASBjJ5N.html
[25] http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-return-of-sahitya-akademi-award-not-a-first-nayantara-sahgal-bitterly-opposed-the-emergency-too-2132374
[26] http://indianexpress.com/article/lifestyle/life-style/the-morning-after-how-artists-and-individuals-creatively-resisted-emergency/
[27] http://www.swapan55.com/2015/10/the-flawed-logic-of-award-returnees.html
[28] http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/fifth-column-literary-politics/
[29] http://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/writers-protest-is-congress-sponsored-alleges-bjp-115101501034_1.html
[30] http://www.ndtv.com/opinion/celebrate-not-mock-the-dissenting-writers-1233429
[31] http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-rss-mouthpiece-defends-dadri-lynching-calls-it-a-natural-reaction-to-sin-of-cow-slaughter-2135992
[32] http://www.livemint.com/Politics/RdJb5L8xp3iD5gc2GSWOjJ/Narendra-Modi-says-Dadri-beef-lynching-sad-and-unwelcome.html
[33] http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/digvijaya-singh-congress-will-back-beef-ban/1/491222.html
[34] http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/muslims-can-live-in-this-country-but-they-will-have-to-give-up-eating-beef-says-haryana-cm-manohar-lal-khattar/
[35] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/11585490/Four-to-hang-for-mob-killing-of-Afghan-woman-accused-of-burning-Koran.html
[36] http://www.hindustantimes.com/india/suspected-bajrang-dal-members-lynch-man-over-alleged-cow-smuggling/story-MRBEhyD4UqwjZg1wzwjm6J.html
[37] http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/days-after-dadri-lynching-mob-beats-up-two-over-alleged-cow-slaughter-in-mainpuri/
[38] http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/clashes-in-jammu-as-trucker-targeted-over-beef-rumours-dies-1233569
Article 48 under Directive Principles of State Policy states
“The State shall endeavour to organise agriculture and animal husbandry on
modern and scientific lines and shall, in particular, take steps for preserving
and improving the breeds, and prohibiting the slaughter, of cows and calves and
other milch and draught cattle”
[40]
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/economics/14-42-environmental-policy-and-economics-spring-2011/lecture-notes/MIT14_42S11_lec02.pdf
[41] http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~hejc/papers/review_swf_fuessel_prot.pdf
(quote taken from p. 5)
[42]
http://indiankanoon.org/doc/709776/
[43] “The sweep of the right to life conferred by Article
21 is wide and far reaching. It does not mean merely that life cannot be
extinguished or taken away … except according to
procedure established by law... An equally important facet of that right is the
right to livelihood because, no person can live without the means of living,
that is, the means of livelihood. If the right to livelihood is not treated as
a part of the constitutional right to life, the easiest way of depriving a
person his right to life would be to deprive him of his means of
livelihood to the point of abrogation”.
[44] http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/economics/14-42-environmental-policy-and-economics-spring-2011/lecture-notes/MIT14_42S11_lec02.pdf
